UtahDuck

I was at this game. It is by far my most memorable memory as a duck fan. 10/10 I always bring this up to my utah friends along with our win in 17 when we had probably the worst qb in a decade beat utah.

1. is absolutely irrelevant, Oklahoma, Alabama and Clemson are all much bigger teams in much smaller towns. As for in state talent, sure UW has more than Oregon, but it still pales in comparison to CA, TX, FL and the rest of the south. You need to remember that this is more about competing with teams that are currently in coaching searches. 2. I mean what is their recent history, nobody cares about 2 half championships from 3 decades ago. you have to go back to 1965 for them to have a winning record against oregon. They do have a good sized alumni and fanbase I'll give them that. 3. does money matter if you don't spend it. Peterson wasn't even making a base salary of 5m in his time at UW. the department has dropped UW's salary pool every year since Peterson left. 4. I'm not exactly sure why this matters but okay Lets look at some key disadvantages that UW has. 1. Roster, UW isn't losing games purely due to inadequacies at coaching. The front 6(they run a 2-4) for UW is bad. their scheme isn't necessarily a bad scheme you just need good space eaters(vita vea) that hasn't been recruited in 2-4 years. They have ILB is bare, OLB is purely hilarious. The only defensive strength is CB and if Gordon and Mcduffie are gone I am not sure that will be a strength next year. AS for their offense, Scheme is probably the biggest issue but that doesn't change the fact that they have major gaps at WR and RB and Otten is basically being schemed out and will be gone this year as well. Their oline is pathetic and they aren't going to be improving their either. The last point of this is that who ever gets hired will inevitably be unable to fix the current recruiting class so they will start even further behind and they will always have to compete with Oregon as long as Cristobal is there. 2. Athletic Department, The UW department is the biggest joke possible, between them trying to push more allegations against Lake(no see that he pushed a player before ever being hired at UW. Then you add in that Jen cohen is the AD, she has not hired a decent coach at UW to date and has worked at UW for 23 years. She has no contacts outside of the pac 12. 3. they have no clear advantage in NIL. Heck about a week ago they had a player sign through their montlakes futures program with VOF space and the VOF space press release called them the UW hokies... I imagine for most players a mid sized community with car dealerships and local companies willing to spend money will make up the vast majority of the money made through NIL. some of the big names like Thibs will get really large deals. as a final note, Currently UW is third? in the coaching carousel behind USC, LSU, and probably TCU they will also have to compete with Florida and maybe Miami. If you are succeeding G5 coach you don't want the mess of UW and most of the good p5 coaches have no reason to move to UW either.

I do agree the coaching carousel this of season is going to be dramatic. I expect some teams(LSU) to throw some unseenly amounts of money around. Their are going to be some teams that will cry foul and will be very upset. Currently I do think Franklin moves to USC(Which is by far the worst blue blood out their). I don't know what to make of LSU at this point I think it's Tuckers but if he decides the B12 is easier and he gets a good raise it could throw a wrinkle in the carousel. I think The leach hire was always expected. He is a nut but he has performed consistently everywhere and even WSU knew it would happen they never had they money to compete. As for Mario, I think it is possible one of the powerhouses comes calling, I just hope cristobal can build his empire to the point that he can point to his machine and say why would i give this up for your mess. Unless he makes the playoffs I don't see florida trying to pull him this year.(could be wrong). AS for P12 teams, I'd say the entire conference could afford one, the question is would Fickell et al give up their current situation for the mess of COL or AZ? no, no they would not

