CFP Quarterfinal Rose Bowl: Oregon vs Ohio State (Jan. 1, Wed 2 PM ESPN)

[nogerO]

Appears they hid the fact that a lot of the team had the flu. And the Danimal wasn't going to use that as an excuse. Burn down the current playoffs fiasco and revert to an 8 team playoff based on season record with bottom 4 playing first, top four play a home game the next week in the classic bowl games and a natty 2 weeks later. That scenario means we're probably in the championship game. What a clusterf&*K this is.

[StevensTechU]

-Secondary just isn’t near good enough, we have 5’9” corners and safeties that run a 4.7. These guys were 3 stars out of high school and there’s a reason for that. They simply lack the talent/athleticism to stop Jeremiah Smith and the Ohio State receivers. They’ve been great all season but today they were awful and didn’t give themselves a chance.

-His two concerns for upcoming seasons are the OLine and not having a receiver who can go over the top. He said the two tackle transfers are got are simply not good enough, the coaches need to recruit better at OLine and keep those guys and develop them. He did mention that Adrian Klemm’s last recruiting class was atrocious and it’s showing. It may take a while to fix that position.

I don’t buy the secondary excuse. QB11 always gets to have his cake and eat it too where he hypes up our talent all year then when we lose blames those same players for not being good enough. Last year it was all Evan Williams’ fault and yet he’s a starting as a rookie for the Packers. Not good enough for our secondary but good enough for the NFL? That doesn’t add up. The secondary players we’ve brought have been VERY good at their previous schools and somehow with a secondary full of all-conference safeties and DBs we’re still blaming the talent level?

Manning/Reed got beat a few times but the problem in the first quarter was that we simply didn’t guard Smith. On both his TDs he was unguarded. How is that a talent issue? Our defense was lost for the entire 1st quarter - that’s a preparation problem. Something that didn’t happen in the first matchup.

I generally agree with the latter here. A couple points on it - the secondary, full of transfers, didn't improve over the course of the season, and arguably got worse. The guys who were getting hands on passes early in the season would not have had such a terrible showing against Penn State, in my view, though we'll never know. But the lack of improvement points to poor coaching, not talent. I also very much agree that "QB11" has a tendency to use measurables as a crutch. Against Ohio State, our DBs weren't getting Moss'd because of the speed or stature, they were completely out of position or failed to make the play when they were in position. Oregon's defense is much more athletic and has more [former] all-conference players than other teams who played Penn State and Ohio State better than we did. Michigan has Wink and we have Lupoi, and that's a much bigger difference.

I do agree with QB11 on the transfers coming in at the tackle spots, and said so in another post so I won't beat a dead horse. Overall, to play at the elite level, at least 4 of your 5 OL need to be NFL (Shane Lemieux, Penei Sewell, TJ Bass, JPJ) and fringe-NFL (Sala Aumavae-Laulu, Alex Forsyth, Tyler Johnstone, Hroniss Grasu). I don't know if any of the projected starting 5 next year have NFL talent, let alone 4 of 5, and I can already see fans on and off this board putting the blame on Dante Moore or Will Stein for an offense that's struggling more than we're used to when the problem is that it's the worst OL we've had in a decade (or two or three). If the OL is bad, I hope they just go with a youth movement and get Fox Crader, Gernorris Wilson, and the best of Boulton/Lipe/Brooks to go with Bedford and Poncho, so the team doesn't find itself in the same position the next season.

[OregonFan4Life]

I think it’s a combo of both regarding the secondary, I don’t think they’re as bad as QB11 said and coaching is an issue but they are limited athletes. There were a few times i thought Savage in particular looked really slow. But no doubt they were way off in the RB and coaches did not have them ready.

