I know the headline may sound a little crazy, but bear with me for a second. Justin Herbert has been electric in his five starts as the LA Chargers‘ quarterback. The former Oregon signal caller has thrown for 290 yards in each game this season including last week where he accounted for 412 yards and 4 touchdowns against the Jacksonville …
If you’re like me, the return of the NFL season this past week was a refreshing change from the doom and gloom of 2020. And if you bleed green and yellow, you probably wished former Oregon Ducks quarterback Justin Herbert had taken a few snaps for the Los Angeles Chargers against Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals. Ducks …
With new state of the art NFL stadiums coming to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, it’s time for the “Conference of Champions” to be the champions of the college football bowl season. The Pac-12 and its less than stellar bowl tie-ins, long the ire of Pac-12 fans, especially when compared to the SEC and B1G, finally has an opportunity to vastly improve …
This is a slightly shorter version of a full interview conducted with Eddie Pleasant. To read the full story, please visit Game On’s blog. Nothing came easy for Eddie Pleasant. The former Oregon Duck spent the first six years of his life growing up in Compton, one of Los Angeles’ toughest ghettos. But when Pleasant discovered his talent in football, he decided …
During mini-camps earlier this summer, both Marcus Mariota and Jameis Winston impressed their new teams and were praised for their accuracy and leadership qualities. In the relatively low-intensity practices, the quarterbacks looked good and impressed their fan bases, coaching staffs and their teammates. Thus far in the preseason training camp, Mariota is without an interception in his first five practices, …
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 …
There’s a famous Johnny Cash song, way before my time but great nonetheless, that summarizes Chip Kelly‘s NFL off-season perfectly. Kelly is walking a fine line, and if he slips it could end catastrophically for the former Ducks coach. If he succeeds, he could revolutionize how GMs and coaches approach player management and personnel decisions entirely. Kelly’s off-season began with the higher-ups …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out For Duck football fans, it used to be about beating the Beavers and the Huskies. Then it moved on to being about winning the Pac-10/12. Now with a Heisman in the trophy case, there’s just one bridge to cross to garner total respect: a national championship. That brings up a new group of rivals, most notably Ohio …
Pressure is something Marcus Mariota knows well. From his days in college, he understands that his team’s successes and failures will all fall on him. He understands how to thrive in situations when everyone is looking to him, needing him to come through when it matters most — either on the field or in the community — whether that means working at a …
There’s a new sheriff or two in Nashville. Along with Tennessee Titans’ second-year head coach Ken Whisenhunt, former Oregon Ducks quarterback Marcus Mariota has joined a freshly assembled Titans’ posse, and is already regarded as THE guy in Tennessee. The NFL franchise that once boasted the careers of Earl Campbell, Warren Moon and Steve McNair, capitalized big time by swooping up the Heisman Trophy-winner at No. 2 in the first …
Many people assumed that one of the NFL‘s most polarizing players, Tim Tebow, was done as an NFL player. Despite these assumptions, one coach, Chip Kelly, decided to sign him. Kelly’s signing a polarizing player who many people doubt can even be a backup in the NFL shouldn’t surprise anybody, as Kelly has shown time and again that he doesn’t …
Just about everyone is familiar with the “Big Three” when referring to GM, Ford and Chrysler; LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh; or the folk band, The Big 3. Likewise, Oregon now has its own “Big Three,” which consists of former players who didn’t do the right things when they were Ducks. The trio consists of troubled players …