This deserves the front page.  You nailed it, Quinn.  -Takimoto

I couldn't enjoy this afternoon's game. It wasn't our poor showing in the first half. It wasn't the mistakes we made with the fumble on the mesh, or the numerous unnecessary penalties. It wasn't the offensive line's inability to make space for LaMichael James to run through.

It was losing Nate Costa that really stung.

Continue reading this post »

Mr. Scott,

Tonight I watched a football game between two very good teams from the great Pac-10 conference. The Oregon Ducks were rolling into Tempe, Arizona tonight to face the upstart Sun Devils of Arizona State. The crowd was into it for the first time in a while at an ASU game, the teams were pumped to start up conference play, and the queso dip I prepared was phenomenal.

The teams played and played and played their guts out on the field in the 95º heat after midnight in Arizona. They were playing hard for a good 3 1/2 hours on a hot night. In the end, it was Oregon that held on just long enough and got enough takeaways to put the game away with about two minutes left, escaping the trap game in Tempe with a sloppy win. 

However, the face of the game was greatly changed from what it really seemed like it was supposed to be. The difference was the officiating. And it needs to be fixed.

Continue reading this post »

Even with a 13.5 point spread in our favor tomorrow, I'm awfully nervous for this game. The closer the game's gotten, the more nervous I've been. 

In spite of a 72-point demolition of New Mexico in which they rolled up 720 yards of total offense and could have scored 130 points if they really wanted to, I felt strangely insecure about the week that would follow it.

Make no mistake about the New Mexico game. New Mexico was a bad football team. They were arguably the most inept, disorganized, and slowest teams I've ever seen play on a football field. It wasn't so much that they were putting in a solid effort and Oregon was just too good to let them even earn a yard -- it was that they were just so incredibly off-kilter that they were literally one step above handing the ball off to Brandon Bair. 

The other thing that New Mexico didn't offer was a real mid-range test for our team. This game was, for all intents and purposes, a glorified scrimmage. And, while it's better than nothing and opening the season blindfiring at Tennessee, it's not as satisfying and worthwhile as going against a Houston or a Fresno State or a Michigan State. One could only hope.

The last time we went out on the road early in the year for a big non-conference game was last year at Boise State. We all know how that ended. "That was the first game of the year and Boise State was actually good", you say. Fine.

The year before that we went on the road after two very easy wins against the Huskies (who would go on to finish 0-12), and Utah State (who were remarkably comparable to the New Mexico team we just faced, if not just a bit better.) We went out to Purdue the next week and found ourselves down 20-6 at halftime, playing a flat and slow game against a team that was not expected to even touch us. 

We ended up winning that game on the feet (or wings) of Jairus Byrd and a few heroics by LeGarrette Blount. "That was a game where we had two mediocre quarterbacks at the helm! Darron Thomas is better than them!" He may be; we don't know yet. He hasn't played in a big road game yet, let alone in Neyland. Tomorrow is a massive litmus test for him.

Obviously, along with everyone else, I have all the trust in the world in our stellar coaching staff to know what they're doing out there. But, for fandom's sake, I'm writing this post anyway. I've identified one thing that I think could tip the game to Tennessee awfully quickly and shock the town if we let happen...

Continue reading this post »

I'm not sure if anyone else has this problem, but when you post .gif files in a thread, especially threads where there are already a .gif or two, it can really slow down the thread. This has been known to happen to myself and users on many other blogs that I've been on. Just opening the thread and spotting the .gif has produced the rainbow loading cursor and made me force quit my Safari multiple times even just today.

Because of this, I ask that you provide those of us whose computers don't respond well to .gifs the courtesy of refraining from posting .gifs in threads where it is not forewarned with something along the lines of "Here be .GIFs" in the title. If you absolutely have to post some hilarious .gif you found, either hyperlink it with text so one has to actually follow a link to witness your genius discovery, or make a separate .GIFstravaganza thread or something. I don't care. Just try and be mindful that .gifs can be fairly large files depending on their length and they run automatically, without warning or the need to be initiated.