personally not sold on Norvell. The MWC is good not great and I think they have slumped a bit recently as BSU hasn't been a powerhouse since 2016(don't get me wrong they've still been really really good). I'm just not sold on norvell. I mean outside of the SEC how often do teams hire away other P5 head coaches? The only ACC coach I can think of is Mendenhall who coached at BYU. That is a debatable if byu was a p5 caliber team. The big 12 has no head coaches that were hired away. big 10 has Tucker at MSU and Franklin at PSU SEC has Dan Mullen at Florida, Mike Leach- Miss state, and jimbo fisher T A&M. Of the coaches that have been "stolen" you have two taken from the pac12, two from the SEC and one from the ACC. These are all the head coaches that were the head coach at a power 5 school at their previous stop(and weren't fired from it). I mean I don't know the historics of every head coach in the pac 12 but the fact that good coaches were target from both WSU and COL really doesn't surprise me. overall COL has been one of the worst teams in the conference year in and out and while WSU has the worst finances of any school in the conference. I just don't think this a great narrative. Even though as an oregon fan we keep thinking about the taggart situation and him leaving for FSU, we need to recognize that that was his dream job and not the statistical likelyhood.

I'd also like to make note of some of the other coaches in the conference. Namely Whittingham and Herm. Kyle Whittingham is on his 28th year at utah. has coached 2 of his best utah teams in back to back years(excluding covid year). The man is 61 and has made it abundantly clear that he never intends to coach till he is dead. He has had 2 players in the last 12 months die from gun violence and if you have watched any of his press conferences he is exhausted. Literally the only thing I truly think is still keeping him coaching is the fact that his succession plan died the moment media caught wind of Scalley's racist remarks. I don't know how long Whitt will coach but as of today I wouldn't put him to last more than 2 seasons. Herm is gone after this season. I think he will resign and retire to save face but he is gone. I'd also argue that Cristobal is the reason why. Herm and ASU's cheating was a direct response to Cristobal. nearly every elite player that these two schools have gone after in the coaches timeline went to oregon. ASU was cheating the system to get an advantage on oregon. Also to note CAL, COL, STAN and WSU. CAL: Wilcox has personally proven to be a bland Coach, I don't think he will ever break an 8 win average and I don't think he will ever break 10 wins. with that said he deserves better than Berkley. COL: dorrell is no surprise a bad football coach, While he isn't on the chopping block today he has at best 2022 and 2023 before being relieved of his duties WSU: no head coach currently. I do think dickert has a chance of removing interim if he can beat either UW or UO. and win his bowl game. I'm a bit skeptical on what WSU will do when the two leach WR's leave though. STAN: Shaw probably has at least one full year left at his current rate of performance. What baffles me the most is how bad his coaching hires have been over the last 5 years have been. This conference is about to go through likely the worst talent drought at head coach in the next 5 years. It's possible that some of these teams will make decent hires but frankly, I'd love to see wilcox up at UW. I don't think USC will hire a good head coach. And stanford historically is more of a punching bag than the puncher. Utah is interesting the right hire, could push them up but at a school like utah the right hire is 1 in a 1000. If Cristobal is around the next 3-5 years he should be rolling come 2025.

I'm actually glad cohen opened her big mouth. How can you fire a coach "with cause" for unintentional or indeliberate acts? At this point it guarantees that lake will either get his buy out or kept through the off season. Right now UW is in a situation of all around bad... 1. if they fire lake for cause they won't be able to hire a good coach because every coach will see not only the pasquinade the UW Athletic department is but they won't be able to guarantee they will get their money if they inevitably underperform.(also UW will be in a huge lawsuit because lake will look to get his money) 2. If the fire lake for performance, the department is less of a farce but you still have Cohen making the hire. She hasn't made a single good hire between men's and women's basketball and football and the fact that she has worked at UW for over 23 years means she really doesn't have the sports connections outside of the conference. 3. fire Lake and then cohen gets fired. This may literally be the best option but who becomes the interim head coach, because you can't have an interim AD hire your next head coach. At this point Bob gregory would be the likely pick at IHC but we all know the UW fans will pretend that Peterson will come back to coach uw 4. Don't fire Lake. If lake isn't fired, that means he needs to hire an OC and at this point who wants to work at UW, the lack of recruiting along with transfers has shrunk the talent this team has significantly. They current head coach has limited qualifications and no real experience as a HC. and finally the head coach just used his last OC as a shield to keep his job an additional year.

Aliotti was a great coach but that is not going to happen and this isn't even a good argument to even try. This is just canzano spouting stuff. Heyward makes more sense but frankly I don't know if he has enough on his resume in way of play calling. If I were oregon state I would look at Grant Duff at weber state. He has been the DC their for about 5 years and during that time they have really turned around making 5 straight FCS playoffs. His contract would be small and he gives you an in to a new state when it comes to recruiting, the FCS schools really know the head coaches in states like utah and they may lead to be an edge in a good recruiting state for oregon state. it's also a bit off the wall

I actually think this is a good thing for the conference. if even the little brothers have expectations from their coaches and they fail to perform their is ramifications. Even a bad team like osu in the SEC would be a coaching wheel to find what sticks(until the coach that stick gets hired by a better SEC team(Florida, Dan Mullen). As a conference we should be weeding out the bad coaches and we want teams to be improving. As much as we like to joke about Helton the conference is better when we have good teams and USC honestly has the easiest route to being a good team. the only team I am content with being garbage is UW.

the ducks controlled that game. If you look at nearly every aspect of the game the refs intervened on behalf of UW. 1. the oregon safety sure looked like he got out of the endzone 2. on UW only TD drive they were completely aided by a missed intentional grounding call. that would have likely stalled out UW. 3. the unsportsmanlike on forsyth was a farce and oregon should have gotten that TD. 4. the overturning of Cardwell's TD was likely a farce, They never showed one view during the game cast that would have turned the call over yet they did. If you take all that inconsideration it really just comes down to Brown giving UW a gift TD followed by UW having 7 punt attempts, 1 int, 1 downs, 1 safety and one drive. the final score is not indicative of how well oregon played against UW.

Here is my quick synopsis of our remaining pac 12 games. First I don't expect to go undefeated during these three games, not because we can't but because it is our hardest string of games and we haven't played consistent enough to win these games.(it could be possible to turn around and play more consistent.) As a side note We have only played one pac 12 team with a winning record to date which was UCLA, the next three teams will all having winning records as we move forward. WAZZU: Has the second best passing offense in the conference paired with the second worst rushing offense. They started the season 2-2(skipping fcs games) and have since gone 3-1. I think what has people worried is that after firing Rolo, WSU has had a close loss to BYU and a win over at the time pac12 south leaders ASU. What i'll say is they will likely get some yards against oregon, but I don't think this offense is efficient enough to score at will. Add in that this defense is about as middle of the conference on every meaningful stat(except fumble recovery) and I think we should roll pretty handedly. I'd also keep in mind that under Cristobal oregon is 20-1 at home with the only loss going to Stanford in 2018. This team should be ready to roll. Utah: Scares me the most but only because I really respect Whittingham. what I will say about Utah that gives me some good hope is they lose to teams that run the ball. They lost to SDSU who put up over 180yds rushing, BYU over 200 and OSU who put up 220+ yds. Add in that while they have beaten both UCLA and STAN in back to back beat downs, both teams were without their starting QB. This is a team that has a clear weakness on defense; one that I think the oregon offensive line should be able to exploit. I also think that the oregon defensive front should be able to limit Utahs rushing. Don't get me wrong I Think this is our hardest game remaining of the season. OSU: First off, Smith is the most likeable head coach in the pac and I still think he is the best play caller too(better than Moorhead). BUT... 1. The ducks won't have forgotten 2020 in this rivalry. 2. they have one of the worst defenses in the conference and just fired their DC. and 3. they have yet to play a good Dline all season. All in all I think oregon has a good shot to win out but the game in SLC scares me the most. I think it has the tellings to be an exact rundown of the 2019 pac12CCG where all the predictions go to Utah and Oregon runs away with it but That doesn't mean I am not scared for it.

Thanks for sharing 30Duck! The officiating was bad this game. not in the same kind of bad as the stanford game but seriously it was bad. I am still baffled on the final TD that was called back as well. Not saying he didn't score just that none of the tv angles provided during the broadcast confirmed any justification to overturn the play. I swear the more i watch pac 12 officials the less I understand football.

