TAKE ONE: Just Win

Quoting Al Davis is never something I intend to do, but the quote ‘Just Win, baby’ is apropos through three weeks of the season for Oregon.

The thing I have always liked about a true playoff is that winning a conference should matter and so too should winning tough games. We have talked about it a lot with the two less than stellar performances for the Ducks to open the season, but when we get into the meat of the schedule, we will learn two potential lessons about this Oregon football team.

One, I think we will learn that the two ‘so called’ lesser opponents were hardly lesser. Idaho made it to the second round of the FCS playoffs last season, and they looked every bit as good this season. After losing their starting QB against Oregon to injury, the Vandals have won two straight – including a win over the University of Albany 41-13 in week three. The Vandals dominated the same team that ousted them from the playoffs last season.

Boise State has been a thorn in the side of Oregon for a while, but this team looks like it could be the cream of the Mt. West crop and contend for a spot in the 12-team playoff.

If we take a step back from the high expectations of the preseason and look at the teams Oregon has played, the games they have won, and the lessons they have learned, we might see a team that is playing the long game. With the expanded playoffs, the season is even more of a marathon today than it has ever been.

In the course of the last two decades, we have seen plenty of examples of injuries to key players derailing an otherwise promising season. Depth is the first area that elite teams like to address to help resolve this issue; but sometimes the depth is not jut that you have a great player that can come in if the starter goes down, but it allows the starter to stay fresh throughout the season with liberal substitutions throughout the games.

While that does not explain all of the flaws, we saw in games one and two, it does start to paint a picture of a team that is playing some tough early season games that are closer than expected learning how to grit out a win.

This past Saturday we saw a close proximity of what Oregon can do when they play a complete game on both sides of the ball. And – as many said – the game could have been better. The Ducks struggled to get off the field early in the game giving the Beavers too many chances in the first half. If the Ducks had played a complete game, the 49-14 win could have been even uglier for the Beavers.

TAKE TWO: Penalty Box

Normally in the second take, I talk about a recruiting topic, but I wanted to address a couple of thoughts surrounding penalties. I have never really been an advocate of too much worry about penalties, but after watching several games in which roughing the passer was anything but roughing, I do think that there needs to be an opportunity to overturn the call when it is incorrectly applied.

I get what the NCAA (and other leagues) are trying to do; protecting players is a major concern and I agree with doing what we can to protect players as much as possible, but we should not be punishing players when they do everything right just because in real time the play looks or sounds worse than it was. As a former player, I am all in on protecting these young men on the field.

If we look back at the Devon Jackson ‘roughing’ penalty, he can be seen to be getting to the QB at the right time, but still lets up and even twists away from the QB to avoid ‘pile driving’ him into the ground. That was a very athletic and fantastic play that should have been held up as exactly what can be done by a defensive player; instead he was penalized. There needs to be an ability to overturn obviously inaccurate penalties. Maybe even a ‘challenge’ rule that gives coaches the chance to challenge a penalty in each half. Something definitely needs to be done.

My second thought on penalties is relating to a Beaver writer who complained incessantly about the ‘holding all over the place’ in the game – as if that had anything to do with the outcome. First, we all know that if the referees wanted to, they could call holding on every single play for both teams. I am pretty sure that writer does not want to see a game where each team has 45 penalties.

Aside from the questionable call against Jackson, the game was called fairly evenly. The one thing that you will hear from most players and coaches is simple: as long as the game is called the same on both sides of the ball, it is fairly easy to adjust. The biggest thing that gets frustrating is when there are two different standards – or worse no standard at all.

While the writer complained about the ‘holding left and right’ all game, they ignored the reality that there was only a single holding call the entire game on Oregon State. That penalty game at 14:52 left in the game and was legitimate.

For a rivalry game, I thought this was a clean game. Two false starts by Oregon State, two pass interference penalties, and a personal foul in addition to the holding. Oregon had just three total accepted penalties for the game.

The harsher truth? Those supposed holding penalties ‘left and right’ had zero impact on this game. Oregon was better at every position, and it showed in the final score. The unwillingness to recognize this is a coping mechanism for a team that was decimated by their circumstance.