#7 Indiana @ #3 Oregon (Oct. 11, Sat 12:30 PM CBS)

[Everythingsducky]

Before the season started, most would say this team was not going to end up winning the title because of their rebuilt OL, youth and inexperience. The Penn State game got people thinking otherwise but now we know Penn State is a complete fraud. 2026 is the very real window for Oregon to make a legit title run.

How so? They will again lose at least three off the O line once again. The Ducks are rarely playing any youth on the line at any time. Maybe Wilson, but that’s it. Looks like it will be another rebuild next year. Can you refute?

[wepto]

We’ve scored 40 points in 8 quarters. That’s 5 points a quarter. When should the talk start happening?

And it's actually worse than that.

Our offense has looked either bad or disjointed in each of our conference games this season. It looked dreadful in the Rose Bowl. It looked bad or disjointed in several of our conference games last season. Heck it even looked bad against nonconference foes last year (thank goodness that got fixed lol).

How long should an elite program with superior talent settle for having an offense that regularly looks bad even against inferior competition? We're coming up on 1.5 seasons now, and we barely play with as much rhythm as me doing the electric slide.

I don't think Lanning should fire Stein now. That would be a bad look. But if the offense herks and jerks through the rest of the season, then yes, absolutely. There's probably someone on our staff right now who'd do a better job of calling plays.

The right way to handle it is to quietly let Stein know he needs to take a HC offer this off season. Let his agent start working on it now. He will land at a bad G5 or a good FCS, and everyone saves face.

[whosyourwally]

I keep telling myself Lanning is young and a willing learner. It took Day several years to get the right coaches around him. Lanning is still learning how to run and build a program and I’m hoping he sees his staff as a work in progress. Lessons I hope he and his staff can learn:

Experience and success at a high level need to be requirements for future coordinators. Stein and Dilly were both babies when they got here. No matter their ceiling, it takes time to ripen. Elite programs don’t need their coordinators learning how to drive while on OU’s payroll.

Even at the highest level in CFB, coaching > natural talent. Our coaches need to be elite at developing talent and game planning/ game mgmt, not just recruiting. Or maybe we need a better balance of brains and recruiters on this staff. I’m not in sitting in on practices, so I don’t want to scapegoat Tosh, but the Ducks’ D is anything but consistent in big games. See what IU did today with far less talent and much smaller players.

Stopping outsmarting yourself on offense. They spend all game thinking several plays ahead, rather than on the current down and distance. Dante’s countless fruitless drop backs, and their consistently short gains on WR screens were called to keep IU spread out, and keep their safeties from creeping up, but it kept setting us up with 2nd and 8+. The offense threw away a lot of plays trying to preserve the run. Never played downhill. We also went for the short FG to tie the game rather than go for the lead on 4th and 2. I’d put money on Lanning deciding to do that to get his kicker’s head back in the game, assuming he’d need him later. Turns out they needed points more than a kicker with zin….

‘Experience and success at a high level need to be requirements for future coordinators.’

Think about that for a second. OSU had Kelly at OC last year. Now, OSU has Patricia as D coordinator this year. I’m not necessarily in favor of retreads, but to put you over the top, why not bring in coordinators with head coaching experience, or NFL experience? I get giving young up and comers a shot, but when you believe you have a shot at a title, don’t you want someone with a more worldly outlook, and experience? I’m all for it.

Chip Kelly was Oregon's OC before anyone knew him. Dillingham was Oregon's OC before taking over a reeling ASU program that he's turning around. Young coordinators bring new ideas. If teams always went with the retreads we'd still be in the 3 yards and a cloud of dust times.

Dilly had a few very frustrating games as our OC, too. Chip was a career OC who came over to work under a very experienced head coach and joined a staff with more tenure than any other in CFB. Lanning is still green behind the ears is tasked with mentoring young coaches while learning the HC job.