I think Lanning is the guy for Oregon but part of me wonders if he needs to evaluate the full staff closer as not sure if every coach on staff as they currently are allow this team to be consistent contenders for a natty. Like others have said the defense, secondary in particular, were a mess the last two games and while the OLine played very respectable for most of the season given their lack of talent it was clear they are overmatched against an elite DLine, outside of Conerly who is fantastic. Our interior blocking wasn’t than good and neither Cornelius. I think Iuli and Poncho could potentially turn into fringe NFL players but they aren’t there yet and Harper and Strother won’t be playing football beyond Oregon unless if it’s arena football or in Canada. We need to improve OLine recruiting for sure.

[StevensTechU]

Iuili is a great athlete with all the measurables you could hope for. That said, watch him play against Penn State. He's not good. Not at this point. I haven't rewatched the Rose Bowl to zero in on him yet, but the conference championship game made me go "oh s***."

[Duck07]

Iuili is a great athlete with all the measurables you could hope for. That said, watch him play against Penn State. He's not good. Not at this point. I haven't rewatched the Rose Bowl to zero in on him yet, but the conference championship game made me go "oh s***."

Jim Nagy and Geoff Schwartz both think that Worlds can be a Top 50 draft pick next year so if we can get Connerly back at LT for 1 more year that would allow the other transfer Harkey to compete at one of the Guard spots along with Iuli, Wilson and maybe a surprise OL who pops. That would seem to be the best-case scenario option right now for us.

[OregonFan4Life]

From what I’ve heard Worlds has all the measurable and talent that you’d want but he has very poor technique and with only 1 year of eligibility left he’ll need to improve a lot this offseason to be the caliber of tackle Oregon needs to be a championship contender. The other guy from Texas St I’ve heard is already a better tackle than Cornelius.

[OregonFan4Life]

So from what I’m hearing (and this time it’s reliable) about half the team did have the flu on Wednesday during the game.

[QuackininBama]

So from what I’m hearing (and this time it’s reliable) about half the team did have the flu on Wednesday during the game.

Well this does change my statement somewhat, however I believe, and this was prior to the game as well, that the single biggest factor in their performance was rust. Sitting around not playing football for a full month was to much to overcome. If they had an easier team to play prior to Ohio State to get back into game speed I think that would have made a huge difference.
Let me add, I am giving Ohio State full credit, they are playing next level football right now and no matter what, we may just not be good enough to have beaten them regardless, but I believe if we had played them with only a 7-10 day layoff, this would have been a very competitive game.

[OregonFan4Life]

I totally agree, and the fact that Georgia also loss shows that the bye was a disadvantage more than an advantage. But the flu also makes sense, a bunch of players were vomiting on the sideline before the game. Also just sucks to see such bad luck for Oregon, yet again. We are truly cursed.

[bdkipe]

I think something else we need to consider is that Stein likely didn’t even get to go through the first 15 on script. They overwhelmed us so hard from jump that we had to abandon the script and adjust on the fly in the 1st Quarter.

Dilly showed that after Texas overwhelmed ASU he was going to stay committed to establishing the run score be damned. It paid off. It was a gamble but it worked and it wore Texas down.

Schwartz was calling for us to stay with the run to get 3-6 yards and move the chains despite the score. Others analysts have mentioned that they were surprised Oregon didn’t stay committed to the run just a bit more to rest the D and get another safety to come join Downs in the box and free up space. When they showed Skyview all22 so Herbie could give commentary, you’d see 7-8 tOSU defenders in zone coverage passing guys off. 4 deep 3 mid and rushing 4 or 4 deep 4 mid and rushing 3. They were absolutely executing passing receivers off to each other perfectly and Downs was roaming around just diagnosing us, playing off instinct and wrecking shop. Caleb Downs was in Gabriel’s head all day. Almost like the way you teach a helpside post to defend a team with a great penetrating guard. Sink into that guard’s line of sight whenever possible and get as much eye contact with them per possession as you can so they know when they try to get to the front of the rim you’re cracking back early to meet them. Establish doubt.

