Oregon just signed an outstanding recruiting class, No. 7 as of now, and did it by pulling players from a who’s who of legacy programs. Add that to Dan Lanning’s recruiting wins last year and we know that he and his staff can persuade top players to come to Eugene. Which brings us to Wednesday’s bowl game–and the other half …
December Is Too Busy and Bowl Season Suffers
College Football has changed so much in the past decade. In the early 2010s, the value of bowl games was clear for teams and players alike. Making a bowl game, even a bad bowl game, was the reward for a decent, or even good, season. Then starting in 2014, the value of bowl games started to decline with the College …
Oregon Ducks Football: Signing Day Superlatives
Signing day was a HUGE success for Dan Lanning and Oregon Ducks football. As our own Charles Fischer chatted about just yesterday, this easily could be one of the best first-year head coach’s recruiting classes ever with how many big swings Lanning took in the past few weeks. Well, those swings have certainly paid off. The gut punch of Dante Moore flipping this …
How Many Quarterbacks Can One Team Sustain?
Just how many scholarship quarterbacks can a college football roster sustain? This is the big question in this day and age of the transfer portal and NIL. Any starting quarterback is going require a chunk of NIL money (that’s a given, though how much will vary depending on the player and school). More NIL opportunities will also come with being …
Chaotic Transfer Portal is Destroying College Football
Fans have been going through some things since the regular season ended two weeks ago. Players are jumping from rosters like hot beans in bacon grease, fueled by the promise of more playing time and lucrative NIL deals. Gone are the days of program building from the ground up; coaches develop players from scratch with the hopes of eventually enjoying …
Oregon Ducks Football: Can We Trust Dan Lanning?
Dan Lanning is Oregon’s new head coach for the immediate future. Heading into bowl season, he has one 9-3 season so far under his belt with the Ducks, and now looks to cap off what looked to be a promising campaign with a solid bowl win against the North Carolina Tarheels. Mr. FishDuck discussed this topic with me after he decided …
Building Lanning’s Defense: The Linebackers
Dan Lanning’s defense this season did not live up to his standard, and it wasn’t even close. Oregon’s defense couldn’t get off the field on third downs and struggled to get any pressure on opposing quarterbacks. There were some bright spots, but on the whole, Lanning’s defense failed to get the job done. But now we are in transfer portal …
Will the Transfer Portal Save Oregon Ducks Football?
The transfer portal could entirely reshape the Oregon Ducks football program through 2023. The real question is: does it need saving? I posed this to Mr. FishDuck, who was intrigued enough to first ponder his selection of live dealer games at Bollywood, and then write his own thoughts in a Saturday article about the portal to accompany mine today. Well, …
What is Oregon Football’s Standard?
Oregon finished the regular season with a record of 9-3 with losses to Georgia, Washington and Oregon State. Most programs would kill for a 9-3 record, but to Oregon fans, this feels like a lost season in which the Ducks failed to meet their own standard. Oregon is not a blue blood; we have never won a National Championship, but …
Ducks, Beavers in Battle for Holiday Bowl Bid
Between long periods of silent reflection, handwringing, bargaining with the football gods and frequent public outbursts in a nightgown and slippers, Oregon Ducks fans are likely spending the weekend unshaven and waiting for the College Football Playoff to announce its top four teams and (yawn) the rest of the bowl games. All joking aside, the Ducks are likely headed to …
Oregon Ducks Football: Will Dante Moore Be a Duck?
Looks like head coach Dan Lanning’s off to save the future of the Oregon Ducks football program today. After a rough last couple of weeks, the Oregon football world has been fluttering full of rumors about superstar quarterback Dante Moore de-committing from the program. This all sparked up when offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham took the job as Arizona State’s next …
Don’t Forget that Oregon’s Identity is the Run Game
Since the firing of Mark Helfrich after the 2016 season, and through the Willie Taggart and Mario Cristobal eras, we’ve heard a lot of talk about Oregon’s identity as a program. We have seen teams range from high-scoring offenses like those under Chip Kelly, Helfrich and Taggart to low-scoring nail biters from the Cristobal era. But there is one thing …