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I'd enjoy a little cheese with my whine.

You're right we are spoiled. And we have high expectations and the last time we were looking at a season this awful (and this one might not turn out as bad in truth) was 2016. 10 years!!! So we can all suck it up and see what the future holds. Granted with the firing of Mehringer I'm actually feeling more optimistic right now than I was a week ago and that was after a win.

Lanning's regular season tenure since year one. 11-1 Lost Pac12 championship to eventual championship game team. 12-0 Won BIG10 Title game. Lost to eventual National Champs. 11-1 Only loss to eventual National Champs losing again in playoffs to same team. 4-3 Bad OC hire and position coach promotions derail the season. One bad year is a correctable mistake. You want to see a trainwreck, look no further than SUC where their yearly implosion is in full swing. Fuskies also say hello.

I like pro spread at this point. But we need a dynamic offense that is hard for an opponent to key into a few things and slow or shut it down. This is an opportunity to upgrade for Lanning. I don't think the current offense was going to make it to a national championship. It was too simple and easy to shut down. We need a dynamic offense with a top notch play caller who can twist the opponent into knots and dance to the tune they are playing.

Okay, so we have lost three games this year that we shouldn’t have. Only one with our starting QB. Of those, two are to now ranked teams and the other loss is now in the first non-ranked loss of Lanning’s career. Do you know how many other fan bases would kill for that. Last count 135 out of 135. Lanning has now made one bad hire, promoted from within. Promoting within will get you good assistants that think they have a chance to advance as opposed to avoiding you since you don’t promote from within. And I’m sure once bitten, Dan has now learned a lesson in regard to searching outside also. This is the year to have a Mulligan year, the last year of the 12 team playoff. Only four teams made the first two 12 team playoffs: Georgia and Indiana which will probably make it three in a row, Oregon and Ohio St. which without Sayin will probably go the way of the Ducks and sit this year out. Many of us Grey Beards longed for just a bowl game in the ole days. So, even with a disappointment this year, it is still a GREAT time to be a Duck. So, if you are thinking about getting off the Oregon or the Lanning bandwagon, don’t let the rear wheels hit you on the way off . . . Better yet, go ahead and let them hit you.

This move was necessary, but I still don’t think this situation is entirely on the coaching staff. We know Lanning knows he didn’t hire the most qualified coordinators available. He hired for continuity believing his veteran players would shoulder the load - think Bo Nix getting better from Dillingham to Stein. His miscalculation is that he didn’t need continuity to get over the hump, he needed reform. On top of all that, I believe there is a character gap with the composition of the team. I’m not talking about terrible character, just not the character traits that win championships.

All this " fire Lanning" hype is pretty interesting. You've got a coach that's 52-10, 84% win record, and was considered an up and coming star for 4 years. He could be coach at any school during those years. In six weeks, he suddenly doesn't know how to coach? He has obviously made some bad hires to coach this year, and it sounds like he owns that, and is working to remedy the problem. There are a lot of winning coaches who have been on the hot seat for losing a few games, Day and De Boer for example. Did they forget how to coach? If Lanning were fired, who could you expect to get that would do better? I understand past performance doesn't guaranty future results, but give the man some time to solve the problems the team has.

Lannings fingerprints are all over this defense. He was hired as a defensive coach. He rightly handed the offenses to Dilly and Stein. They were great hires. He missed with Meh'. 2 out of 3 ain't bad. Chances are he hits a Home run with whoever is next. He will have to lick his wounds and move on. Try and learn from this failure. To call for Lanning's head is premature and irresponsible imo.

I cant believe that I am saying this...but Oregon State has the NATIONS #3 offense and the the NATIONS #1 passing offense. Let that sink in...and maybe a new OC is just up the road. His name is Mitch Dahlen. Just saying.

I did read it. This is how it starts In this season of failures and fizzles, frauds and faceplants, one team still found a way to stand out for its futility. Look out below! Here comes Dan Lanning with a bellyflop off the high dive. Splash! It's verbiage throughout is all sensationalism, all for Oohs and Aahs. All to stick the knife in and twist. Complete hack imo. I am sure some people love it, I find it uninformative and weak.

Just looking at the top 25s and 3 remaining undefeated's...Who has 1 loss and who has 2 losses...whoddathunk?

