Yes. I guess one could say Ducks were just not a very good team. Somehow beat Ohio State in the opener; maybe they had better pre-season preparation. Struggled against many weak teams all season and of course lost to a bad team. Appears that Pac-12 was not very strong.
Yes. Have to question whether Cristobal's emphasis on power over speed has hurt. Certainly his teams not as enjoyable to watch as previous Duck teams.
The lines are certainly bigger than teams under past coaches. I dont think they ever had a 260 linebacker, in fact most were average to small but fast. Keep in mind that these huge lines he as will get better once they become junior, seniors.
he had three: 12th, 12th, 14th. Even though he was coach for four seasons, because of the timing of his promotion to HC and then him leaving for the NFL, he practically had just 3 recruiting classes. (those were composite rankings of the three recruiting services) Chip is a bad comp for anything though. He made his success with almost all Bellotti recruits. If you look at the 2-deep for the national championship game against Auburn in Chip's 2nd season, 39 of the 44 players were Bellotti recruits. And Chip just caught lightning in a bottle. He was running a spread-power offense when defenses had no clue how to defend it; and, he was running high tempo when again, defenses weren't prepared. He also had Oregon on top of fairly weak Pac-12. Stanford was the only team that was consistently good in the 4 years Chip was coach. Besides that, Chip's recruiting success was mostly on offense. His defenses got progressively worse over his 4 years and of course, if Chip was such a genius he wouldn't have had a 28-35 record in the NFL and a 18-25 record at UCLA. At UCLA he found out what it was like to have to build a program instead of inheriting a highly talented roster like he did at Oregon. In fact, Chip's situation at UCLA kind of mirrors Cristobal's situation at Oregon. Mario inherited a roster that was weak from Helfich's last couple of recruiting seasons, and had lots of holes because of decommitments after Taggart left. Mario had to rebuild just like Chip did. They have both been head coaches for 4 seasons; Chip's record is 18-25; Mario's is 35-12. And Mario's record against Chip is 3-0 (I don't count the bowl game when Mario had been HC for a week and had 3 practices before the game) I think people trashing Cristobal are full of shit. Or at least they have no grasp on reality. By that I mean, contrary to hype, Oregon is not a blue-blood of college football. They aren't an Alabama or Georgia or Ohio State or Oklahoma. They are not close to recruiting hot beds like the blue-bloods and they don't have the tradition. They are a lot more like Utah than Ohio State or Alabama. so then, I don't know what you people expect. Being in the playoffs most of the time? That's not going to happen. National Championships every 5 or 6 years? Again...won't happen as a Pac-12 coach, Mario's winning percentage is .744. How does that compare to other conference coaches? John McKay .749 (USC. Won 4 national Championships, 8 conference championships, and 5 Rose Bowls) Cristobal .744 (.729 if you want to be pissy) Don James .712 (the Husky Legend) Chris Petersen .679 Mike Bellotti .678 Kyle Whittingham .676 David Shaw .674 Chip Kelly .667 Terry Donahue .665 Jeff Tedford .590 what kind of coach do you guys think the Ducks will end up with if Mario leaves? Somebody like Peter Carroll or Nick Saban? Not going to happen. They'll be extremely lucky to end up with somebody like Bellotti or Chris Peterson. Coaches who averaged 8 wins in a 12 game season. Mario has averaged 9. I think it's a decent chance Cristobal will leave for Miami. So you guys will get to see what kind of coach Oregon can land. If he does leave, the recruiting class will be gutted, the transfer portal will be full, and the new coach will have to start over. Then you guys can not only bitch about the coaching but the recruiting too!
Nice breakdown! Im hopeful he stays but thats his decision. For many including me it all comes down to where you want to live.
c'mon....they won 10 games. They are a good team, just not a great team. Utah was just better and Utah's strengths were able to exploit Oregon's vulnerabilities. It was a bad matchup for the Ducks made worse because of some season ending injuries for Oregon
No problem. I enjoy a good football game, but when it comes to the history of college football I am not so much an encyclopedia as a dog-eared old Dr Seuss book!
Agreed. It would be sad if it wasn't that good as well. So hard to tell with this staff if they have a system that is hard for QBs to succeed in, if they can't develop QBs, or maybe they're poor at recruiting QBs. The smaller the sample size, the less recruiting rankings matter. Huard was the #1 QB in his class and he looks to be shakey at best as well. However, putting together top classes year after year seems to have a strong correlation to success in college (and NFL for the players).
that's fine. I come from a longer POV my first year on the UofO campus was 1970. So I lived thru the 70's and 80's and early 90's of Duck football. Back in the days when the Ducks and Beavers combined rarely won 8 games. Back in the days of the Toilet Bowl when the Ducks & Beavs played to a 0-0 tie in a monsoon. They combined for zero points and 11 turnovers. Over a 19 year period from 1970 to 1988 the Ducks high point was 6 wins which they hit 5 times. In 15 of 19 seasons they had losing records Rich Brooks had a .459 winning percentage at Oregon and they named the field after him. As good as Bellotti was in his 14 seasons, he had 6 seasons of at least 5 losses and 2 more of 4 losses. His record in bowl games was 6-6 so I've been conditioned by reality and I don't expect an Oregon dynasty in football. If Cristobal is the gauge, I think the chances of Oregon finding somebody better are close to zero, somebody as good, very remote, and somebody worse, almost certain
I can understand. The last time I went to a Duck game live, the QB was Norv Turner. He was so scared of getting hit that on 5 or 6 long yardage downs he just dropped the center snap and ran away from the ball! I've never seen anything like it. Contrary to what has been suggested, I am not an OSU fan. I really and truly root for both teams to be good.
Back to what really important, the MWC championship game is happening right now. If Utah St. wins would they go to the LA Bowl, or would San Diego St. still be considered the best team from that conference? When do these bowl selections become official, after this weekend's games?