1. Lake should be on the hot seat currently no matter what. 2. Despite being on the hot seat I don't think he will get fired especially if he can pull of a 6-6 record. 3. Even if UW did fire lake I would be ecstatic. There are currently eight teams that have fire a coach this season. Akron - Tom Arth Connecticut - Randy Edsall Georgia Southern - Chad Lunsford(they have hired clay helton LSU - Ed Orgeron TCU - Gary Patterson Texas Tech - Matt Wells USC - Clay Helton Washington State - Nick Rolovich AS of now I would say UW is comfortably the third best team on this list, but you have other coaches including dan mullen(florida), Manny Diaz(miami), Justin Fuentes(VT), Chip Kelly(UCLA), and Scott Frost(Nebraska) all of which may be fired. If Washington decides to jump the wagon and look as well they are not going to be a top 5 team looking for a new coach, they won't even be in the top 10. Add in that Jen Cohen who has made poor hires her entire career will be put in charge of hiring his replacement and the next coach at UW may invariably hire Kevin Sumlin or Willie Taggart.

Here is the perfect situation in my opinion. 1. UW finishes the season going 2-2 with wins over WSU and COL but loses their bowl game for a final record of 6-7. 2. Lake blames the failings of the team on jon donovan, and jon don gets let go. 3. Cohen believes this and lake is retained for next year. 4. Lake makes another poor hire at OC. 5. following his poor hire, the school lets Cohen go.(she has been a really bad AD) 6. with Cohen gone, Lakes contract kicks and automatically extends 1 year 7. all the while their 2022 class stinks ends up ranked 55th(or thereabouts) in the nation and is ranked 11th in the conference. 8. 2022 rolls around the team stinks and lake is then fired 9. the university can't get their act together quick enough and the hire another poor coach I think 1-4 are almost a guarantee as for the rest i am being very hopeful as a petty fan.

You mean the team was set up to succeed by the previous coach but the new coach who had almost no head coaching experience is sending them into a downward spiral. It's almost like UW does have a narrative.

I don't look down on the university itself, UW is a top academic public university. I won't dispute that. Their certainly is a benefit of being a large public university in a large city, in a state that has emphasized their higher education for years. With all that said their football team is not very good right now, they have a an overtly high sense of worth that is certainly undeserved and if you are the head coach of such program please don't put out a sentence so nonsensical that you just embarrass yourself.(I'll note that I often have grammatical errors in my comments/posts but I also don't represent a top university.) also of note is that all of these teams are competing at the same time, for the same people. there are about 1,000 top athletes in the nation(5,4 and high 3 stars) and certainly their may be some limitation(GPA and testing) in who is recruited to the top(academic) schools but those same kids can also go to any school they chose so pretending that oregon isn't out their and capable of poaching players from stanford, notre dame or uw is both asinine and uninformed. it isn't like recruiting has come together and said if you are 3.9 gpa with 1500 SAT you can only go the list of 15 schools. If i remember correctly Thibs had an 3.8 gpa from oaks christian which is a private school with some pretty rigorous standards just to attend.

So clearly I wasn't the only one perplexed by Lakes comments on recruiting but I wanted to see if he was even remotely accurate. I gathered all this information from 247 I am sure some of it could be off but for now i am viewing it as subjectively accurate. also as note I wish i picked the previous recruiting class as this one is currently unfinished but i was halfway through when i made that determination. so far in the 2022 class UW has made 79 total offers. of the 79 commits oregon offered 52 of them as well. that is a clip of 65%. now as far as who have these recruits have committed too. the breakdown is as follows Oregon 8 USC 2 Ohio state 1 Notre Dame 3 Stan 2 BC 1 UW 3 UCLA 2 Tex 2 Cal 1 TA&M 2 OK 1 Indiana 1 Clearly oregon is pulling the largest portion of offers from UW. On top of this I wanted to evaluate the 27 offers that oregon didn't offer. of those 27 they average ~5 pac 12 offers. UW has done significantly better at recruiting these players. with 7 commits. To date in this class I think not only are the two schools competing but that oregon is winning handedly. this isn't to say UW doesn't have a shot to jump up especially with about 25 of the players still uncommitted but I don't see that happening. On a final note if you are going to brag about something it needs to be backed up coherently. You can't brag about your academic prowess and but together a sentence that is almost gibberish.

