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As a Duck, I'll admit that on TV the Duck floor is pretty difficult to get use to. I think the floor contrast is difficult for the cameras. I will tell you that in person, I really enjoy the whole arena and the floor looks pretty cool.
I find it very difficult to watch on TV, which may be due to the TV contrast, etc. At least its different, which is consistent with the state of Oregon. (No offense intended...just the way it is).
The first two drives in the 3rd were awful, but selling for FG attempts on our last two first half drives were the killers.
short side option, works every time!
It was simply amazing how we can't break tendencies on our audibles. They show "x defense" we audible to "y play" they get out of "x defense" knowing what we like to do when they show "x defense".
Can you give us some background on your disgusting human of a LB that did the flying headbutt to our QB and then followed with a wind up forearm to the head...tia
Thanks Duck fan.
Have fun with that coaching search. Any chance of internal promotion if CK jumps?
Obviously as a Duck fan I'd like to see coach Kelly stay. I have just a feeling that he might stay to win a National Championship. It's a long shot, but that's all I've got right now. As for a replacement, that's an interesting question, I'd like to see the Ducks continue with the same offensive philosophy and I'm not sure that would happen if you brought someone in. Helfritch, Offensive Coordinator is a local guy, his family is more well known locally as the best fishing guides in the area. One boat landing is named after them. I've used them for a trip down the middle fork of the Salmon River in Idaho. Point is deep roots in the Eugene area and better chance of a long term coach going forward. The Ducks have been a program that sticks by a coach for a long time. Brook, Bellotti, Kelly (if he'll stay). Track coaches, basketball coaches etc. Defensive coordinator Allioti has been there something like 18 years with three different head coaches.
Kelly rubs some big buck alum the wrong way because he's not a "schmoozer", I have no problem with Kelly in this area, I have a problem with the big bucks guys wanting access and a "golf buddy". I'd rather Kelly be visiting with the troops, like he does, going to Africa and visiting with young women talking about education, and helping bring attention to the problems of the world than playing golf with some booster that thinks he has a right to Kelly's time.
Did not know all this. Seems like a quality dude.
Why does he talk out of the side of his mouth though?
Also, you guys are returning a crap load of talent. ESPN said something like 69 frosh and soph coming back. Insane.
Busy all day at the game. Was that a contingency plan if he left early or a long term solution?Thanks Duck fan.
Have fun with that coaching search. Any chance of internal promotion if CK jumps?
ESPN has been saying all day that UO confirmed they will promote their OC to HC if Kelly makes the jump.
I'm not so sure Oregon isn't the best team in the country. Good team.
i think they are.
I know Oregon could beat ND. 'Bama? Not so sure, but quite possibly.
Thanks Duck fan.
Have fun with that coaching search. Any chance of internal promotion if CK jumps?
The Duck kick return stat is really misleading, for most of the season opponents squib kicked to avoid letting Oregon return the ball. Oregon also faced a lot of "quick kicks" by opponents also meant to avoid letting Oregon "return" the ball. Don't be fooled by the low yards on the return stat.
That's reasonable. Starting field position after a KO return would be a more meaningful stat. Overall K-State led the country in average starting field position on the year.
Special teams.
On paper, K-State has the advantage, but mainly in a couple areas. K-State's KO return averages 28 while Oregon gives up over 20 yards per return and K-State has made 18/21 FGs while Oregon has only made 5/12.
K-State is better in the punt return game, 22 yards per, but Oregon is averages a solid 14. Both teams are very good in punt coverage; Oregon only gives up 3.4 yards per punt return and K-State only gives up 2.2. Surprisingly Oregon's KO return unit only averages 16.7 per return, which is probably K-State's biggest ST weakness, giving up 23 yards per return.
Its cliche for a K-State game, but there is no doubt in my mind a big special teams play will be needed for K-State in this game. Having Lockett back to 100% again will be huge. The biggest fear is allowing a big Oregon KO return. If the game does come down to a final FG, K-State has the advantage there.
Oregon Defense.
K-State needs to run the ball, but Klein will have to make throws to win it. Oregon's pass defense is very efficient, only giving up 5.9 yards per attempt. K-State needs to approach 10 YPA in this game and take advantage of Oregon's aggressiveness. K-State was 6th best nationally, averaging 9.0 yards per attempt. However, bigger than that will be Klein's decision making as Oregon led the nation with 23 interceptions and finished 3rd (2 spots behind K-State) in turnover margin. Oregon is average in getting sacks at 2.3 per game. Oregon was solid against the run, giving up just over 4 per carry. K-State will still want to run it and gained over 4 yards per carry in only 2 of our last 7 games. However, the key will be staying sound with our number of carries, and K-State probably needs 36-40 carries (mixed with 25 or so throws) to keep the balance that has made K-State most successful offensively. K-State averaged running the ball 63% of the time and only had one game where that number was below 57%, the abismal performance agaisnt Baylor where the Cats ran the ball only 38% of the time.
