Exactly two months from today, Abiliene Christian plays Georgia State in the first game of the 2014 football season. As we march closer and closer to the glorious time of the year that we know as football season, we still must feed the monkey that is our football addiction. One way we can do that is by looking at some of …
By now, we’ve all heard of the unfortunate ACL injury Bralon Addison suffered in Spring practice, and it appears to be season ending. Injuries are an unfortunate reality of sports, especially football, and everyone has to deal with them. While there are plenty of reasons to be upset about Oregon losing their best and most accomplished receiver, don’t start writing …
If a picture is worth a thousand words, I should stop typing right now and just post a pictorial of Josh Huff’s Oregon football career. With nary another word, it might win me a Pulitzer in the sports writing category — if there is such an honor. Put it this way, no Oregon player from 2010 through 2013 graced my …
For the better part of the last decade, Oregon has been a veritable clearinghouse for NFL-caliber defensive backs. The likes of Jarius Byrd, T.J. Ward, Walter Thurmond III, Patrick Chung, Eddie Pleasant, and more recently, John Boyett, are all former Ducks now cashing checks from teams in the NFL. Assistant Coach John Neal gets kudos for recruiting defensive backs extremely …
A little over a month ago, Budda Baker, a prized recruit out of Bellevue High School in Washington, had Duck fans screaming with joy and Husky fans howling in agony when he announced he was going to play football at Oregon. It sounded great — here comes the next De’Anthony Thomas! But two weeks ago he made a U-turn that …
Great football players inevitably face a choice between leaving school early for the NFL draft or completing their education. It’s a personal decision for each individual and most Duck fans support whichever direction the player goes, but the 2014 roster comes as a surprise to some of us. Some Ducks, such as DeAnthony Thomas (DAT), should have stayed. Ifo Ekpre-Olomu, …
When news broke that Don Pellum was going to be Oregon’s new defensive coordinator, a number of people asked me how it would affect recruiting. ”It won’t,” I said, “the thing to watch is whether or not John Neal stays put.” I was worried, since I knew that Neal really wanted that defensive coordinator position. How would he react to …
Craig Strobeck It seems that it was not that long ago that I attended a recruiting luncheon and the subject was our current cornerback star, Ifo Ekpre-Olomu. Coach Kelly was talking about Ifo (a few years ago when this took place) and he explained that he only had to watch four or five high school highlight plays of Ifo, when, …
Craig Strobeck Now that we are halfway through the season, I thought I would take this chance to highlight some of the top players. Most of the names on this list are the usual suspects and for good reason. While there are players on the team whose roles go unnoticed on the stat sheet – for example, offensive linemen – I am sticking with …
Kevin Cline If you’re a Ducks’ fan or an NFL team in the market for a physical defensive back with great ball skills, then Ifo Ekpre-Olomu is a guy you want to keep your eye on this season. Simply put, he is a ball hawk who has the aggressiveness to legitimately project as a boundary corner in the NFL. Ekpre-Olomu can …
The Oregon-Stanford game this upcoming season will surely be one of the best games of the year between two of the best teams in the country. An early prediction: the Ducks will win. Now, there are a million reasons why this result might happen. Maybe Stanford suffers a bunch of costly injuries leading up to the game. Maybe Oregon will …
When someone mentions the Oregon Ducks, most people think of a fast-paced explosive offense that leaves defenders in a whirlwind searching for their own jock straps as the band strikes up “Mighty Oregon” and the Duck starts doing pushups. Lost in the offensive storm is a secret scarcely ever uttered east of the Oregon-Idaho state line: Oregon has a nationally prominent defense as well. While there are some …