Oh man this is a great question charles. personally I love to watch a stifling defense. a stifling defense paired with an efficient offense is a fun game to watch. I love seeing QB hurries, hits and sacks by the defensive front 7 and PBU's and INT's by the DB's. the problem is that this is not a full proof way to win games. When things go bad on the offense in these games you lose(most of the time). an offense that fails to perform puts added stress on the defense, increasing the likelihood of lapses in play and mistakes to occur. the issue with winning back 7-10 points is that it doesn't take much to lose by 3 points. So I think while I prefer to watch stifling defense, I would prefer to have an elite(explosive) offense. Elite offenses make up for underperforming defenses. elite defense will win most games but they will often fall short in a game or two. I think this is even more present as the game has consistently moved towards favoring the offense.

That's my thought too about utah, and I would argue that eccles stadium is the second best fan base so no matter what it is a hard stadium to play in. Probably, but I do think Smith is more likely to stay at OSU than go to a big name school. Yes OSU will have to pay him more but also I think he has a great opportunity at OSU. 1. it is his alma mater which i think matters to him. 2. osu will clearly give him more leeway than pretty much any school.(go 4-8 at osu, your fine, in the SEC, you are fired.) this doesn't mean they can just lowball him they will still have to put out a comparable salary. Eh, i'm still not sold on this. in my situation, i expect oregon goes 10-2(7-2), osu is 9-3(7-2), and you likely have two 9-3 teams in the pac 12 south(utah and ASU) both of which would mean utah has an 8-1 record in conference and asu has an 7-2 record. with Utah having the best record and wins of asu and oregon while a lose to oregon state. it is hard to have division-less football when you don't play every team. and honestly outside the mess of 2020 has it really been that many times the top teams didn't play in the ccg. 2018 you had 2 9-3 teams with technically the best team being wsu. but it is hard to argue they deserved a spot when they lost to UW the week before. 2017 washington had the best overall record but they lost to stan and had a 7-2 conference record. USC was 8-1 in conference. 2015 oregon got shafted by the system(no arguments here) 2012 oregon got shafted again 2011 stanford was better. to me this is probably the worst example. only because the best team in the south was ineligible for post season so a 6-6 ucla got to play. honestly in the past 5 season's it has happened once and that was in covid season. prior to that it happened to oregon and stan a number of times. I would also argue if the conference added a rule state "if a team is ineligible then the next best conference record regardless of division gets in" this would fix the 2020 season and 2011 season. finally I agree the conference needs to move to an 8 game system. if oregon go to play the little sisters of the poor prior to heading into a game against OSU i would be way more confident in saying oregon wins out. not to mention that we shouldn't be putting other conferences up with the advantage of a late season cake walk.( personally like the 9 game schedule but unless you can convince other conferences to adopt it we should be using it).

I am actually pretty confident going into the next three weeks of the season. COL is just bad, do i think we cover, no but i also don't think it'll be a one score game going into the final minute of the game. UW is really bad too. They have two wins this season an overtime affair against cal and AZ in a game i have finally watched and can claim is the worst pac 12 game of the season. WSU is probably the hardest of the three, but with half their coaching staff gone it is really hard for me to look to seriously at this game.(which means oregon wins on an int in the final minute of the game. It's the final two games that have me concerned, utah seems to be turning a corner offensively and oregon state has the most likeable head coach in the conference who also happens to be the best offensive play caller. I think oregon goes 1-1 in these games, I would rather lose to utah and pull a win against oregon state. if we go as predicted oregon still wins the north as we likely tie OSU but hold the head to head. and I think we end up playing Utah in the P12CG.