Keys:
1. Limit Oregon's big plays. The Ducks will likely gain 400+ yards and run 70+ plays, but K-State can't give up a bunch of 30+ yard scores.
2. Win the TO battle. Oregon thrives on TO margin and a big reason they scored so much is they forced a nation leading 38 turnovers on the season. However, they also turned it over themselves 19 times.
3. Maintain offensive balance. The numbers are clear above, K-State can't make this a high volume pass attempt game, but they must be efficient while still being near 4.0 yards per carry rushing the ball.
4. Big play special teams. K-State has thrived on the return game putting up big numbers in both KO and punt returns. Lockett needs to have a big game in this area tonight.
I think the Cats win 3 of those 4 key battles and if they do that they will be fine. Yeah, bowl games are merely exhibitions, but it would be nice to celebrate our first bowl victory since was the number one song in the land.Cats 41
Ducks 37
where are the rest of your message boarding fans? hope you stick around after the bowl.
we have a michigan guy, and an illinois guy who are really good.
Back to fball, I'd expect the Oregon defense to stuff the K State running game forcing K State to move the ball through the air. Question is can Oregon contain K States passing game.
I think your defense is solid... but I see nothing that says your defense will "stuff" the K-State running game.
I'm not saying they will succeed in stopping K State, I'm just saying Oregon will commit to stopping the run first, always have, always will as long as Aliotti is the defensive coordinator. I wouldn't expect 9 in the box, I'd expect 7 with blitzes coming from the other four trying to catch K State off balance and force 3rd and long as much as possible.
Fair enough. I haven't watched as much of the Oregon defense yet, but I did notice the Ducks are very aggressive and will put a lot of guys at the line of scrimmage. It will be interesting to see what K-State does to counter that.
BTW, I've got a bunch of breakdowns of our offense from this past season on the goEMAW blog here: http://goEMAW.com/blog/?cat=4
Thanks, for the link. As far as Oregon fans go, we've become accustom to the defense giving up a lot of yards until someone gets inside the red zone. Then the Ducks tend to shut things down better. Of course part of that is that opponents fear Oregon's offense enough that they tend to go for it on fourth down rather than settle for a field goal.
ZOMG, thats totally what KSU does as well!'
Do you think that having stud wide receiver Chris Harper on our team will help when the Oregon Defense decides to "Tighten Up" down in the red zone?
I would imagine Harp would read their defense and shout over to CK7 "Hey, they are sending a blitz. Just throw it up to me and I'll grab it"
Does Oregon's defense check into/out of a blitz if the offense checks down to another play?
Back to fball, I'd expect the Oregon defense to stuff the K State running game forcing K State to move the ball through the air. Question is can Oregon contain K States passing game.
I think your defense is solid... but I see nothing that says your defense will "stuff" the K-State running game.
I'm not saying they will succeed in stopping K State, I'm just saying Oregon will commit to stopping the run first, always have, always will as long as Aliotti is the defensive coordinator. I wouldn't expect 9 in the box, I'd expect 7 with blitzes coming from the other four trying to catch K State off balance and force 3rd and long as much as possible.
Fair enough. I haven't watched as much of the Oregon defense yet, but I did notice the Ducks are very aggressive and will put a lot of guys at the line of scrimmage. It will be interesting to see what K-State does to counter that.
BTW, I've got a bunch of breakdowns of our offense from this past season on the goEMAW blog here: http://goEMAW.com/blog/?cat=4
I'm going to forego the blog and just post stuff here.
What to expect from Oregon's offense.
If you've been paying attention by now you realize that Oregon is a running team. They will mix in the pass effectively, but they want to run the football. Most of their concepts are finesse/zone blocking schemes, but they will include some power football by pulling multiple linemen (I've seen them pull 3 a few times even) and using their tight end (#15, very good player) as an H back/lead blocker. All that said, the base run game for Oregon is zone read/option and they will read anyone and everyone in the front 7 of the defense. They run true zone read where they attack both edges, zone read with a bubble route on the edge, triple option when motioning Thomas to the backfield, using Barner as the dive back, and Thomas as the pitch man. They will attack all edges of the defense until Kelly figures out the weakness in the defense. ON zone read they run both inside zone and stretch, they really like to let Barner/Thomas run to the edge until they find a vertical crease. Mixed in with all this zone read will be some tosses, a few leads (TE leading), occasionally a counter trey type power run, and a few draws for Mariota. Based on what I've watched I'd say we'll probably see 2/3 to 3/4 of their run game be zone read/option football.
