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With Oregon sitting at No. 4 in the College Football Playoff rankings, one reader asks: Do the Ducks really want Georgia? Plus: Oregon’s airing it out and what is Jimmy Lake doing?
(Graphic courtesy of the College Football Playoff)
Who would have thought Fresno State would get Oregon kudos?
It happened Tuesday night after the first College Football Playoff rankings were announced. Oregon came in ranked No. 4 — ahead of an Ohio State team that every pundit seemingly placed ahead of the Ducks — and when queried about UO, College Football Playoff chairman Gary Barta gave the Bulldogs a shoutout.
“Oregon at 7-1 was ranked in large part because of its win earlier in the season against Ohio State,” Barta said, adding “but also a good win against a 7-2 Fresno State team.”
Shout out Oregon AD Rob Mullens for shelling out the $950,000 to schedule that one back in 2016. It helped.
So, as it stands right now, the Ducks are in. Georgia is one, Alabama two, Michigan State three and then Oregon, in the top four of the rankings for the first time since reaching the Playoff in 2014. But we begin today’s I-5 Corridor Mailbag with a question about the presumptive matchup against the No. 1 Bulldogs.
“Am I crazy,” Michael Hoag asks, “for preferring a Rose Bowl berth to the Playoff? I’d rather beat a Big Ten team than get splattered against Georgia’s defense.”
Maybe I’m a sap for the pageantry of Pasadena, but I would never call someone crazy for preferring a Rose Bowl berth. It’s a premier game with a large television audience and, in the case you’re referring to, likely an opponent the Ducks are better suited for. Oregon can hang with almost anyone in the country. I, like you, have my doubts as to how they’d hold up against No. 1 Georgia or No. 2 Alabama.
As Georgia coach Kirby Smart said this week: “There’s no coach out there who can out-coach recruiting. I don’t care who you are.”
And while Smart was talking after beating Florida and not sub-tweeting Chip Kelly, it’s a point Mario Cristobal has embraced since he arrived at Oregon.
And right now, Georgia and Alabama have a lot more talent than the Ducks.
5-stars
Alabama: 14
Georgia: 19
Oregon: 4
4-stars:
Alabama: 60
Georgia: 47
Oregon: 44
That’s not the end-all-be-all. Oregon already beat a more talented Ohio State team earlier this year. But, yeah. Georgia is making mincemeat of the SEC so far and it might not be the best optics if that trend continued with the Ducks in the national semifinals.
The risk here, I guess, would be looking foolish against elite opponents who the Ducks are now almost exclusively recruiting against. And maybe there’s a little substance to that.
Regardless, being in the Playoff is a good thing. Even if they get throttled, the Ducks would use the few weeks BG (Before Georgia) in their final push leading up to the early signing period in late December. The ability to reach the Playoff is yet another card in Oregon’s hand to use when recruiting against the rest of the Pac-12.
“Come to Oregon and make the Playoff.”
Again, rooting for the Rose Bowl is understandable. The Rose Bowl is also a game Oregon could lose. And I’d rather lose in the Playoff if that’s the case.
Also, the Ducks don’t generally make a sales push when they get mentioned in November as a potential Rose Bowl contender.
With ZTF back and a very hungry Husky squad looking to redeem a beleaguered coach and disappointing season, what should the overall feeling for Duck fans be after a Husky loss? Pity? Schadenfreude? Pure malicious glee? Your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. — Mark
Washington got Pac-12 North Division Champion t-shirts printed up last year.
And it’s technically true — Washington did win the Pac-12 North, but only after the Pac-12 North deciding game against Oregon was canceled due to Washington’s inability to field a team. The game was called, the shirts were printed and Washington was on to face USC in the Pac-12 title game.
Only that part didn’t happen. Washington couldn’t field a team that week either, giving Oregon a path to defend its 2019 title. The Ducks would beat USC 31-24 and go on to face Iowa State in the Fiesta Bowl.
So, when (this is your hypothetical, not mine) Oregon wins this week, you can celebrate knowing that whatever excuses Washington fans will use are coming from a fan base that printed up championship shirts for a season it didn’t complete.
As an aside, It’s pretty amazing how quickly this rivalry has turned since kickoff of the 2018 game. Back then, No. 17 Oregon had the new coach and the Ducks were just getting going in their quest to reestablish themselves in the Pac-12.
No. 7 Washington came into Eugene just a season removed from a Playoff appearance.
For four quarters the teams were equal. Then CJ Verdell found the end zone in overtime.
It hasn’t really been close since.
I’m amused by Jimmy Lake’s bizarre, “We recruit against academically elite schools,” flex. Good for him for trying to keep things spicy rather than give a “one game at a time, nameless faceless opponent”-type answer. I also don’t believe in “bulletin board material.” If you need an opposing coach or player to talk shit in order to get up for the game, then you’re probably not that great to begin with. I guess my question is: are any Oregon fans actually offended by his attempted dig? — Keith Daniels
It’s been pretty humorous, hasn’t it? I was just thinking this morning how refreshing it felt that the two fan bases were going at each other for something so trivial. It feels normal.
