This offseason has provided a few storylines for Oregon Ducks fans to watch. With Marcus Mariota pressing for a No.1 pick in April’s NFL Draft, to Vernon Adams Jr. transferring from Eastern Washington, the drama has been plentiful. One of the tougher storylines to follow, however, is the amount of veteran players the Ducks lost this offseason. Yesterday, senior wide receiver B.J. Kelley made the decision to not return to …
The Concept of Tempered Steel If you aren’t a huge science guy (I for one am not), you might mistake the process of tempering steel for hardening a metal. While increasing steel’s strength, tempering is actually all about softening a metal through the use of heat to make it more flexible. In season three of Oregon’s best quarterback in school …
When a new class of freshmen arrives to a football program, it’s always a mixed bag. Players of all positions gather from different high schools or junior colleges, states and backgrounds, to come together as teammates. Some are prized recruits coming in from premier high school programs; some are lesser-known players that the coaches hope are diamonds in the rough. …
Mike Bellotti raised a lot of eyebrows in 2007 with the relatively uninspiring, no-name hire of someone named Chip Kelly out of Division IAA New Hampshire. Result: Oregon has been among the nation’s leaders in rushing since. During that span, perfecting the zone read has not only turned quarterbacks into de facto running backs, but it has made talented running backs even …
Photos courtesy of Kevin Cline In most of the close games and eventual losses during the Chip Kelly era, a common theme seemed to surface consistently. An opposing team that was able to slow the run game enough force the Ducks to throw would sometimes find that Oregon couldn’t. The 2012 game against Stanford aside, we saw opposing teams like …