Agree or disagree, interesting points were brought up in this article.

From championship hopes to rock bottom, what went wrong for Oregon?

"Sometimes it's the health of the team, it's the bounce of the ball. There's some things that you really can't control," said former Oregon coach Mike Bellotti, who helped start Oregon's era of modern success with the program's first ever double-digit win season in 2000. "Yet when you have the initial ranking and the belief and you've paid [$50 million] amount of dollars for a roster, there comes to be a certain belief that, 'Wow, this is our year' but things still have to go right and they haven't."

How it all started to unravel

Yet a closer look at what the Ducks lost from last season yielded some glaring results. While no marquee names left Eugene, Oregon, lost 27 players in the January portal who were all rotational players or backups. What's more: 23 of those Oregon transfers ended up at other Power 4 programs, despite only one of them (Jahlil Florence) starting more than three career games for the Ducks. Fifteen of those 23 players are starters for a new team this season with several starting for ranked teams, including Ole Miss outside linebacker Blake Purchase and Alabama defensive lineman Terrance Green.

No loss was bigger than offensive coordinator Will Stein. His departure to be Kentucky's head coach prompted a robust staff exodus too, including Pat Biondo to be Kentucky's GM, Cutter Leftwich to be his offensive line coach, Parker Fleming to be his special teams coordinator and Dallas Warmack as assistant offensive line coach. Even more, former defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi left his post as defensive coordinator to take the head coaching job at Cal and brought six former Oregon staffers along with him to Berkeley.

https://insider.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/50286778/oregon-demise-failure-season-lanning

A good article. Painful, but good.

Right now, when I think about our program, I feel like I've been rocked with a concussion.

This article was written by Paolo Uggetti. He is a USC Trojan graduate in 2017. He covered the Trojans football team for two seasons. Deep down inside, he is probably stoked that the Ducks have crashed and burned.

1 hour ago, sports fan said:

This article was written by Paolo Uggetti. He is a USC Trojan graduate in 2017. He covered the Trojans football team for two seasons. Deep down inside, he is probably stoked that the Ducks have crashed and burned.

I read nothing in the article that felt biased. His bringing up the coaching losses and listing them really helped me understand why coaching is so poor this year. A LOT of turnover outside players transferring out.

"....written by Paolo Uggetti. He is a USC Trojan graduate"

Well, rock bottom may look more like 4-8 at USC in 2021? So, Uggetti does have that base line to compare.

The coaching losses are the most significant...the focus has tended (rightfully so) to be on the loss of Stein and Lupoi. But all the supporting staff that went with them was probably just as detrimental and would explain so much of the sloppiness we're seeing from players this season.

I remember many of us here never cared for Stein at all and were even happy to see him leave. Little did we know... Maybe DL is just not that big of a magnet in the program? Scary thought that I hope to be wrong! Facing the biggest adversity of his tenure, now is the perfect time for him to show how good of of HC he really is.

The support staff migration is historically not unusual... Except at Oregon, prior to the ending of the Helfrich era.

Lanning has lost all his momentum. How do you sell the program to recruits, if they've seen the recent results on the field?

Offer them more money?

The team has suffered from complacency and entitlement from the get-go.

As Mike West has observed, the team is not talented at every position and does not have the same talent as the teams that blew out Oregon in the Rose and Peach Bowls and won titles.

Unlike Chip Kelly's far less talented team that was so close to winning a BCS title, this team has no schematic advantage on either side of the ball.

Marcus Mariota's squad was an awesome group, and Marcus was a run threat when needed. The Ohio State team that defeated Oregon in the title game had one of the most talented squads in CFB history. The loss was sad but understandable.

Without a QB who presents an 11-on-11 threat on offense, Oregon's offense is predictable and not difficult to defend. Especially so when the O-line is mediocre at best.

But all of these issues can be overcome by a kick-butt attitude and a desire to kick the whey out of the other guy. Of course, better coaching helps the cause, but ultimately it's not generals but the soldiers who have to hit the beach.

From the opening game against a G6 opponent, where in Hades has been the desire to kick butt and win?

A talented QB was decapitated, and I thought, with the way the team battled in LA after Dante's injury, this team was ready to fight and run the table. I thought leaders would step up in the locker room and on the field.

I was wrong.

Stuff happens. Bad seasons happen. I hope this isn't a Clemson-like, top-down, long-term endemic problem.

We'll soon see. Next year's in-conference schedule is more difficult than this season's Big Ten schedule.

BTW, $50 million? Bull Manure.

9 hours ago, BroncoSas said:

Lanning has lost all his momentum. How do you sell the program to recruits, if they've seen the recent results on the field?

Offer them more money?

Well, we're all about to find our how talented Coach Lanning really is.

I'm still hopeful that he has the right stuff.

Edited 23 minutes ago23 min by Desert Duck