I enjoy hearing the perspective of former Oregon football players and coaches, and I find George Wrightster is knowledgeable and fair when it come down to evaluating the team.

The below video includes his instant reactions from the Oregon-UCLA game. Some of the highlights:

• The Oregon defense finally showed up. The Oregon offense gave UCLA great field position all game and Oregon’s defense held their own. After the first drive, UCLA got the ball in Oregon territory on the next four possessions and Oregon’s defense held UCLA to zero points. UCLA also averaged ~3 yards per play. It was good enough to win most games.

• Oregon’s offensive line was terrible. If Oregon had a decent showing, up front, we would have just run the ball and won the game.

• George Wrighster was not a huge fan of the Dylan Raiola signing and this game was what he was concerned about. If Dante Moore played, even with the bad offensive line play, Oregon would have won the game. He thought that Brock Thomas should have started the second half and maybe even then Oregon would have won the game.

• While he didn’t like some of the play calls (e.g., the decision to run the ball up the middle on the last 2 point attempt, when we haven’t been able to run the ball between the tackles all year, the option play with Oregon’s RBs was “too cute”), he doesn’t believe that this is all on the OC and is not sure someone else could do better with the offensive line playing this bad and the poor QB play. He claims that there were receivers open and Dylan did not see them.

• The loud but few people who are calling for Coach Lanning’s head are crazy. With the exception of a few programs (e.g., Georgia, Indiana, Miami), most programs would fire their head coach to hire Lanning in a heart beat. A University of Texas fan posted on his thread, please fire Coach Lanning so they can replace Sark. LOL.

• Oregon now needs to run the table and beat Ohio State at the Shoe.

Thoughts?

Having just now come out of my post game funk, I realize that yes, we played poorly, offense was non existent, 7 turnovers were atrocious, line and qb play were pathetic, but at the end of the game, we were still right there in the game thanks to the defense. We had a qb showing a little spark of momentum, down at the 1 1/2 yd line for a 2 pt conversion and a tie. If the refs had placed the ball on the 1/2 yd line correctly, the play would have been successful and we'd be playing in overtime. Who knows how that would have ended.

Win or lose, we would still have the same complaints about the line, the qb play, the offense, and the play calling, but 4-1 vs 3-2 record would have felt a lot better.

.