Oregon’s 20-year football nadir has produced three factions on this site. It is no secret that I belong to the outnumbered Root-and-Branch faction. As difficult as may be for some to hear, in this camp we’ve forecasted that Mark Helfrich will fail and have begun calling for new leadership to reverse the degradation to Oregon’s erstwhile winning culture. Then there …
Tonight the most anticipated Oregon Ducks basketball season in recent memory will begin, and the 5th-ranked Oregon Ducks will charge onto the hardwood at Matthew Knight Arena. Their goal in simple terms will be to start the season 1-0, but by winning tonight the Ducks will also extend their home game win streak to 25. It has been more than 500 days since Oregon …
Ducks Need a Miracle to Reach Bowl Eligibility After some signs of life in a victory against ASU, the Ducks returned to playing really badly in their blowout loss to the USC Trojans. With the loss, the Ducks now sit at 3-6, their worst record through nine games since 1991, when they also sat at 3-6. No one on the Oregon football …
It’s no secret that Oregon women’s basketball has been scoring big time in the recruiting department. Their recruiting class for this year is ranked third in the nation! One of the freshmen this year is the incredibly talented Sabrina Ionesco, one of the top recruits in the country, who was USA Today’s Player of the Year and the McDonalds all-American MVP. She will undoubtedly make …
I am mad as hell. I have had three Coaching Consultants on the FishDuck.com Analysis team tell me that, “If my players in high school used defensive technique like that – I would be embarrassed.” I can hardly believe my eyes, as coaches sit with me through intense “Skull-Sessions” and detail the bad technique being exhibited on defense. Could we have …
Much that has been written about the Oregon defense and why it is one of the worst in college football has been centered around recruiting and the lack of talent on the defensive side of the ball. “We are being overpowered on the line-of-scrimmage and do not have enough 4-star defensive players to take on the sophisticated offenses and talented …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out Amid the controversy of why and how to fix it, there’s one thing we can all agree on: Oregon football 2016 sucks. “Why” is no doubt complicated. If we want to be simplistic, we can just blame the coaches and join the witch hunt. Reality, however, is more complicated than that. Personally, I subscribe to the “perfect …
Over the past 50 years or so there have been many great teams in the Pac-8/10/12, but only a few teams have risen to the top to dominate the conference over an extended time period. There are common threads among the teams that dominated and unique outliers as well. Coaching, a matter of “no small disturbance” in Oregon right now …
After last season’s groundbreaking success that finished with the most wins ever in a season by an Oregon Duck basketball team, the off-season has brought unprecedented attention to the program. There was some concern in the spring as two of the leading scorers declared for the NBA draft. That concern was short lived, as Dillon Brooks and Tyler Dorsey pulled their …
Ordinarily I wouldn’t do this: write about a specific new defensive coordinator when there are still several important games left in the season – games in which the Ducks could significantly improve, or the new DC’s team could get blasted. But I really don’t think either of those things is going to happen. I believe I have enough evidence to present …
Statistically there is no denying how low the Oregon Ducks football team has gone on the defensive side of the ball. The cause of this rapid decline can be blamed on poor coaching, lack of buying into the system or the increase in talent for other schools to make the Pac-12 more balanced top to bottom. Those ideas are intriguing …
You would think we are in Seattle with all the Dog-Piling of Oregon fans on the stack of the #Fire Mark Helfrich movement around here. As you all know, I am not in that group, although this site will allow editorials on both sides of this discussion and we have certainly had some juicy articles on that topic lately. Yet, I …