Jon Wilner of the Pac-12 Hotline posted his under/over predictions for all Pac-12 teams. The under/over for the Ducks is nine wins, of which Wilner goes for the under while citing Oregon’s lack of a proven quarterback. The only team that Wilner predicts to win more than nine games is Arizona State. Given Oregon’s talent advantage, in addition to a …
Oregon Head Coach Mario Cristobal was an offensive lineman. He loves to recruit and coach the big guys in the middle, often giving the Ducks one of the better units in the country. He is improving at recruiting pass-catchers, and what would an offensive line coach love more than pass-catchers who can block? The tight end room at Oregon might …
Turnover differential is one of the most important stats in all of football, and perhaps no team in all of college football exemplifies that more than the Oregon Ducks. For a long time now, the Oregon Ducks’ turnover margin has determined the team’s fate. Oregon has generally been one of the best programs in college football since the start of …
With every new hire, Mario Cristobal declares it an upgrade. In most cases to date, this seems true. However, was each one of these hires really an upgrade for the Oregon program? In the case of the new defensive coordinator, this would seem to be true. When Mario Cristobal took over the program at the end of 2017, he inherited, …
We all grew up hearing “Defense wins Championships,” and the early Nick Saban National Championship teams at Alabama epitomized this mantra. Yet college football has begun to change: Alabama scored 45 points against Auburn in 2019 and lost, and it took over 50 points to win the SEC Championship in 2020 over No. 7 Florida (52-46). Everyone watched the carnage …
Incoming freshman quarterback Ty Thompson may not get the starting job this season, but he should eventually become a superstar quarterback for the Ducks. If he’s able to get comfortable before his upperclassman years within the Oregon program, I not only see him having a couple great seasons, but the potential to lead the greatest era of football in school history(assuming …
Chip Kelly ruined it, didn’t he? He was just a good enough recruiter to always have a decent roster, his offensive mind is one of the greatest of all time and he is easily the best halftime adjuster in modern school history. He was never going to have to leave Oregon. The administration was going to give him anything he wanted, …
Perhaps it is the long cold winters I spend up here in eastern Washington, but the grouch in me has returned. It’s been a while, but like a broken record, I’m placing Oregon’s offense inconsistencies once again on Mario Cristobal’s shoulders. Having not been kind to Cristobal in the way he had handled the Oregon offense with the uber-talented Justin …
Mario Cristobal is building something special at Oregon. He is taking a school that sits at the physical and metaphorical fringes of the College Football world and elevating it into a football power. Now, none of this would be possible without the prominent coaches who came before him: Rich Brooks, Mike Bellotti, Chip Kelly, and Mark Helfrich. All these coaches …
With change comes opportunity. As Andy Avalos leaves Oregon to take the head coaching job at Boise State, there is an opportunity for Mario Cristobal to evaluate the Oregon defense and elevate the defense to the next level. Coach Eric Boles was kind enough to give us his most recent list of top five defensive coordinator candidates, which shows us …
Something simply doesn’t add up. There’s a pretty simple formula to winning in college football, and it starts with getting better players than everybody else. There are other factors needed to build a consistently good program, but bringing in top-tier talent is believed to be the most important. Oregon has done that better than just about any other Pac-12 program …
Dear Mario Cristobal, I, like many Duck fans, have appreciated the recruiting revolution and the defensive reinvigoration brought during your tenure. The back-to-back Pac-12 Championships are a major step accomplishment for an Oregon program that bottomed out in 2016. It has been a fast rebuild back to the top of the Pac-12, and for that we are appreciative. There is …