Look, Oregon fans: You’re in a really good place. You have a really good head coach. You’re now in your third consecutive decade of being the better team. Everyone knows that you are lapping the Huskies when it comes to recruiting. And they’d still know it had you not spent the last two days tweeting about every instance when UO got the upper hand.
Whether you get listed as the better option in the annual “What’s a better job” clickbait carousel, just take pride in knowing that you are, without question, the better program right now.
And with that sort of self-assurance, you don’t have to get so worked up when a coach tries to poorly fan the flames of a rivalry.
Has there ever been a World Series you have cared less about? — Kevin
It’s been rough, hasn’t it? And it’s not because the baseball has been bad. I’ve heard from some very fine people that it’s been good. But I really don’t want to spend hours upon hours watching the Astros win the World Series. And I don’t have much affinity for Atlanta, either. Freddie Freeman is a great player and I find him interesting when they mic him up at the All-Star game. But that’s about it.
I actually had a few friends come over on Sunday to watch Game 5. I grilled ribs. There was a great potato salad. And we just spent the majority of the game grading the politeness of the trick-or-treaters stopping by the house.
Ran out of candy by the fifth inning. Turned the game off in the sixth.
How did you enjoy the Linfield game you went to a few weeks ago? Other than Oregon, that might be my favorite place to watch a football game. — Tyler
For the uninformed: I’ve been doing the occasional freelance story for The Oregonian to keep the lights on, and two weekends ago they sent me out to McMinnville to write about the Wildcats clinching the program’s 65th consecutive winning season.
And it was an absolutely lovely day. The whole drive out there is going through Oregon wine country in the fall. Throw in blue skies, sweatshirt temps and some small town football vibes and that’s about as good as it gets around these parts.
And it was a little eye-opening for me, too. I’ve always known Linfield had a good program, but it’s always just been on the periphery. I had no idea that five coaches have essentially sustained peak Chip Kelly-like levels of success there for 60-plus years.
Pretty incredible. And the pizza spread at halftime in the press box was clutch.
Do you subscribe to the the idea that the offense improved after Verdell went down because they are no longer committed to the power run game? Kyle
Good luck ever getting Cristobal to say they’ve abandoned the power run game, but the Ducks have pretty obviously changed their philosophy, at least slightly, the last three weeks.
In Oregon’s first five games, the Ducks averaged 42.2 rushing attempts against 27.8 passing attempts. In the three games since Verdell’s injury, the balance shifted to the passing game where UO has since averaged 34.33 passes against 31.66 rushes.
Anthony Brown Jr. has had 28, 39 and 31 passing attempts in those three games — he had only eclipsed 30 once in the season’s first five weeks — and had completion rates of 71, 74 and 81 percent, raising a season average that was hovering below 60 percent to a far more respectable 65 percent.
Oregon’s 7.9 yards per play Saturday against Colorado was the team’s best output of the season.
And all of this works with Travis Dye as the fulcrum. Dye’s had double-digit carries in four consecutive games for just the second time in his career, with similar efficiency as Verdell.
Yards per carry
Verdell: 5.2
Dye: 5.7
Yards per carry after contact (per Pro Football Focus)
Verdell: 3.08
Dye: 3.07
But since Dye is the better receiver of the two, having him on the field for more snaps naturally shifts the balance toward the passing game. Verdell had eight catches for 74 yards in the season’s first five games. Dye, who had eight catches during that span, has caught 20 balls for 223 yards in his last four.
I’m no expert, but I think the split is letting Brown get into a better rhythm. It’s also helped that Devon Williams has emerged in recent weeks as a pogo stick target for the quarterback downfield. But I also just think that the more Dye is on the field, the better.
“He is as valuable of a player as there is in the entire country for us,” Cristobal said earlier this week. “The guy is the heart and soul of our team. Those are big numbers and you can expect probably more because he is capable, he’s ready, he’s eager for it.
After seeing a lot of the younger RBs this past weekend, how do you feel they will shake out over the next few seasons? In my head I really wanted to see Trey Benson get in there but Byron Cardwell was a pleasant surprise! — Adam B.
Cardwell looks legit. I like his size (6-foot/210 pounds) and he really turned the corner and ran against Colorado. You don’t just stumble your way to 127 yards on seven carries. And I feel like Oregon’s been waiting a really long time for a performance like that. Cyrus Habibi-Likio and Sean Dollars both got their opportunities to emerge as the post-Dye/Verdell options for Oregon, and Habibi-Likio transferred to Boise State and Dollars has been injured. I would have guessed Benson to be the one to emerge before the season, but Cardwell looks like yet another strong UO running back pulled out of Southern California.
And I really like Seven McGee. He’s only 5-foot-9, but he’s a solid 5-foot-9 at 180 pounds. And while his abilities in the passing game and size could draw some comparisons to De’Anthony Thomas, the player McGee looked up to when he was younger, McGee runs hard. Not only did the Ducks use him to punch in a one-yard touchdown Saturday, but he’s also shown a willingness to throw his body around when blocking. The Ducks have future pieces here.
— Tyson Alger
