Our coaches were exposed today

[OregonFan4Life]

I understand our players did not play well, but I am pinning this loss on the coaches.

First, Will Stein. I’ve been going to games since 97, outside of 2022 I have gone to at least one game in Autzen every season since 97 and many of those seasons every home game, that was the WORST called game from an Oregon offensive coordinator that I witnessed in person at Autzen. Stein is a timid and scared playcaller that had been disguised under the premise that it’s “efficient”. Credit to the Indiana defense; they were fantastic, but Stein made everything so easy for them just like he did against Knowles in the Rose Bowl. He is an extremely predictable playcaller that relies on presnap eye candy but when you go against a disciplined defense with a good DC it just leaves our players on offense in vulnerable positions. It is lazy playcalling and he’s doing nothing to make things easier for Moore and the offense.

There is no rhythm at all, whenever we have a decent play, the offense just stalls, we sub three guys in, wait til the end of the play clock, move at a snails pace, allow the opposing defense to get aligned and set up, and remove any chance of our guys being in a rhythm. And my gosh, can we just stick with one formation? Pistol, under center, wildcat, just new formations and we aren’t consistent with any single formation, it’s like how I call plays in NCAA 26. How many formations were Indiana in? Outside of kneeling the ball, one. Indiana identified their players strength, have utilized the formation/alignment, and they run it extremely well. With Oregon, new play, new formation. We move slow, there is no rhythm, and Will is NOT using his elite players at all. How many OC’s would die to have Dante, Dakorien, and Sadiq? A lot, and Will made them look extremely pedestrian today.

Multiple times today fans were able to predict what he was calling. When Hill is in with pistol formation, mostly running to the c gap. With Davison running up the A grape. Dakorien sprinting in motion is a jet sweet, a receiver jogging in motion and stopping in the slot receiver is running an inside curl route. The entire game the offense was very predictable and vanilla and Indiana ate it up. Will needs to stop relying on presnap movement/alignments with the hopes it will cause the defense to make a mistake and let our talented athletes play some freakin football.

Second: A’lique Terry. STU said it before, but the OLine development seems absent under him. Iuli looks no better than last season, maybe Poncho is slightly better, heck last year we saw Cornelius get significantly worse. Why is our OLine not improving? He’s relying on transfers and putting a patchwork OLine together rather than developing the talent that he has. World is exactly what he was at Nevada and despite having amazing measurables he is consistently getting destroyed by smaller guys. At this point why not try Wilson just to see if it can be better and if not, at least a young guy can get quality experience. While I do think Stein is the #1 issue with the offense, World is also hurting this offense and he’s gonna be gone after this season. I will give Terry the benefit of the doubt, Klemm didn’t recruit, and he inherited a bad unit, and he is recruiting well this year so maybe we’ll see this get better, but I don’t feel like I see OLine improving under his coaching.

Third, Tosh Lupoi. I’m not too upset at the defense, they played pretty well, the offense put them in bad positions and Indiana had the ball pretty much the entire 4th quarter, but Tosh’s addiction to 3rd down blitzes allows us to give up way too many crucial 3rd downs. It has been this way for a while under him and he just doesn’t seem to be learning or getting better at getting the defense off the field on 3rd downs. Also why was Theron Johnson starting over Ify? Dude was getting beat badly.

Fourth, Brian Michalowski. He’s young and probably in a position he shouldn’t be in, but his refusal to pursue a quality LB in the portal may be the main reason this team doesn’t make the playoffs. Our LB’s are all backups at best, we don’t have a single LB that is a legit starting LB for a top B1G team. Boettcher plays hard and is a great leader but he lacks the speed. Jackson has the speed but he struggles to dissect plays fast enough. Like Boettcher, Mixon has good instincts but he is too slow. Indiana picked on our LB’s and it showed how easy it is to exploit our LB’s and in legit worried about what USC and Washington will do to our LB’s with their speed and dynamic playmakers.

Finally, Dan Lanning. I love Dan, I wouldn’t trade him for any other coach in the nation, even Cignetti who spanked him around today. But ultimately, losses like this fall on him. Lanning has a reputation for not micromanaging coaches and letting them freely coach how they want to, and that is fine when the coaching staff is mixed with savvy veterans who know what they’re doing, but when you have a bunch of young guys who are in their first position coaching job, he needs to be a little more like Saban and take control. When he saw Michalowski refusing to go to the portal he needs to step in take control. I do think he needs to be more serious and controlling at times and I don’t like our head coach taking his shirt off at gameday, especially before a showing like that, this is a bad look for him and the entire athletic program.