When you’re an elite team, it’s not an either-or convo. It’s not a rookie or a retread. You pay for a top coordinator from a power 5 program or you bring in coaches with recent success as coordinators, even if they don’t cut it as head coaches. Different animals.

[bdkipe]

I think we need to cut Stein a break. He can call the plays but he is not out there running them.

Moore was extremely off today. He got spooked after the 1st sack and never looked right the rest of the game.

He looked like the UCLA freshman version of himself. Trying to scramble away and taking losses instead of throwing it away. We haven’t seen him do things like that all season.

There were receivers open. You could see them sitting in the zones on replay. Dante was either running away from them because he was hearing footsteps,

He will adjust and learn. We will be fine.

[greenyellow]

[pezsez1]

Moore was off, but I've just seen this movie far too many times to have faith in Will Stein. We usually win despite the clunkers just because of our superior talent, but today it cost us a very winnable game. Indiana didn't pull away until later in the fourth when our D had been on the field for most of the second half. We squandered some excellent field position. We had stretches of moving the ball, but then just shot ourselves in the foot or played our way out of good situations. There's just no excuse for that degree of offensive futility so many times over the course of two years.

I've tried really, really hard to not put too much anti-Stein energy out there, but it would take a ton of mental gymnastics to rationalize what happened today. We were playing tick-tack-toe while Indiana was playing wizard chess.

[GrantDuck]

Tough game. Ultimately we lost to a more experienced team on the field and in the coaching staff and I thought it showed in several areas.


-The 100% difference in this game was that Indiana stacked the box hard and played 3 LBers most of the game and we couldn't take advantage. We simply didn't have an answer for it. Although we did lose a few reps in pass pro, this was more of a Poncho/line calls issue. They absolutely cooked our protection rules. All those guys in the box and we never figured out the whole game who was coming. This led Dante to speed up his clock and miss some guys WIDE open for TD's. (Dakorien and Sadiq both were open on busts on different plays and he checked down instead for like 2 yards). The stacked box made it a challenge to consistently run the ball.

I primarily put this on the coaching and the O-line, but Dante also needs to process faster when blitzed. We don't have to look much further than that. When a team can stack the box on you and play a 4-3 like it's 1995, and you only hit 1 big play, that makes it extremely hard to move the ball.

Lots of other mental errors from a young team, the first 4th down for example, Davison had a big hole to the left and randomly cut back right into the teeth of the defense. Later on a wide run, he went to block a DB instead of the linebacker right in front of him. As we know, it's a tough spot, because our best runners make a lot of mental errors in other game aspects.

Defense was OK, but disappointing efforts from Matayo(absolute non-factor) and Mixon(slow to read and poor tackling). Surratt is a heck of a player and I think we could have taken away that option more often in key situations.

Guys that had good games were Boettcher, the punter, and Finney.

Long season to go and hopefully we can continue to improve.

[bdkipe]

How dare you have reason and nuance GrantDuck!

The answer is clear: Turf Stein! Turf Tosh! Turf Terry!

Give PezSez a few mill a year to call plays and hire Stu to be the offensive line coach.

Our fan base is rapidly starting to rival anything you will hear post tough (insert SEC progrum here) loss on The Finebaum Show.

Seriously, some of the postgame shows were like “well, this season is over”.

You all are a massive eye roll tonight. I say that with love. But it needs to be said. Feel free to call me out on being too blue skies, I have my faults too.

Remember what happened after UW in 2023? The sun came up. We got better.

Idaho and BSU last year? We improved and corrected. Got better. Went 13-0 during the reg season + B1GCG if I recall.

Let’s sit back and see what happens before we sharpen the pitchforks and light the torches.

[greenyellow]

How dare you have reason and nuance GrantDuck!

The answer is clear: Turf Stein! Turf Tosh! Turf Terry!

Give PezSez a few mill a year to call plays and hire Stu to be the offensive line coach.

Our fan base is rapidly starting to rival anything you will hear post tough (insert SEC progrum here) loss on The Finebaum Show.

