Piggybacking off of my previous post about Mario Cristobal costing Justin Herbert being the No. 1 draft pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, I wanted to explore what’s to come for Herbert and his draft day “rival” Tua Tagovailoa. But first, I must come clean. I must admit my “sin” of wishing a fellow human being to not succeed. While …
A lot of noise has been made about the ineptitude of the conference in which the Oregon Ducks play. From some random guy deciding when penalties should stand, to bowl game opt-outs and criminally poor refereeing in all sports, the Pac-12 has long been the worst that the Power Five has to offer. The conference took their first step toward …
Good luck, Tyler Shough. If you haven’t already heard, the Oregon Ducks‘ quarterback announced he will enter the NCAA transfer portal after starting all seven games of last year’s shortened football season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I have mixed feelings about the redshirt sophomore’s early departure from Eugene. Shough’s rollercoaster performance was puzzling, dazzling at times but pockmarked with …
Oregon and USC seem primed to be the top two schools in the Pac-12. Both have top ten recruiting classes for the 2021 recruiting cycle according to Rivals and both teams are already projected to win their respective divisions. In terms of raw talent, Oregon and USC are miles ahead of the rest of the conference. It wouldn’t come as …
Darren Perkins, one of our own at FishDuck, wrote this past Friday about Herbert’s draft billing and its relationship to head coach Mario Cristobal’s coaching which got me thinking about the 2019 season again. Joe Burrow became the unanimous first choice of the NFL Draft this time a year ago, as Oregon star quarterback Justin Herbert followed closely behind at sixth overall …
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 …
Henry To’oto’o has been a star at Tennessee. Unfortunately for the Vol’s, the rest of the team hasn’t matched his ability over the last few years and they find themselves in search of a coach. For To’oto’o, that was enough to put his name in the transfer portal. It looks more and more likely that the linebacker might just end up …
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 …
Now that we have a surface-level understanding of what Coach Tim DeRuyter’s defense will look like from my last article, lets’ take a deeper look at his base alignment. From the writings of the man himself, Coach DeRuyter prefers the 3-4 defense, and for good reason. Some of his personal reasons for using the alignment are that it gets better, …
The Oregon Ducks have hired Coach Tim DeRuyter to fill their vacant defensive coordinator position. Coach DeRuyter has spent the last four seasons as DC for the California Golden Bears, where his defensive units have given the rest of the Pac-12 headaches. He took over what was the 127th nationally ranked scoring defense the year before he arrived in Berkeley, …
Come this June, the Pac-12 will purchase one final plane ticket for current Commissioner Larry Scott, and it will be a one-way ticket to anywhere but here. Thank goodness. While Scott did bring the Pac-12 up to date and into the 2000s (His predecessor Tom Hansen had fallen woefully behind the times) with marketing and branding, it became …
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 …