The passing game is fairly simple. Mariota spread the ball well, but the biggest threats are their big WR Huff #1, Lyerla #15 the TE, and Thomas #1 (usually a slot WR, but will be anywhere). They will run a ton of zone read play action, sending the TE down the middle seam of the field, or looking for Huff on deep vertical/posts, but they don't throw vertical a lot. I'd say that's the biggest difference from Baylor, Oregon doesn't look to attack down the field a lot with the passing game. They like to test the edges and run a ton of 2 or 3 level routes against zone coverages with a deep route, intermediate route, and short route, often a swing by the Thomas/Barner. Against man they run quite a few short crossing routes as well. Finally, Mariota is really dangerous scrambling, Oregon's biggest play against Stanford was a 70+ yard run when he broke contain.
Formation wise Oregon is fairly simple, almost exclusively a 1 back team. Occasionally Thomas will line up with Barner in a 2 back set, or Thomas will motion to the backfield. Oregon will also often motion their back to either side of Mariota to get the proper alignment for their zone read running game. They mostly run 3 WR/1 TE sets, and balanced formations (2 by 2) with a TE or with 4 WR. They also like 3 WR trips formation, and they will unbalance the defense with the TE lined up to the 3 WR side. Finally, they will run quite a bit of TE with 2 WR split to the same side for TE trips. They are varied game to game, but a big key will be figuring out their tendencies by formation. Its pretty clear Kelly comes up with a game plan going in, and they generally have a package of plays out of each formation and will stay with that package. As the game goes along they won't deviate a lot from that; they are counting on the tendencies they see in the defense and especially for defenses to get into bad alignments because of the speed that they play at.
Keys:
Simply getting lined up right (Zimm back should help tremendously) and tackling. They want to spread you out and create vertical creases in your defense and often the breakdowns occur because defenses aren't gap sound. Also, when you watch Oregon you see a lot of runs where defenses seemingly have Barner/Thomas tackled or contained, and they break one tackle and are off on a 20+ yard run. K-State has tended not to blitz a lot, and that's wise against Oregon's offense. Another way to stop fast pace offenses is to force TOs, but Oregon has gotten a lot better over the season with only 3 TOs their last 5 games. As a result they have won the turnover margin battle in 8 of their last 9. Finally, try to force some FGs. Oregon leads the country, scoring TDs 80+% of the time in the redzone. As a result they've scored at least 42 points in every game except against Stanford. I'm not expecting us to hold them to 14 like Stanford did, but hopefully we can keep them at 35 or below. If the Cats can manage that I think we have a good shot.
Back to fball, I'd expect the Oregon defense to stuff the K State running game forcing K State to move the ball through the air. Question is can Oregon contain K States passing game.
I think your defense is solid... but I see nothing that says your defense will "stuff" the K-State running game.
I think the first quarter will tell a lot about how this game ends. My impression is that K State starts slow on offense. That's not a good thing to do against the Ducks. If K State starts slow and Oregon gets rolling on offense, it's game over. It's just not wise to get behind the Ducks as it gives both the offense and defense a lot more good choices in schemes.
If K State starts slow offensively and doesn't let Oregon get started, it should be a tight game. I'm not to worried about it if Oregon gets behind early, because they can score quickly and don't panic. They could be down 21 in the fourth and still be in the game with a good chance to win.
Lets have a great game with no injuries and may the best team win.
I agree that how the teams start will make a big difference. K-State showed that they they could overcome somewhat slow starts against fast paced, explosive offenses against Oklahoma State and Texas Tech, granted neither team is as talented as Oregon and both games were in Manhattan. The Baylor game was where K-State really got off course and panicked. K-State can't let that happen again.
As far as pace goes, K-State won't be surprised by how fast Oregon plays. 5 Big 12 teams averaged over 76 plays per game and 6 ran plays every 24 seconds of total possession or less. The average number of plays on offense for the Big 12 was 73.9 per game and teams ran plays 24.3 seconds of possession on average. The Pac 12 averages were 73 plays per game and average a play ran ever 24.5 seconds of possession. Overall K-State handled that well, only Baylor and KU reached 80 offensive plays against them. The KU game was skewed because K-State averaged nearly 10 yards per snapped, so possession wasn't as high as normal.
I think too much is said about how many plays get run, time of possession, etc. I do not expect K State to be surprised at all by the pace of the Oregon offense. K State has an excellent defense and will be a great challenge. K State doesn't make mistakes and Oregon thrives on opponents mistakes, so I think this is a close game. What I am curious about is how K State handle Barner, Thomas, Mariota, and Lyerla carrying the ball. Remember Seastrunk was sitting #3 on the depth charts behind Barner and Thomas before he left.
