a pretty important factor that hasn't been mentioned, much, is that Maryland had a bye week between their last game and Oregon; they had two weeks to prepare for the Ducks. That's worth a lot in college football unfortunately, for the Ducks, their next game is at Wisconsin and they too have a bye week and will have had 2 weeks to prepare for Oregon; and they don't have to travel, Oregon does the Big-10 actually talked about not giving teams this advantage, likely because several coaches complained about it (thus, both Oregon and Washington have byes before their game against each other). But for the Ducks to have back-2-back games against teams with 2 weeks to prepare is a significant disadvantage. The Ducks will have to play a lot better in Wisconsin than they did yesterday
that's how Chip Kelly took the Ducks to the championship game against Auburn in 2011 (after 2010 season). They had a senior-heavy defense made up of Mike Bellotti recruits: Bellotti was a couple of tiers better than Chip/Helfrich/Taggart/Cristobal at recruiting quality defenders Lanning might be the equal of Bellotti, but he has the advantages of NIL and the transfer portal
Thing with Bellotti is they really coached those guys up. It seemed like they were turning two and three star recruits into NFL players.
Because his lineman were not as big as say SEC he used speed and as you say coached them up using different schemes.
sometimes yes where that really showed up was on the O-Line. Oregon knew they would not land a 5-star O-Lineman and would have mixed results with 4-stars. So they, Bellotti and Steve Greatwood decided to go out and recruit taller rangy kids and build them into all-conference O-Linemen. They couldn't get the mass of SEC or Big-10 O-Linemen, so they went for mobility and flexibility. Oregon became masters of O-Linemen making the initial block at the LOS then having the speed to get downfield and make additional blocks against LB's and DB's. It worked extremely well because Oregon Led the Pac-10/12 for 11 straight seasons in rushing another assistant coach who was instrumental was Gary Campbell, the RB coach. Oregon always had great RB's under Campbell. Just look at the 25 year progression of RB's: Ricky Whittle-->Saladin McCullough-->Reuben Droughns-->Maurice Morris-->Onterrio Smith-->Terrence Whitehead-->Jonathon Stewart-->Jeremiah Johnson-->Legarrett Blount-->LaMichael James-->Kenjon Barner-->De'Anthony Thomas-->Byron Marshall-->Thomas Tyner-->Royce Freeman
yeah...he does he fooled me the first time I saw a post of his. I read what was said, and saw the picture of Canzano, and it was so right on in capturing Canzano's anti-duck/pro-beaver snark I assumed it was crapzano
As long as we beat the Huskies we are in the College Football Playoffs. Even if we lose to Wisconsin and the Big 10 Championship game, we are in.
Okay I have to make a confession.... all these weeks hearing about Vander Ploog, I thought that was his last name.... I didn't realize his first name is Vander.
