Slingin' Quack

Ifo Bomaye and I are back for our last scheduled episode of Addicted To Quack. We are going through the football roster and giving our year-end awards. We select our most improved, most under-appreciated, most fun, and breakout player for this year on offense and defense. We also give our prediction for who the breakout player will be next year. This isn’t a standard MVP-type award show where the answer is really obvious and a no-brainer. We take a pretty good look through the roster. The next signing day is coming up and we address some of the positions of need and what we hope to see. I have a policy of only mentioning the names of players who have signed letters of intent so you won’t get specific names of players who haven’t committed but are clear commits or are the favorites, just FYI. We recorded this pod last week before the weekend’s basketball games. I wasn’t able to get the episode up until the weekend. Ifo Bomaye breaks down the basketball season thus far and we give a quick shoutout to the wom

Ifo Bomaye and I are back after taking a week off and luckily not much happened. First, we talk about Mario Cristobal as our new head coach. We discuss the other coaches that were interviewed including Leavitt, Sumlin, and Harsin. No coach was a perfect candidate and we weight the pros and cons for each. Ifo Bomaye and I disagreed on our preferred coach when the search began but we both believe that right now we are in a best-case scenario given the circumstances. Following that we move to preview the Las Vegas Bowl against Boise State. I had just finished parsing through the advanced stats that you can find at Football Study Hall so was ready with some fun facts. Both of us think that Oregon will pull off the win and cover the spread. I have picked against Oregon in most games against the spread, so I’m feeling pretty confident about this matchup. Looking at some of the advanced stats like S&P+, IsoPPP, and efficiency ratings we see some pretty clear trends on how the game could go. Lastly, we take a

Oregon put the Beavers in the dirt in the 2017 Civil War game. In all three phases of the game, Oregon looked completely prepared for anything that came at them. Special teams, offense, and defense, dominated all four quarters. With some of the talk coming from Oregon State athletes leading up to the game, and on the O in Autzen, it wasn’t much of a surprise to see some pettiness from some Duck players, in the best way possible. Players wore raincoats after the game when shaking hands and even Rob Moseley was making tweets referencing warm jackets that he was wearing in the press box.   It was also great seeing the players have so much fun. Big shoutout to the senior leaders for rebounding so well from last season and keeping the squad together through the rough part of the schedule. Mid-seasons like that can ruin team chemistry and it says a lot how well the team played when the passing attack was back.

fo Bomaye and I are back for a new bag with some of the most potent quack. Obviously, we open with our recap of the win over Arizona. Leavitt’s gameplan was executed phenomenally by the defensive line and the secondary. We liked seeing so much fire on defense, even though it sometimes led to penalties. One of the biggest takeaways we both had from this game is how no one on the team seemed to give up on each other. The last few weeks were full of moments that could have divided the team and I think it says a lot about the team leaders that the team stayed unified. Having Herbert back was obviously a huge change in offensive efficiency. The presence and continual threat of a deep ball opened up the entire offense. Freeman averaged over 7 yards per carry and had 4 rushing touchdowns. Taggart didn’t call too many more pass plays than normal. Something I didn’t get to on the pod was that the offense’s identity is all power running. On the 94-yard touchdown drive at the beginning of the second half, only 14 yard

The Ducks are back after a win over the bye week. We open the pod with the odds of Justin Herbert making the start on Saturday. If he doesn’t play then we can probably expect an offensive performance similar to what we saw against UCLA. If Herbert does get the start, what can we reasonably expect from someone who hasn’t played a game in six weeks? In order for Oregon to win we probably need to score 40. If not Khalil Tate could really take it to us. He’s going to be a Heisman candidate to start off the season next year and has already rushed for 1000 yards this season. He is the first quarterback in conference history to run for over 1000 yards and he hasn’t played every game this season. We talk about a few of the things Oregon’s defense might use to slow Tate down. Basketball has played two games and there’s a lot of promise to the season. Troy Brown has looked like the player people expected and has surpassed my expectations. The team has had their stretches of bad basketball but Altman has proven year a

So Saturday’s game was very not chill. After a good start to the game a couple breaks went the Huskies’ way. There was a very small window of opportunity for Oregon to pull out the win without some serious help from PAC-12 After Dark. A red zone fumble and a punt return for a touchdown later and the game was out of hand. I do want to give a quick shoutout to the Honolulu Oregon Alumni Association. I happened to walk into a sports bar to watch the game Saturday afternoon to find that the alumni association in Hawai’i had actually reserved multiple tables in the place. It was great randomly meeting some great Duck alumni in the middle of the Pacific. Mahalo. Ifo Bomaye and I talk about some of the popular takes around Burmeister, the team, and what the trajectory of the team is the next season. I think it’s premature to make a definitive statement on how good Burmeister can be. A lot of growth can happen in just a few years and the list of great football players who were written off in their first season is v

Ifo Bomaye and I begin the pod with recapping the loss to UCLA out in Pasadena. We talk about what we can expect from the offense and we have pretty different opinions of where the unit is headed. I talk about the play-calling but really think that the calls indicate something that runs much deeper on offense. There are a couple pitfalls we can have the rest of the season. One of the problems I brought up on the pod is that the defensive side of the ball could resent the offensive side of the ball. They get stuck on the field a lot and lock down the opponents until things fall apart in the fourth, when games are pretty well out of hand. All the pressure is on the defense to make things work, and with little help from the offense, some bitterness could arise. Going into the Utah game I think we have a bad matchup. The “Sack Lake City” defensive line could pose major problems for a quarterback with a 15% sack rate. If Oregon couldn’t get enough points to win against the worst rushing defense in the country, t

Ifo Bomaye and I are back after quite the weekend in college football. A lot of top-25 teams went down and there were fewer undefeated teams than there were the week prior. The PAC-12 results only lead to more questions now that we are over halfway into the season. How does Cal go from giving up 40 points to an Oregon team that was with a backup quarterback for three quarters of the game to shutting down an offense that had made good defenses look below average? USC beat Utah but then washington drops their game against Arizona State. How did the Sun Devils hold washington to only 7 points while Oregon scored over 30 at full strength?

Throughout this podcast both of us sound pretty negative at times. But we are actually pretty optimistic about the rest of the season.  We move on to recapping the game against Washington State. The strides that the defense has made have been nothing short of astonishing. Leavitt is getting paid a lot by the athletic department but he has certainly earned it so far. Troy Dye has been an absolute force in the middle of the field. Springs and Jelks have also caught the attention of Pro Football Focus. Ultimately, we have a true freshman quarterback who looked like a true freshman quarterback against one of the better defenses in the conference. He made some freshman mistakes and struggled at times but I think he’ll have a much better second game after simply having a start under his belt. The offense made it harder, especially the line by not getting much of a push on first down or on the fourth down tries. Washington State did a good job of making late shifts and stunts on the defensive line that were effect

News broke yesterday (at the time of the recording) about four schools, apparel companies, and players, that are involved in bribery and other possible financial crimes. Ifo Bomaye and I talk about the implications of what the investigation means, the role of bag men, and what it could mean for Oregon. Obviously, we move on to the Arizona State game, which was not chill. Arizona State exposed a lot of the weaknesses that Oregon had. The Sun Devils’ identity was a bad matchup on paper, especially when there was a clear lack of execution by Oregon. I feel that the team was unprepared in a lot of ways. However, there is a lot of praise for how the coaches adjusted in the game, especially on the defensive side of the ball. Ifo Bomaye and I discussed some of the weaknesses last week but we go over them again and how Oregon can fix those this next week. We finish discussing Cal and how they are exceeding expectations this year. Cal looks like how I thought Oregon State would do this year. They have rough first ha

Ifo Bomaye and I are back after taking a week off. Due to my travel schedule I didn’t have the opportunity to get on a skype call. Luckily, (or unfortunately) we saw some of the same themes across both the Wyoming and the Nebraska game. We both agree that the issue is on the offense but we have different opinions of what that can be. I mention a few things I see on the offensive line and Ifo goes more into the play calling. The segment is wrapped up with a talk about the players that stand out to us, the positives and negatives so far, and what we hope to see in the next few games.    

THE HYPE MACHINE IS IN FULL EFFECT AND WE ARE ALMOST OUT OF KOOL-AID. The first rule of week 1 is that nothing is as good as it seems and nothing is as bad as it seems. Oregon beat Southern Utah by a lot, and Southern Utah is Southern Utah at the end of the day, but Oregon did what they were supposed to do. There are a couple takeaways from the game. A lot of what we discuss is relative to the level of competition. My biggest point is that the weaknesses we thought we had going into the season didn’t kill us, which means that we won’t be bad. The problem isn’t solved but it’s not going to be bad (again, everything is relative). One of the biggest changes to me is that the players looked like they were really enjoying playing. We go over what we saw was an offensive identity take shape and how that identity can be seen across multiple phases of the offense. Some of the stuff I talk about are parts of the playbook and how play calls develop over the course of the game that weren’t visible with the TV camera

Ifo Bomaye and I have the great fortune of doing a preview of college football game. A singular college football game. We open the podcast doing a quick preview of Southern Utah, and by that we talk about how Southern Utah’s experience could counter some of the youth and talent Oregon has. After that we go through the depth chart and pick out some of the notable additions and absences. There are some players not listed due to injuries but Brendan Schooler listed as a WR along with eight others is indicative of how much the position has to grow this season. The linebacker that weighs less than our safeties does cause some concern, but he’s already started multiple games and the inside linebacker position has gotten smaller over the last ten years to keep pace with opposing offenses. Near the end we pick some breakout players for the season. We have different players on the offensive side of the ball but we both think one guy will really break out on defense. For this game we are both excited to see what th

  Rusty and Ifo Bomaye return for a new episode of Slingin’ Quack to break down the roster. We use some loose depth chart projections by the Oregonian and what we read in the practice reports to get a feel for where things may land. We start on the offensive side of the ball. The backup quarterback is where the question marks come in. How could the winner of the backup spot impact the rest of the roster this year and next? We both believe that Kani Benoit will be a breakout running back with the new offensive rushing strategy. Brooks James will be a a much bigger big-play threat as a secondary option if the defense overcommits to stopping the runs between the tackles. Wide receivers and tight ends, like the linebackers, are going to be the most fluid positions and where we are going to see the most progress this year. It sounds like many receivers are raising their game but nobody is breaking out to be a star just yet. The offensive and defensive lines are where we have seen the biggest growth. Each offe

Ifo Bomaye and I return for the second division in the PAC-12 conference, the south. The story of this division is that USC is the king of the hill and the rest of the teams are toss-ups. Each school has a big question mark that will be the deciding factor for their season.  

Ifo Bomaye and I unite for a long podcast on the PAC-12 North.  We go through the PAC-12 media conference projections starting with washington, followed by Stanford, Washington State, briefly Oregon, Oregon State, and then Cal. Unfortunately, washington is probably going to be over on their 10 win over/under line set by Vegas. They have great coaching and they’ve lost great players the last couple years and bounced back just fine. Their schedule sets up well and it’s hard to imagine them losing three games. Stanford is next up and the 8.5 is comically low. That’s a clear over. Their schedule also sets up well getting Washington at home, where they are statistically favored. They’re countering the rest of college football’s efforts to get faster on defense while they get bigger on offense. They’re so good every year and have had good recruiting classes so it’s hard to imagine them losing 4 games. Third is Washington State and this could be a year that they slide. Luke Falk is back but the secondary has some

Sean and I are back for a primer on the Oregon football season. It’s a bit a of a meandering conversation as we weave our way through a variety of topics. We peruse the performance of both the offense and defense to start the pod off. The chart that I reference is in Bill C’s analysis on the Ducks. Darren Carrington had just committed to Utah when we recorded and we go into detail about the decision by Taggart and the funny circumstances about Utah’s core values. What stands out to me personally is that Carrington made a lot of huge plays for Oregon but is not well liked by the Oregon fan base. Similar to Colt Lyerla who had a lot of off the field issues as well. From there we move into talking about the wide receiver position. We have a lot of talent filling the depth chart, but not much of it is proven. The linebackers are the biggest question mark to me. The offensive line was forced to play a lot of freshmen last year but we will see a big boost in performance as a direct result of taking the early lum

  It’s been a while but the gang is back with another podcast. I’m joined by Ifo Bomaye to talk about a variety of topics. We open up with the Duck basketball stars making their way through the NBA summer league. Jordan Bell and Tyler Dorsey have signed contracts with their NBA teams. While recording the podcast we get distracted a couple times by the Warriors-Sixers matchup on TV. One part of college football I have always been really critical of is the obsession with recruiting. However, I’m making an exception, because there’s really nothing else happening with Oregon football. Also, we are apparently really good at it now and like any fair-weather fan I’m now interested. This setup a good transition to talk about the incoming football players, like our favorite Jordon Scott, and how many of them are showing on the depth cart. The inside linebacker position is a huge question mark. We discuss Leavitt’s defense at Colorado and how it changed over time and what that could mean for Oregon this year. I thi

A new edition of Slingin’ Quack is here! It’s been a long layoff but Ifo Bomaye and myself are back. We open the podcast talking about basketball recruiting. Ifo Bomaye walks us through the players who have signed and some of the implications moving forward including Brian Bowen. I’m continually impressed by how Altman is able to pull together an awesome team of players in a short time span. Basketball recruiting transitions into football recruiting. Oregon had a huge weekend with not only the spring game but a huge haul of 4-star players. Taggart and his staff are really going all out and have far exceeded my own expectations. The coaches are really pushing the limits of how attractive Oregon can be to recruits. Most impressive is the fact that there are currently 6, 4-star athletes committed. Granted, it’s May, but that is a lot more than us Oregon fans are used to at this point. One of the best players in the state is committed, and guys also come from California, Florida, Colorado, North Carolina, and A

Slingin’ Quack is back for a preview episode of the sweet 16 matchup against Michigan. We open the show with a brief discussion on the women’s basketball program, which toppled Duke to advance in the women’s NCAA basketball tournament. Kelly Graves has done a great job of turning the team around from what it was in 2014. We move on to discuss the game against Michigan. The Wolverines opened as 2-point favorites but the line has since moved to -1.5 even though the Vegas Power Rankings have Oregon as a 1-point favorite. Michigan is probably the hottest team offensively having shown that they can score inside, like they did against Louisville, and outside the arc, like they did against Oklahoma State. The key to this game rests on which team will have the fewest lapses in production. Michigan needed a full 40 minutes to advance twice and Oregon has shown many times this season that the offense can dry up, sometimes more than once a game, and allow teams big runs to get back into the game. Bigby-Williams has b