That said, I love my ducks, and we can only hope this young coaching staff got a real wake up call today and what we see on from here on out is much improved from what we’ve seen today. 1 loss does not end the season but it will be difficult to look back at the schedule and see only one ranked opponent and it was a loss.

[ld2001]

100 percent agree with what you wrote. Football, like any competitive game (chess, poker, etc) is a game about doing the right things so your opponent is never comfortable. Nothing in our scheme makes the opponents feel like we’re unpredictable or makes them uncomfortable. They’re uncomfortable against our size and speed cuz we bought it, but not against our schemes and calls.

[GDuck]

The fact our top offense players barely touched the ball today speaks volumes. Out of halftime they ran a play for Sadiq and one for Dakorian but when our best players aren’t consistently touching the ball, we have an issue. We are totally wasting Sadiq so far this year in my opinion.

[Everythingsducky]

All the ‘pump up’ videos on motivation, are just that, videos. I doubt Cignetti has them at IU. Window dressing doesn’t win sh*t. IU doesn’t recruit like UO. Cignetti and his staff are just better than the UO coaching staff. They motivate, call games, and get the best out of their players better than Lanning and his staff do. It’s pretty incredible what Cignetti has been able to accomplish at a basketball school in less than two years. I’m a fan of the guy.

[bdkipe]

Sh!t like this is exactly why Dan came up with FEBU. And by “us” he means the players and the staff, “us” certainly ain’t including these fans that turn on the team after just 1 crappy day. Consider yourselves in the “everybody but” section.

Bad days happen. We got punched in the mouth and weren’t ready to respond.

But Good Lord, this season is far from over.

[OregonFan4Life]

Sh!t like this is exactly why Dan came up with FEBU. And by “us” he means the players and the staff, “us” certainly ain’t including these fans that turn on the team after just 1 crappy day. Consider yourselves in the “everybody but” section.

Bad days happen. We got punched in the mouth and weren’t ready to respond.

But Good Lord, this season is far from over.

Did you even read my post or just see what you perceived as negative and jumped to a self righteous post? I even said 1 loss does not ruin the season and this young coaching staff can grow from this. Acknowledging the reality of the coaching staff’s shortcomings that were exposed today doesn’t mean we want everyone fired or that we are negative fans.

[greenyellow]

You seem to forget many of the clunkers of games Oregon had with OCs like Crowton and Ludwig during Bellotti, then again when Taggart was calling plays, and during the Cristobal era with Arroyo.

[OregonFan4Life]

You seem to forget many of the clunkers of games Oregon had with OCs like Crowton and Ludwig during Bellotti, then again when Taggart was calling plays, and during the Cristobal era with Arroyo.

Yeah no doubt there’s a lot, but I still think today’s game takes the cake. The constant formation changes, weird rotations, predictable movement, not doing anything to counter Indiana’s 4-3 defense, and of course the refusal to try anything to get the deep pass going, I just think that was the worst I’ve ever witnessed in person in Autzen. Not necessarily the worst I’ve seen, but the worst I’ve seen attending a game in Autzen.

[bdkipe]

It’s far from self righteous. More of a call to take a deep breath. Perhaps I’ve had my fill of Duck Social Media and the like melting down over 1 loss to the #7 team, in a game that was tied with 8 minutes to go whilst we played horribly (and, other than their false starts, they played almost perfectly).

In that case, my bad.

[GrantDuck]

Our OL made significant improvements over the course of last season. They played great from game 3-13. Cornelius I think hit a developmental ceiling.

This season will depend on if guys like World, Iuli, and Harkey improve in the scheme and as individuals. That said, most of the OL issue today was a terrible combination from Stein/Poncho/Dante in picking up who was coming and who wasn't in their 8 man boxes. They literally stacked the box and dared us to throw deep and we couldn't because we couldn't pick up the blitz for long enough and then Dante was just bailing to the check down immediately, even when he wasn't rushed as much. IE, yes there are deficiencies in our OL that we need to see Terry develop, but I don't feel those were the primary issue today.

Outside of that agreed with the main points. Our defense had a really awful drive at 20-20. Stein is not in his own words "feeding the studs" nearly enough. I'm very confused with our lack of use of Sadiq.

[OregonFan4Life]

It’s far from self righteous. More of a call to take a deep breath. Perhaps I’ve had my fill of Duck Social Media and the like melting down over 1 loss to the #7 team, in a game that was tied with 8 minutes to go whilst we played horribly (and, other than their false starts, they played almost perfectly).