With tOSU up 14-0 and seemingly scoring every 4th play, I can’t fault Stein and Lanning for gambling and feeling like they had to keep up. That gamble lost, more 3 and outs happened and BOOM, it’s 34-0.

Hindsight is 20/20.

[droop10]

I think something else we need to consider is that Stein likely didn’t even get to go through the first 15 on script. They overwhelmed us so hard from jump that we had to abandon the script and adjust on the fly in the 1st Quarter.

Dilly showed that after Texas overwhelmed ASU he was going to stay committed to establishing the run score be damned. It paid off. It was a gamble but it worked and it wore Texas down.

Schwartz was calling for us to stay with the run to get 3-6 yards and move the chains despite the score. Others analysts have mentioned that they were surprised Oregon didn’t stay committed to the run just a bit more to rest the D and get another safety to come join Downs in the box and free up space. When they showed Skyview all22 so Herbie could give commentary, you’d see 7-8 tOSU defenders in zone coverage passing guys off. 4 deep 3 mid and rushing 4 or 4 deep 4 mid and rushing 3. They were absolutely executing passing receivers off to each other perfectly and Downs was roaming around just diagnosing us, playing off instinct and wrecking shop. Caleb Downs was in Gabriel’s head all day. Almost like the way you teach a helpside post to defend a team with a great penetrating guard. Sink into that guard’s line of sight whenever possible and get as much eye contact with them per possession as you can so they know when they try to get to the front of the rim you’re cracking back early to meet them. Establish doubt.

With tOSU up 14-0 and seemingly scoring every 4th play, I can’t fault Stein and Lanning for gambling and feeling like they had to keep up. That gamble lost, more 3 and outs happened and BOOM, it’s 34-0.

Hindsight is 20/20.

I’m sure losing Stewart in warmups also affected the plan. To be honest, outside of Tez and Stewart, they don’t have guys that are great at getting separation. Stewart is their big deep threat, so losing him didn’t help in terms of how they could attack Ohio State. Wouldn’t be an Ohio St. matchup without them losing a critical player randomly right before the game, whether it’s Carrington, Burch, Thibodeaux, etc. The way they played defensively, I don’t think Stewart makes the difference, but having any offensive consistency early could have at least prevented the snowball effect that happened when they couldn’t execute the first few drives.

I do think it’s silly that the teams with byes still have a month off. Definitely will generally lead to sluggishness early. They need to start the playoff earlier in December. Should start the week after the conference championship games, and play week to week. Make it just a regular bye week for teams with a bye.

[AutzenMember]

Or just get rid of the conference championships and begin the playoffs earlier. If the CCGs are kept, make them the first round of the playoffs...elimination game (for the most part). Then, have the top 6 conf champions, and two at large, seeded by rankings. Then, the most any team would play is 15 games. Right now, Penn State and Texas have to play 17 games to win the natty.

[Alan]

Simply go to a 16 team playoff, get rid of CCG, every team plays pretty much the same schedule (maybe a day difference). come up with a computer ranking system using polls, SOS, with limits on how many teams each conference get in and possibly two at large bids. the 1 seed plays the 16 seed, 2 plays 15.....

[UOducksTK1]

Simply go to a 16 team playoff, get rid of CCG, every team plays pretty much the same schedule (maybe a day difference). come up with a computer ranking system using polls, SOS, with limits on how many teams each conference get in and possibly two at large bids. the 1 seed plays the 16 seed, 2 plays 15.....

First round will mostly be boring, but makes sense.

Not like 12 seed first round games were very exciting anyway.

[OregonFan4Life]

Chip Kelly throwing shots at Oregon, what a tool, you’re just OC little Chip shut your mouth. I hope that Notre Dame finds a win so we can see those little media darlings with their bandwagon fair weather fanbase cry some more. Ohio State is easily becoming America’s most hated team cause they’re built off cheating and tampering.

https://x.com/on3sports/status/1880717518664339675?s=46