Great post Dazed. It seems like the entire philosophy of this offense has been make as few mistakes as possible and get the ball to our 4 star guys as easily as possible and let them do their four star things. Then through in some WTH stuff here and there to look unpredictable. No rhyme. No reason. No flow. No situational awareness. Almost like someone not having a clue what they're doing just faking it and hoping no one notices. Lanning needs to sit down and really focus on what he wants the offensive identity to be from the list you laid out above and go for it. I think that's exactly what happens.

He was down!

The first question isn't who the OC is, it's what's the system that we want to run. Stien had a spread option horizontal RPO with the zone blocking scheme and I hated it since day one. It won't win a Natty. You got Air Raid or Air Raid Hybrids, Spread RPO-Concepts, Veer and Shoot, Pro-Style or Pro-Style Spread. Riley Runs a Pro Raid at USC that I really like. They run that out Oklahoma counter gap play really well and blocked us up on it perfect a few times. Charlie Wiess Jr runs a nice spread RPO I like at LSU with Kiffin Kendal Briles runs a Veer and Shoot - spread them out and run first, deep shots and high tempo Ryan Day runs a Pro-Style Spread at OSU I like. He runs power gap, zone, RPO, and will go under center play action pro passing concepts. Day is multiple and when you try to take one thing away, he will attack what you give him. Pro-Style like Todd Monken at UGA when Lanning was there. I love Todd, great play caller with his play action mixes, used those elite TE's. Lots of QB under center for hard play action and half-backs in the backfield. Pro-style like Monken protects the ball the most of these, watch Lanning go that route. We'd have won the Natty last year with Monken as our OC and Dante in that system. We'd have steam rolled Indy.

The annoying part of Lanning's schtick is it's very front runnery. That's not how to do it. Be confident and know who you are in adversity too. But instead of his cocky schtick he appears meek. How about more even keel? How about, to me , pathetic message it sends when Ducks vs Them only seems to come out after wins. No son, adversity is often the best teacher. I dunno. I think Lanning is a good enough guy which I appreciate but maybe I would appreciate an actual high quality coach with less charisma than whatever Lanning currently is. Right?

And if we do fire Dan who else are we going to hire? He just needs to be honest with himself and truly evaluate his staff.

I think it was even worse than that. It seemed to go between the extremes of absolutely bland, safe predictability to absolute willy nilly. The run game is finally looking great so let's pass it nine straight times. Let's dink it to Moore around or behind the line then go deep to a second stringer. The creativity of the Oregon offense reminded me of that Australian breakdance lady. Sure she's doing something nobody could have predicted but why?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he feels, Been there, done that.

Pardon me for asking, but did you read it? If you did, I'm wondering which part(s) you so strongly disagree with?

He also put more value into being clever than into being wise, which is also a recipe for failure.

Just stop, they are not firing Dan, period. If anything he had great success at a young age. Now he has to deal with professional angst for the first time. He will be fine.

Agree with all of this. The fire Dan crowd just isn't thinking critically enough about the circumstances. Dan's ceiling is high. He's proven that. The college football landscape is getting more parity every year for the next 5 years. Firing a coach to find someone else that can guarantee a Natty is a fools errand. Look what happened at Penn State if you want to see the risk of firing someone that has been really successful, because you feel that winning Natties is the standard. And I've always felt Penn State is our best comp, not Ohio State or Michigan. We are a tier 1.5 school and I enjoy us when we are in the championship discussion.

Here's a bit of college football trivia which calls attention to the situation as a target. In the last 50 years of AP football polls, only 5 teams have been pre-season No. 1 or No. 2 and finished the season unranked. Obviously Penn State last season which started at No. 2. Then in the 49 prior seasons just 4. Including No. 1 USC in 2012. All 5 of them finished unranked ...and for a couple it was Top 20 (not 25) final ranking years. Those 2 might have made top 25. But, and this is significant, all 5 of them finished with 6 wins or more, and above .500, including 6-5-1 Notre Dame which was No. 2 and then unranked in 1994. Unless the Ducks get their s..t together they could be the first to go from preseason No.1/2 to under .500.

When you look at what was Mehringer’s approach to being a coordinator, it has all the ear marks of a position coach who can’t see past the personal, one on one, and into the whole of offensive strategy. His focus on making one individual (usually the quarterback) completely responsible for making things go is an opposing defense’s dream come true.

Agree to a T.