I imagine we'll probably try and tackle them before they get too many yards
Solid gameplan
GoDucks, at what point do the real Oregon fans normally show up? Are you the scout squad?
LOL I've only been a Duck fan since 1969......
Back to fball, I'd expect the Oregon defense to stuff the K State running game forcing K State to move the ball through the air. Question is can Oregon contain K States passing game.
GoDucks, I feel like I have to respond to your post since I used to nail an Oregon grad on a fairly regular basis. She was a huge Duck fan and through our trysts I can confirm that Oregon will neither stuff the run or contain the passing game. Trust me, I have "inside her" information.
I think the first quarter will tell a lot about how this game ends. My impression is that K State starts slow on offense. That's not a good thing to do against the Ducks. If K State starts slow and Oregon gets rolling on offense, it's game over. It's just not wise to get behind the Ducks as it gives both the offense and defense a lot more good choices in schemes.
If K State starts slow offensively and doesn't let Oregon get started, it should be a tight game. I'm not to worried about it if Oregon gets behind early, because they can score quickly and don't panic. They could be down 21 in the fourth and still be in the game with a good chance to win.
Lets have a great game with no injuries and may the best team win.
I agree that how the teams start will make a big difference. K-State showed that they they could overcome somewhat slow starts against fast paced, explosive offenses against Oklahoma State and Texas Tech, granted neither team is as talented as Oregon and both games were in Manhattan. The Baylor game was where K-State really got off course and panicked. K-State can't let that happen again.
As far as pace goes, K-State won't be surprised by how fast Oregon plays. 5 Big 12 teams averaged over 76 plays per game and 6 ran plays every 24 seconds of total possession or less. The average number of plays on offense for the Big 12 was 73.9 per game and teams ran plays 24.3 seconds of possession on average. The Pac 12 averages were 73 plays per game and average a play ran ever 24.5 seconds of possession. Overall K-State handled that well, only Baylor and KU reached 80 offensive plays against them. The KU game was skewed because K-State averaged nearly 10 yards per snapped, so possession wasn't as high as normal.
I think too much is said about how many plays get run, time of possession, etc. I do not expect K State to be surprised at all by the pace of the Oregon offense. K State has an excellent defense and will be a great challenge. K State doesn't make mistakes and Oregon thrives on opponents mistakes, so I think this is a close game. What I am curious about is how K State handle Barner, Thomas, Mariota, and Lyerla carrying the ball. Remember Seastrunk was sitting #3 on the depth charts behind Barner and Thomas before he left.
I imagine we'll probably try and tackle them before they get too many yards
Solid gameplan
GoDucks, at what point do the real Oregon fans normally show up? Are you the scout squad?
#fanningbragThat was the best Mariola can play fwiw. I've watched him since Jr. High and he just sucks at throwing. Sorry.
Really? I believe he completed over 70% of his passes in all but three games. Against Stanford he completed only 56%. Also, I'd love to see what stats you have for him from junior high and high school. I thought he really didn't start at QB till his senior season in HS.
Plus I certainly know that what a kid does in Junior High isn't exactly relevant. I know I didn't make varsity in bball, yet I did end up starting as a freshman at a small college. Point is lots change and no I'm not a great athlete.
I think the first quarter will tell a lot about how this game ends. My impression is that K State starts slow on offense. That's not a good thing to do against the Ducks. If K State starts slow and Oregon gets rolling on offense, it's game over. It's just not wise to get behind the Ducks as it gives both the offense and defense a lot more good choices in schemes.
If K State starts slow offensively and doesn't let Oregon get started, it should be a tight game. I'm not to worried about it if Oregon gets behind early, because they can score quickly and don't panic. They could be down 21 in the fourth and still be in the game with a good chance to win.
Lets have a great game with no injuries and may the best team win.
I agree that how the teams start will make a big difference. K-State showed that they they could overcome somewhat slow starts against fast paced, explosive offenses against Oklahoma State and Texas Tech, granted neither team is as talented as Oregon and both games were in Manhattan. The Baylor game was where K-State really got off course and panicked. K-State can't let that happen again.
As far as pace goes, K-State won't be surprised by how fast Oregon plays. 5 Big 12 teams averaged over 76 plays per game and 6 ran plays every 24 seconds of total possession or less. The average number of plays on offense for the Big 12 was 73.9 per game and teams ran plays 24.3 seconds of possession on average. The Pac 12 averages were 73 plays per game and average a play ran ever 24.5 seconds of possession. Overall K-State handled that well, only Baylor and KU reached 80 offensive plays against them. The KU game was skewed because K-State averaged nearly 10 yards per snapped, so possession wasn't as high as normal.
That was the best Mariola can play fwiw. I've watched him since Jr. High and he just sucks at throwing. Sorry.
