Id say Oregon because he played his final full season there and was drafted as a duck. Maybe it should be what uni you are wearing at the time of being drafted? Not sure.
This just reeks of going with the 2nd and 3rd stringers instead of keeping the starters in for a blowout.
Most of these teams have a win against a decent team. OSU beat Texas. Miami beat Notre Dame and USF. Georgia beat Tennessee. LSU beat Clemson and Florida. Honestly, wins over Clemson, Notre Dame and Florida really aren’t that good at this point but they’re still names that voters know. The team that really doesn’t deserve to be top 5 is Penn State.
I think the Ducks’ defense against Northwestern’s run game didn’t impress anyone. They’ve got one more gimmee game against the Beavers before they face Penn State. They have to get dialed in.
my concern meter over the AP ratings is resting at zero mostly because they are irrelevant. Compared to the earlier games, the Ducks did seem a bit flat but whatever. The most important things are that they won (handily), got a lot of young guys game experience, and at least from what we know, no one was seriously hurt. Dan stated this was a business trip & they took care of business despite all the reasons they weren't up for this game. Next up the task is not looking past the Beavers to the game everyone has circled. Hopefully they emerge from next week's game with another decided W and relatively healthy. If so it won't matter if they drop another spot or two in the APs. STOMP
They were favored by 27……they were up 31 going into the fourth. Had they kept everybody in, they win that game by 55 points easily. I’m sure they are going to be fine.
Agree on the polls. And yes they did what they were supposed to do. One thing they might have been dealing with was that 9am start PDT. Don’t think I’ve seen that for a few years.
I do believe some 'weaknesses' were on display for the Ducks in the NW game obviously, there was the 9AM factor; and the 1st road game factor, but still... on rushing plays, the Duck OLine had trouble with NW's front-7 a lot of the time. They did break some longer runs which helped they average yards/run, but they were also stuffed more than they should have been; Oregon spent too much of that game in 2nd & long I'm also not liking Oregon's offensive pace very much. Maybe I'm too critical, but in the heyday of Chip's offense, and the first couple of years of Helfrich, Oregon averaged over 80 plays a game. Obviously that was in the prime years of Oregon's high tempo. But even in 2016, when Herbert was a freshman and Oregon went 4-8 and Helfrich was fired, the Ducks averaged 74 plays a game. In Mario's 'slowest' paced offensive year, Oregon averaged 68 plays a game. This season, Oregon is averaging only 60 plays a game one factor mitigating that slow pace is that Oregon is 3rd in FBS in yards/play. But to me that signals that the Ducks should actually pick up the pace a little and stress the defense even more. A slow pace helps the opposing defense. And obviously, another factor slowing that pace, is the 2nd & 3rd unit defenders being unable to get stops resulting in the 2nd & 3rd unit Duck offense running fewer plays ******************************************* on defense: now, I saw all the chatter about how this year's DLine and Front-7 were as good or even better than last year's versions. I thought that was bullshit. The Ducks lost Derrick Harmon, Jordan Burch, Jamaree Caldwell, Keyon Ware-Hudson, Jeffrey Bassa, and Jestin Jacobs from the front-7. AND, they lost nickel backs Brandon Johnson & Nikko Reed (plus their entire starting secondary) this year's front-7 looks really vulnerable to the run to me. And it's not performing that well, IMO. Last season, Oregon ranked 14th in FBS in sacks; this season, Oregon ranks 48th. Last season, Oregon ranked 35th in tackles for loss; this season they rank 82nd. And last season's marks were posted after a full slate of Big-10 games. the Ducks lost 10 of 11 starters off of last year's defense. It was irrational to expect this year's defense to be better