Seriously, some of the postgame shows were like “well, this season is over”.

You all are a massive eye roll tonight. I say that with love. But it needs to be said. Feel free to call me out on being too blue skies, I have my faults too.

Remember what happened after UW in 2023? The sun came up. We got better.

Idaho and BSU last year? We improved and corrected. Got better. Went 13-0 during the reg season + B1GCG if I recall.

Let’s sit back and see what happens before we sharpen the pitchforks and light the torches.

It's also like people are forgetting Indiana is a top-10 team, not some middle tier team or bottom-feeder. They are a good team with good players and excellent coaches. Oregon has some work to do and the season is not over after only one loss.

[bdkipe]

I think the season is OVER. I need Tosh, Lanning and Stein gone like yesterday and replaced with Pez, Stu and OF4L.

That should just about ensure a decade straight of natties.

For those of you that bitch and moan about Stein try to remember Andy Ludwig and year 2 of Gary Crowton.

[GrantDuck]

How dare you have reason and nuance GrantDuck!

The answer is clear: Turf Stein! Turf Tosh! Turf Terry!

Give PezSez a few mill a year to call plays and hire Stu to be the offensive line coach.

Our fan base is rapidly starting to rival anything you will hear post tough (insert SEC progrum here) loss on The Finebaum Show.

Seriously, some of the postgame shows were like “well, this season is over”.

You all are a massive eye roll tonight. I say that with love. But it needs to be said. Feel free to call me out on being too blue skies, I have my faults too.

Remember what happened after UW in 2023? The sun came up. We got better.

Idaho and BSU last year? We improved and corrected. Got better. Went 13-0 during the reg season + B1GCG if I recall.

Let’s sit back and see what happens before we sharpen the pitchforks and light the torches.

It's also like people are forgetting Indiana is a top-10 team, not some middle tier team or bottom-feeder. They are a good team with good players and excellent coaches. Oregon has some work to do and the season is not over after only one loss.

Exactly. There's a spectrum of improvement outcomes and reactions with the highs and lows being:. 1. Lows: What Penn State is doing 2. Highs What Ohio State did last year.

Scheme wise, we gotta figure out what to do against an 8 man box and simulated pressures.

Player wise, OL/Dante need to continue to get better.

[Everythingsducky]

Not sure how the Ducks fix the O-line issues. As mentioned earlier, they don’t play younger players, like at all. A few snaps in a blowout, maybe. Unless there is some hidden upcoming stars, what will this OL be next year? Another patch job? This has a bad look for development.

[StevensTechU]

I'm much more concerned with the lack of pressure from the defensive line than what I saw out of the OL. If the ducks get more pressure from their two first round defensive linemen (Matayo and A'Mauri) they win the game.

[Indiana Jones]

Best of luck the rest of the way out Duck fans.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-footb ... diana-usc/

[dthomas=ddixon]

I think we can acknowledge that Indiana’s turnaround under Cig is pretty unreal, and we are likely underestimating how good they are.

This game reminds me a little of the games against Washington under DeBoer. A team that is less talented than us with clear disadvantages comes in with a plan that not only neutralizes our strengths but exploits our weaknesses in a way that kind of shocks us as fans.

Those losses didn’t expose the Ducks as frauds, it just proved how good UW and DeBoer was. Looking around CFB, I still don’t see that many teams that look better than the Ducks. This is still a playoff team that has a chance to improve and get ready for USC and UW to end the season.

That said, Terry and the OL concern me. Last year’s OL had the same problems. The Idaho game was an embarrassing showing; that line was made up of mostly returning starters and was absolutely owned by an FCS team running stunts. Yesterday we saw the same thing—an OL that looked utterly unprepared and never adjusted. And the staff’s approach of chasing big fish then backfilling with projects and transfers when we don’t land them has us stuck in this cycle where the line is mediocre for half the season and only starts to click halfway through. And next year will be the same story.