Monday Game Review: Ducks Forgot That Chip Kelly is Chip Kelly
UCLA brought the heat to Eugene, and the Ducks got their first real wake up call just in time for Beaver Week.
Lots to debrief about Saturday, but first some housekeeping. It’s a big week of newsletters:
Men’s basketball home opener/season preview on Wednesday (11/25)
Civil War Story Time: “Oregon Agricultural College Tries a Coup” Thursday (11/26)
Oregon State Game Preview on Friday (11/27)
Pac-12 Week 4 Preview on Friday (11/27)
Women’s basketball home opener/season preview on Saturday (11/28)
If you have anyone in your life that would love any of that, consider sending them his email and telling them to subscribe.
If nothing else, you should forward them that Civil War Story Time when you get it. It’s one of my favorite thing I’ve ever written.
I’ll start this game review by saying that, “a win is a win.”
This whole newsletter is usually about me being a sunshine-pumper, but I have some things to say about that UCLA game.
It takes a lot for me to be critical of the Ducks, I think I’ve made that clear, but I seriously underestimated Chip and the Bruins, and it turns out I wasn’t the only one.
Of course I have positive things to say too, but we’re halfway through the season already, so I’ll start off with the tough love, and then get to the hopeful stuff.
We Need to Talk About Defense
Bruins’ tail back Demetric Felton ran all over the Ducks on Saturday. 34 carries for 167 yards and 2 touchdowns. Those are big boy numbers.
Seconds, thirds, fourths and short felt like inevitable conversions for UCLA. Tyrell Crosby pointed it out on twitter, but it was as if the defensive line—and the whole defense, really—was a step and a half back in every regard.
Every linebacker that isn’t named Noah Sewell seemed to be playing on their heels. Even when they did manage to push up to the line of scrimmage, Felton either made them miss or shucked off the first contact and kept moving.
Safety Jordan Happle’s ability to bust down and make tackles at the line was the most effective rush defense the Ducks showed all day—that’s just not sustainable.
UCLA’s offensive line were the aggressors all day, especially in the run. Oregon’s pass rush had few more hurries this week on young Chase Griffin, even managing 2 sacks and directly forcing bad throws—most importantly on Happle’s pick-six. But overall I thought the front seven was still overly patient, not tackling super well, and played without an instinct to attack the ball.
In the secondary, the Bruins made conversion after conversion through the air, too. Griffin found space all along the second level to the tune of 195 yards and 1 TD. Duck safeties seemed to be three/five yards out of position every time the ball was thrown behind the linebackers. Things improved a bit when Nick Pickett returned in the second half in terms of positioning, but still, things looked porous back there.
Both picks were on overthrows, too. So even when you’re taking the ball away it was sort of because you were playing to cautious.
Did the short season catch the Ducks with poor conditioning? Are we suffering so deeply from the losses of Holland/Graham/Breeze that our current talent is forced to play a cushy zone just in the hopes of keeping the game in front of them?
I find it hard to believe that Avalos would keep lining up in this zone defense if he thought he had a better option in his man-to-man. Maybe it had to do with the pace of Chip’s offense, maybe we didn’t trust our smaller corners against guys like the 6-4, 238 lbs tight end Dulcich, but it seems like varying our coverage might at least make things more challenging for the next young QB we face—like OSU’s Gebbia.
Turnovers R Us
Lost turnovers were one of the biggest gripes anyone could have with the Ducks in weeks one & two, but the Ducks reversed their fortunes on Saturday.
Forcing four turnovers in total—two on interceptions and two fumbles—resulting in points each time. Takeaways were really the story of the game when you get down to it.
CJ Verdell lost a fumble himself, however. And it even turned into a UCLA scoop and score.
But I could’ve told you that was going to happen. Cyrus fumbled against Stanford, Travis fumbled against the Cougs, and that meant CJ was due.
Just don’t give Sean Dollars the ball against the Beavs and statistically we should be safe, right?
New Hands, Who This?
Overlooked in all our anxiety was QB1, once again.
RoboShough showed out once again by throwing for 334 and 3 TDs, and didn’t throw a pick. He keeps growing up, he keeps slinging the ball, and we keep making him a side story. But that’s just fine, he’ll be our Steady Eddy.
Shough found Devon Williams alone 6 times for 123 yards and a touchdown. Devon’s Day Out proved he is a gigantic target, but he also stumbled a few times when running after the catch. Either he needs some different cleats, or we need to save the crossing routes for Jaylon Redd.
Cristobal talked about Williams’ performance by roughly quoting Steve Prefontaine. He said that when you get a guy like Devon that is “blessed with that kind of talent, anything less than getting the very best out them is kinda cheating the gift.”
Expect Williams to use all his gifts this week against his former-never-team, Oregon State.
Shough loved having Hunter Kampmoyer back, too. Kamp was a huge asset as a run blocker last year, but 5 catches for 70 yards and a score marked a huge jump as a receiver.
The more targets that pop up for Tyler, the better off the Ducks will be. They’ll just have to get back to protecting him better.
Potpourri
First, Joe Moorhead’s offense leads the Pac-12 with 499.7 yards per game, and 7.65 yards per play (also 5th in FBS). The Ducks also top the Pac in plays of 30+ yards. So we’re productive and explosive in ways we haven’t been in a while. That’s pretty sick.
And until this week, Oregon had been incredibly efficient—especially when it mattered. Oregon was over 72% on third down going into Saturday, but just 3/11 against UCLA.
Rushing better on first and second down are huge contributors to success on third, so the struggle to run the ball effectively on Saturday is the smoking gun for Oregon in figuring that out.
Jerry Azzinaro’s d-line proved to be more stout than I expected them to be, and really shut down the run game in ways that Stanford and Wazzu didn’t. The Eight-Clappers might have the second-best front seven the Ducks will face for the rest of the season, but the Oregon offensive line came back down to earth a little.
After giving up four sacks, the o-line will spend the week re-centering and watching all the wonderful tape that Cristobal and Mirabal can throw at them. I would bet they bounce back well.
Noah Sewell was having another monster game, but then he went down with an apparent leg injury. He was carted off, and even had the entire team rally around him to show their support.
That’s never a good sign.
But in the postgame, Mario mentioned that he hoped tests would show that things were, “better than we originally thought.” So I guess we’ll be hoping for a high ankle sprain, and not a break or a knee tear that would require surgery.
I hope he’s back soon, would love to get him back by the Husky game.
It wasn’t always pretty, but Mario will clean things up, I’m sure of it.
Welcome to Oregon State Respect Week™
Go Ducks.