In that case, my bad.

Oh dang, I don’t have any social media so I fortunately did not see the social media meltdowns, but I’m sure it was bad.

[pezsez1]

Perhaps I’ve had my fill of Duck Social Media and the like melting down over 1 loss to the #7 team, in a game that was tied with 8 minutes to go whilst we played horribly (and, other than their false starts, they played almost perfectly).

It's not the fact that we lost a game. It's more the fact that our offense has underperformed far too often since Bo Nix (an NFL-ready QB) left, and now it finally bit us in the butt. We've been fortunate to have a great D that covers our ass, or to play against teams like Wisconsin last season that were either rebuilding or gutted by injuries. It's just really difficult to ignore the elephant in the room when it stumbles and squashes you.

That's great how our D managed to tie the game with 8 mins to go. They almost saved our butts again! But the simple truth is it shouldn't have been a tie game with 8 mins left. With our D playing the way it was, we should have been up by two or three scores. To only score 13 points of offense is unacceptable. I get it that we all love our Ducks, but how many more clunkers do we need to see from our offense before we start demanding more? Phil Knight isn't pouring millions into the program (in the twilight of his life) for a coordinator who's as flat and predictable as Will Stein. Would this be acceptable at Georgia or Ohio State? What are we doing here?

I still love Lanning and acknowledge he's still young and learning on the job. He does deserve some grace for giving Stein time to grow. But we're also a top-tier program with big aspirations and we're kind of racing against Father Time. Unless Stein has a "come to Geez" moment and shows some dramatic growth then I'll be expecting a change this offseason. We just don't have time to mess around like this. I said this in the game thread, but I guarantee there is someone already on our staff who'd do a better job calling plays than Stein.

Also why the f*** can I say "ass" but not "Geez" without being censored???

[bdkipe]

All good. I love the passion of all the regulars on the board.

I just think we are overreacting to this loss the way we overreacted to the win at PSU.

Although that broke PSU. I will hear no argument otherwise.

Now the trick for us is to not let IU break us.

[pezsez1]

Although that broke PSU. I will hear no argument otherwise.

Now the trick for us is to not let IU break us.

Totally agree about PSU. We didn't just mentally break them, we physically beat the snot out of them. That game was incredibly physical. I just don't think they were physically or mentally the same against UCLA. Not sure what happened against Northwestern.

I'm not worried about Oregon "breaking" from the Indiana game. It wasn't as physical. Oregon just crapped the bed. I might worry a bit about Moore's confidence (the Dante Moore hype train was pretty wild after the PSU game) but not worried about the team in general. If anything, I think we'll just keep having the same issues, and we'll probably still manage to win most games despite that.

[buckmarkduck]

Perhaps I’ve had my fill of Duck Social Media and the like melting down over 1 loss to the #7 team, in a game that was tied with 8 minutes to go whilst we played horribly (and, other than their false starts, they played almost perfectly).

It's not the fact that we lost a game. It's more the fact that our offense has underperformed far too often since Bo Nix (an NFL-ready QB) left, and now it finally bit us in the butt. We've been fortunate to have a great D that covers our ass, or to play against teams like Wisconsin last season that were either rebuilding or gutted by injuries. It's just really difficult to ignore the elephant in the room when it stumbles and squashes you.

That's great how our D managed to tie the game with 8 mins to go. They almost saved our butts again! But the simple truth is it shouldn't have been a tie game with 8 mins left. With our D playing the way it was, we should have been up by two or three scores. To only score 13 points of offense is unacceptable. I get it that we all love our Ducks, but how many more clunkers do we need to see from our offense before we start demanding more? Phil Knight isn't pouring millions into the program (in the twilight of his life) for a coordinator who's as flat and predictable as Will Stein. Would this be acceptable at Georgia or Ohio State? What are we doing here?

I still love Lanning and acknowledge he's still young and learning on the job. He does deserve some grace for giving Stein time to grow. But we're also a top-tier program with big aspirations and we're kind of racing against Father Time. Unless Stein has a "come to Geez" moment and shows some dramatic growth then I'll be expecting a change this offseason. We just don't have time to mess around like this. I said this in the game thread, but I guarantee there is someone already on our staff who'd do a better job calling plays than Stein.

Also why the f*** can I say "ass" but not "Geez" without being censored???

Nix was NFL ready when he showed up to play for Lanning? If by nfl ready you mean undrafted FA, yes he was. Even before strain he was a 4-5th round pick in most mock drafts.