Picture it: November 29th, 2013. Oregon and Oregon State are facing off in Autzen Stadium. Marcus Mariota is capping off a fantastic second season as a starter, the Ducks are 9-2 heading in to the day against a 6-5 Beavers squad who would love to prevent Oregon from reaching 10 wins. Mark Helfrich has had a solid first year as a coach after …
Marcus Mariota, Thomas Tyner, De’Anthony Thomas and Josh Huff combined to score only 36 points in the 2013 Oregon-Oregon State Civil War game, one of the worst outputs of the spread option era at Oregon. It was just enough to beat the Beavers. It started with a fourth-down interception by the UO defense in the endzone in the first quarter. The Ducks came back and …
Some Tuesday morning thoughts as I finish taking in the Husky victory last weekend before fully turning my eyes towards Pullman and the ESPN GameDay hosting hysteria of this weekend. 1) Recruiting Per Rivals.com, the Ducks currently sit third nationally for the 2019 recruiting cycle. After witnessing the “best college game I’ve ever been to,” No. 1 overall prospect Kayvon …
Last week, after two straight home losses to bad teams in the easiest part of the Eagles schedule, I wrote that Thursday’s game against Detroit would tell us a lot about how much fight Chip Kelly has left in him. Apparently, not much. The Eagles lost 45-14, and after the game Chip had no attitude. He spoke in the hushed, …
Last week the Eagles lost a tight game to a bad Miami squad, 20-19. And Eagles fans and reporters went crazy with despair. This Sunday, the team was blown out by a bad Tampa Bay team featuring a rookie quarterback (Jameis Winston) who the Oregon Ducks destroyed just 11 months ago. If you thought the infamous Philadelphian negativity would expand …
Philadelphia lost on the road to the Carolina Panthers Sunday. That shouldn’t be such a huge shock. Carolina is undefeated after seven games, with an excellent defense featuring two of the league’s best linebackers (Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis) and the NFL’s hottest young cornerback (Josh Norman). On offense, they have a creative running game, featuring two stars that Chip …
To be canonized as an official Roman Catholic Saint, you need to have produced at least two verified miracles. The New Orleans Saints got their first on Sunday, miraculously healing the crippled Eagles offense and blessing them with 39 points. It would have been 53 except for two inexcusably bad passes by QB Sam Bradford that were intercepted in the …
The city of Philadelphia was basically on suicide watch after the loss to Dallas, with the only energy wielded by people forming lynch mobs for Chip Kelly. Much of the pessimism was realistic, too. The Eagles’ offense was easily the worst in the NFL, as their three running backs combined for negative yardage against the Cowboys’ decimated defense. Kelly was running …
Things are bad. Really, really bad. The Eagles were somewhat cheered by a stronger second half against the Atlanta Falcons in their Game 1 loss, and hyped up their home showdown against the hated Dallas Cowboys with a cheeky video that poked fun at New Jersey governor and Cowboys fan Chris Christie. Then they rewarded the large national TV audience with …
The Atlanta Falcons had the worst defense in the NFL last year, ending up 6-10 despite boasting one of the league’s best QB-WR tandems in Matt Ryan and Julio Jones. Dan Quinn was the defensive mastermind behind the Seattle Seahawks during the last two years, when that defense led them to the Super Bowl twice, and an inspired choice to take …
After a crazy off-season of frenetic wheeling and dealing, controversies and silly hype, the Eagles season begins, for real, on Monday night during Prime Time. The final preparations are done. The Eagles lost their fourth preseason game, the most pointless, which strangely reassured some people who love to tell you preseason games don’t matter. Which is sort of true, except that …
All programs have them and they are often overlooked by the fans. They are the people who transform incoming freshmen into future stars. These unsung heroes are the strength and conditioning coaches, and they are just as important to the program as each position coach. Without them, no amount of scouting or play calling would help the team win. Fans of Oregon have …