Game Thread Cal @ Ducks - 10/15/2021 - 7:30pm ESPN

Wait a minute? They just had two of the biggest late game defensive stands they have ever had and you think the defense fell apart?

 

Yeah, Our D line was again pushed around through most of the game. Ive noticed that both the line and linebackers are not all that quick latterly. Big but not reactively quick.
Did like the stand we made but their qb just didnt have any touch wit the ball down in the rz.
I though we'd see more blitzing from Deruyter.

 

Are you kidding? On that last drive Cal bullied the Duck defense. They were one play away from forcing overtime and a carbon copy of the Stanford loss.

 

Very unimpressive victory. Brown Jr. was better, but not special. Dye & Redd had nice games. But this defense is mediocre. Thibs was special once he got warmed up. But the secondary has been less than stellar. This offense needs to get more dynamic in the passing game soon! This dink & dunk ain't getting it done. It was OK yesterday, but won't fly against better comp.

 

That isn’t what I watched. I watched the refs bail Cal out twice and then the Ducks hold them 4 downs twice inside the 10 other than one of the luckiest shuttle passes for 4 yards I have ever seen.
They won that game because of defense.

 

I get what your saying, but this Duck team is under performing. Yes, they have key injuries, but they are rated top 10 recruiting wise for a reason. It's time to see if Ty Thompson can play, because Brown Jr. is leaving a lot of big plays on the field due to poor reading of the defense. He was better yesterday, but not special. He's a dink and dunker. Got to stop blaming the refs. Yes they blew that last call in regulation vs. Stanford, but Cal was gouging the Ducks defense on the ground. Unacceptable.

 

I'm fine with the Ducks giving Thompson (or Butterfield) a shot. Oregon obviously has had poor QB play this season, and last season too for that matter. And in college football (or all football) a mediocre QB will generate mediocre offense. It all rides on the QB unless you have an elite RB and OLine. Brown did play better yesterday. He missed some easy passes and made a couple of bad reads, but if he would have played like that against Stanford, Ducks would have won

and yes, Cal did gash the Duck defense with runs. But what I saw is they did almost all their gashing using trap blocks, a lot of the traps with TE's. When a team does that the defensive counter-punch comes using good fast LB's an a good experienced strong safety. The Ducks are/were missing LB's Dru Mathis Justin Flowe, and Mase Funa; and safety Bennett Williams. Essentially the 4 starters that would be dealing with trap blocks. And of course they only got a half out of Thibodeaux (and didn't he make a difference in the 2nd half).

something else, look at the depth chart for Oregon's front-7 in the Fresno State game:



not only are there key injuries, 22 of the 31 players in the depth chart are freshmen (and 5 more are sophomores)

and look at the secondary:



same thing...14 of 20 are freshman and only 1 senior

obviously the free-pass on eligibility last year due to Covid has 'deducted' a year from some of these players. But it's obvious the Duck defense is really young. And it doesn't matter how highly rated recruits are in high school, for most it takes till they are at minimum sophomores before the talent starts showing up. That's especially true for defense. The best defenses are almost always filled with upper-classmen. I don't think you can draw a negative correlation between the last two or three highly ranked recruiting classes yet and performance.

The Ducks also have had holes in their recruiting. They are still having a hard time landing any SEC type interior defensive linemen; and they have a gap of upper class backups at QB and RB.

 

how about this block: