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Chip Kelly is coming to town this weekend. Oh wait, that's for a game and not an interview!

Moneyball Scott Hatteberg: [Responding to being asked to play first base] I've only ever played catcher. Billy Beane: It's not that hard, Scott. Tell him, Wash. Ron Washington: It's incredibly hard. "It's incredibly hard." When 'someone' came up with the idea of hiring a TE coach to be our QB coach (with no prior specialized QB coaching experience), I feel like there should have been a conversation at Oregon that ended with: "It's incredibly hard... and Coach, this idea sucks." And I don't care that he played QB in college. Coaching the game, and playing the game, are often worlds apart, requiring different talents and gifts.

Does anybody know the rules for bringing in anybody short term in mid season? Seems like a Helfrich type guy could come in and at least steady the ship till the end of the season.

Yeah, that one will go down as a historically bad decision. Kudos to DL for having the cajones to pull the trigger now rather than later.

So.....who is assuming the OC role?

DL really didn’t have any choice. I understand the loyalty and promoting from within but Mehringer seriously didn’t have any kind of resume to deserve being OC. Not for a top 5 fbs program anyway.

Yep. And here it is from Go Ducks: https://goducks.com/news/2026/10/25/football-oregon-relieves-offensive-coordinator-mehringer-of-duties

Locksley was already fired. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/50250293/mike-locksley-says-peace-firing-maryland

Here ya go: You can read it right here.

If Akili Smith Sr steps in to mentor the QB room and guides his son to victory at Ohio St, that would be a story to follow!

Hard to ague with that logic. My point is what could a Joey Harrington or Jonathan Smith as a QB coach teach about staying poised and disciplined during a chaotic play vs a back up tight end as your coach.

To the contrary....we are an incredible story to follow, and all publicity is good--even if negative....right?

I agree Lanning is NOT capable of bringing us to the promised land. Seems like a great speaker until you realize that he really didn't say anything. Never really cared for Cristobal but he is a better head coach than Lanning.

No joke. I can chalk up the Ok St defeat to you win some you lose some but everything since then has been gross neglagence.

I am an old time DUCK fan. As a student, my first Head Coach was Len Casanova. I played JC basketball in California and tried to walk on the Oregon BB team and lasted all of one hour. I have watched all of this for 60+ years and have finally reached some level of exhaustion. I think our Head Coach Dan Lanning has lost control of this team. Where is the leadership? All the comments about the OC and DC and position coaches are the result of the HC hiring these coordinators and position coaches and not being willing to make changes. Last night Oregon did not look like a team. Illinois looked like a team with a HC in charge. RaShaad Samples gets a DUI this summer and there was no visible punishment. No surprise to me to see Evan Stewart get a DUI plus no drivers license. I lost a family member to a drunk driver so I have no mercy here. I started my own business 50 years ago and retired last year. I hired people and I fired people. I understood that ultimately the success of my business was me making good decisions and sometimes tough decisions. Our President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said "The Buck Stops Here". I think it is time for Rob Mullens to get actively involved.

I've read that the last three games are the worst three game offensive stretch since the glorious Bermeister era. I predict that distinction will be surpassed in the next three games (Northwestern, Ohio St, Michigan).

Geoff Schwartz's thoughts:

I'd take Monty calling plays at this point.

Dan Lanning's is going to need every bit of his sports psychologist's abilities to keep this team engaged and motivated now that we have nothing to play for other than a bowl game. No more "We still have all of our goals in front of us" to remind the team to get back on the horse. Every person on this roster that stuck around an extra year to win a Natty is going to have to dig deep realizing that at the very least they are still playing to save their draft stock. Perhaps the silver lining will be checking sports media seeing that nobody is covering us anymore now that we are irrelevant. No more rat poison at least.

"Either he has assembled an offensive unit of fake 4/5 star players or he has assembled a fake offensive coaching staff." Exactly. There's only Door #1, or Door #2. There is no Monty Hall (just to show my age there) offering a Door #3.

As Ducks, I'm afraid that the closest Phil, and likely even me, will ever get to the National Football Championship, is when we lost to Auburn in heartbreaking fashion in 2011. That one still stings.

Agreed. 10 points with a roster full of 4 and 5 star players against the statistical 90-100th ranked defense in the country that played FCS G5 and B1G teams. In the words of the great orator Clark W Griswald: "WORSE! How could it get any worse!?...Take a look around you Ellen! We're at the threshold of Hell!" I think we can only improve by putting someone else. I'm hopeful of this. Illinois replaced their DC, and even though our O is trash I doubt they played worse than before.

Geeze. What an abysmal Saturday that was. After a surprisingly easy first drive TD against the 90th ranked defense in the country, the Ducks proceeded to enact every negative offensive characteristic that they've displayed all season up to this point. Discombobulated O line, check. Confused and flustered QB, check. Drive killing whack a doodle play calling, check. The classic third and nine two yard pass so common that everyone called it pre snap time and time again, check. The people of Illinois should thank the Ducks for allowing that retro reenactment of the 85 Chicago Bears defense to take place on their home field. Lanning is going to have to address one of two elephants in the room. Either he has assembled an offensive unit of fake 4/5 star players or he has assembled a fake offensive coaching staff. Every QB the Ducks have put on the field this year has looked atrocious. Is that because two five stars and a three star have forgotten how to play or is it that a former tight end with no QB position coaching experience has no idea what he's doing? Are all the 4/5 star guys on the O line all frauds or does the O line coach not know how to teach the position. The success of O lines past has come from experienced portal guys coming in or pre Terry guys already on the roster. His pre Ducks OL coaching experience was a whopping one year at Hawaii. Is the entire offensive unit just not getting the genius of OC Mehringer or could it possibly be that he is truly the worst OC in the country? This morning Coach Lanning will have to make this assessment and act accordingly. He either blames his players and keeps his coaches or blames his coaches and makes changes. If he keeps his coaches and blames the players then they will all just tune out and start planning their post Duck futures and rightly so. If he acknowledges his own staffing failures and acts on it, he lets the players see him take accountability with a plan to course correct next season. This year has gone up in the biggest what if inferno since Dennis Dixon went down. The fan base can either still root for accountability regardless of outcome or will tune out denial as more 3rd and 9 two yard passes stack up. The choice is Lanning's.

The defense is working about as good as the MINT scheme will let it. Hampton has a (short) prior record of success as a DC. What specifically are you seeing at this point that would warrant him being replaced with someone else? I get that the first 2 games they were trying to find their own motivation, but since then they've played pretty good.. The Illini changed up their play calling in the second half to attack the edges and use their bruiser RB up the middle. As a team that offense isn't exciting but they are incredibly consistent and don't shoot themselves in the foot. Their QB was good enough to help his team score. I specifically saw Lanning with the defensive play call sheet in his hand before the 75 yard score. So that one is on him, and maybe you could argue that if Hampton was good enough DL wouldn't have to be helping him, but he was always helping Tosh too, so by that measure you wouldn't want Tosh back. Dan needs to change his scheme on defense, but the coaching staff at every level is good enough to give us a championship caliber defense. The offense is obviously a disaster. The only coaches to retain there are the RB and WR coaches. We also need to replace whoever backfilled that personnel manager Stein took with him, because we whiffed in the entire portal roster while Kentucky knocked it out of the park like we used to do.