Football Gossip … why would anyone give important Oregon football information that label? My routine at lunchtime years back (before beginning FishDuck.com) was to drive home for a sandwich, let the dog out and then check into the Oregon message boards and sites, as so many of you do. My wife would turn on her soap opera shows and get …
Versatility is the calling card of the Oregon Ducks football program. Multi-threat athletes are at every position, giving the Ducks a huge advantage on the gridiron. Oregon football is recognized for its quarterbacks of the past such as Dennis Dixon, Darron Thomas, and Marcus Mariota and their ability to fool defenses with a very diverse running and passing attack. Year in …
With the NFL preseason around the corner, all of the intrigue that has been building throughout the offseason will finally be seen on the field. One of the most interesting stories coming out of Eagles camp this year has been surrounding Chip Kelly’s two new quarterbacks – Sam Bradford and Tim Tebow. Both players have looked impressive thus far, with Bradford looking …
News Just over a month separates “We, The Oregon Faithful” from our first glimpse of a re-tooled Lightning Yellow and Thunder Green squad with aspirations of Bowling in January. With fall camp just around the corner, recruiting will take a back seat to the maturation of the current lineup, but nonetheless will still produce underlying storylines heading into the fall. …
Football is a game of position and space, and coaches spend a great deal of time analyzing their schemes to incorporate wrinkles and techniques that will influence the opposition. In most cases, causing a slight hesitation, or a few small steps in the wrong direction, can result in a big play. Option football, which includes the zone read, is predicated on this. …
Over the past month, Jack Follman from “Pacific Takes” at SB Nation, has been doing a six-part list of the “Top 100 2015 Pac-12 Players,” and naturally, there are several Oregon players listed. So, let’s discuss how the list ended up. The Ducks take the top spot on the list with 17 players in the top 100, with UCLA and USC …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out In the 2012 preseason poll, the media picked what turned out to be the 7-6 University of Southern California Trojans as the top team in the land. It took three years to recover from being burned by their compulsive love for USC, but like a battered wife who can’t figure out that her prince just isn’t all that …
Friday evening, the Ducks experienced a blow to their recruiting momentum. Highly-recruited four-star LB Bryce Youngquist committed to the Oklahoma Sooners despite saying in June there was a “90 percent” chance that he would commit to Oregon. This comes on the heels of Oregon narrowly missing on many of their top linebacker targets in the class of 2015. More recently, in addition …
In Track and Field, no individual award is more prestigious than the Bowerman Trophy. It’s the sport’s equivalent to the Heisman Trophy, and the Ducks are looking to go two-for-two this year on the awards. Since its inception in 2009, three Ducks have won this prestigious award, with nine finalists. Arizona has the second highest number of finalists with four; thus the Ducks …
It’s always nice to have youth, especially in the ever-evolving world of college football. With youth comes great excitement and thrill. Typically, the goal is to have the younger athletes learn from those that have been there before them, in the hope of providing both short-term stability and long-term longevity. In my most recent article, An Oregon Ducks Dynasty in the Making, …
The best thing about recruiting is that concerns and questions tend to pop up throughout the entire year. My continued analysis of Oregon Duck football recruiting has me asking the tough questions as we begin the month of August. With the tremendous, early start to the 2016 recruiting class, the tough questions aren’t easy to find. With a class ranking …
My new book is out. Controlled Chaos: Chip Kelly‘s Football Revolution tells the story of the Eagles’ crazy 2014 season, including the off-seasons before and after. There was a lot of turmoil, from the sudden release of DeSean Jackson and Chip’s bureaucratic death match with Howie Roseman to the explosion of wheeling and dealing this past spring, when Chip took …