This really is the world though. I have a specific skill set, if i feel my current place of employment is not aligning with my goals, needs, wants or desires I can leave.(most states practice some sort of at will employment law). In the real world some people may leave their current job to find the other pasture isn't always greener, some people leave their job and never find a comparable replacement. He and every athlete is taking a bet on his skills and resume and that is okay. The transfer portal is closer to the real world than the previous system. Heck you could even consider places like linkedin akin to the transfer portal where you can reach out to companies(teams) and they can reach out to you.

I'm not here to speculate on a player and his reasons for leaving. This is the way of college football and to some extent it is good. They should get the option to go to any school they want other students have the same option to go to other schools and then add the fact that they are only guaranteed a spot on the team for one year they should be able to do what they want. as for the reasons 1. if he is actually homesick, why would you try and stop him from leaving 2. if he is upset that he isn't starting then he either needs to improve to the point where he can start or leave. cristobal has shown he will start freshman when ready on the oline. Both sewell and jackson powers-johnson have played as freshman.

Jon, did oregon actually run the ball well? I mean 121 yards isn't bad, especially on 24 carries. but 1/3 of the yards came on browns TD run. while Dye did set an NCAA record he only averaged like 2.5 yds a carry. personally I liked the play calling. We have seen cristobal be way to conservative at the ends of games in the past and it has cost us games(AUburn 2019, Stanford 2018, orst 2020, cal 2020). up by 17 points in the fourth oregon could make a game that is insurmountable with another TD. If you can't trust your QB to throw the ball when you are up he shouldn't be in the game(different conversation to be had). If oregon scores the game is over, no stress we can enjoy the rest of the game in peace. I don't know it seems a darned if you do, darned if you don't situation. people including myself have been very critical of coach and his end of game play calling for being to conservative and now we get upset when we throw the ball.

Thanks Charles! I just closed some big deals at work and then we had a conference to attend over the tail end of last week. I've missed football. I've had to record a bunch of games and have only had time to watch the ducks. I'm excited to go and watch the AZ-UW game and OSU-UT game hopefully soon.

One thing to consider about this defense is their ability to stop on 3rd down. Yes part of the reason this defense has defended so many plays is impart due to the offense sputtering way to much but this defense has been pretty abysmal when it comes to 3rd down conversion. currently they are ranked 109th in the nation with an opponent 3rd down conversion coming at 44%. Defenses ~top 30-35 teams are stopping opponents at a clip 10% lower or at 34ish %. Then pair this with our 127th ranked 2 opponent 4th down conversions allowed per game and oregon is now having to defend even more plays per game. finally the red zone defense is ranked at 72nd allowing scores in the red zone at 84% of the time. Look this defense has its bugs, new scheme, a million injuries along the middle/inside linebacker positions. our nickel is out and more that i am forgetting. The sad thing is our best defense was probably against stanford but the offense was so bad that they couldn't keep it up. Overall this defense isn't bad, but they are also part of their own problem. I'd bet if they were just average(especially on 3rd and 4th downs) this defense would be considered elite. I like rob Mossley, he has pretty accurate information but we also can't forget that he works the university as the editor of goducks and will likely have a very positive spin on the team. also I am glad to be back on FD. it's been a crazy 2-3 weeks at work.

That's not really accurate. against fresno state we didn't have a single int. three fumbles recoveries but some of those were by the effort of sewell et al standing up the ball carrier and stripping it. Also in the final three Fresno drive the defense allowed a total of 25 yds, one 3-and-out and one turnover on downs. against Ohio state oregon defense had 2 turnover on downs in the first half OSU only had one TD. They had another downs in the second half and while they did get the late int that doesn't discredit the fact that oregon could have easily gotten another downs turnover. Not to mention it was the sack by our all arounder that sealed the game. against stoneybrook oregon did have two major int's but even if SB scored the final still ends up 21-48 with oregon winning. lastly against AZ. First the qb threw 5 INT's so to claim that it is a timely int is not likely. Also of the last 4 drive for AZ they through two int's including a pick 6 and one 3-and-out and a missed FG. Did oregon look good in that game, no! especially offensively in the second half. but it's not like you get to take away 5 int's because the were all "timely".