Too many times I'll be reading up on something interesting and I'll scroll down or tab over to a Quack Fix and I'll have to restart my Safari just because somebody felt the need to post a .gif of a stormtrooper thrusting or something. 

Thanks.

A slow practice today, but a few things worth mentioning. They are as follows:

Continue reading this post »

Another day, another practice. On to the notes.

Continue reading this post »

With the promise of a scrimmage in Autzen, a large crowd was drawn to the Autzen quarter this afternoon. After canceling (today I learned that 'canceling' is evidently spelled with one l, who knew?) the scrimmage and disappointing the few hundred who came out for late lunches on Tuesday, the team settled in for another pretty average practice. This one was focused on special teams walkthroughs (real excitement right there) and partial contact drills with full-contact team offense periods. Red zone offense was also gone over quite a bit today.

On to the notes...

Continue reading this post »

Under another Hout's-eye-blue sky this afternoon, the Ducks came together after their first day off for practice. I got there early and was recognized by and met, to my surprise, by SBN favorites Pado (Tortuga12) and his cousin Connor (ConnorOSU). If there's one reason practices get closed down early this year, it's that Connor was being a sneaky snake today.

Anyway, on to the notes. They're kind of sparse today as I was distracted by Connor farting in my face and generally being a drunken conquistador.

Continue reading this post »

On this 96 degree afternoon our Ducks assembled for the first time in full pads (and thus, full contact) for fall camp. Due to the heat it wasn't a less eventful and intense day than you'd think. Not a whole lot to observe, but here are the cliffnotes:

Continue reading this post »

I attended the Ducks' third practice on this beautiful wednesday. A crowd that I estimated to be 90+ or so lined the northeast quadrant of Kilkenny Field in the heat to watch the third day of Oregon football 2010. The cliffnotes for the day after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

I attended this afternoon's inaugural fall practice of the 2010 season. It was great seeing and spending time with DuckFanAndy, Dave (user Addicted to Quack), and my acquaintance axemen23. Stay tuned for axemen23's media room observations coming in sometime tonight. He's got some good stuff.

Anyway, I'm not one to prognosticate about how the season will unfold based on one practice, but I have a few very brief and possibly completely insignificant observations from today's practice (specifically, for today, on the quarterbacks) which will have absolutely no bearing or foresight on the team we will field 25 days from now -- in other words, just the kind of observations you guys tend to like.

Continue reading this post »

Great time yesterday with all the guys. Real cool meeting Matt Daddy, JonathanPDX, DuckFanAndy, dannyoneill, hazmat, and anyone else I shook hands with. I had a great time watching the game, tailgating, and meeting players and coaches afterwards as they left.

But, as far as the Spring Game itself was concerned (and, let's be honest, that's an oxymoron if I've ever seen one), there are some notes on our team that I took.

Continue reading this post »

A few weeks ago I floated an idea to conduct short little interviews with the guys who keep ATQ running. An experimental pilot for a series of interviews, this is THE Matt Daddy edition. If you enjoy it, sweet. If you don't, carry on with dissing axemen23 and cracking benzduck old jokes. Without further ado, a short interview about everything you've ever wanted to know about Matt Daddy. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Tell us a little about yourself. Are you stationed in your mother’s basement? Do you dawdle on lawns? Do you rock a beard?

I grew up in Oregon and eventually ended up playing college basketball for a DII school out east for 3 years before coming back to Oregon and finishing my degree at U of O.  I now live in Tigard, OR (Portland Suburb) with my family, my wife and two beautiful daughters ages 6 and 9.  My only lawn activity is mowing my insufferable grass each week and fighting the moss and clovers that are trying hard to take it over.  I don't have a beard, but I do have a goatee that I have gone without for only a short few months, because my wife said she didn't like me without it.

Continue reading this post »

Just this morning I was thinking about Ben Broussard. Somehow I came across a factoid about him and I was immediately taken to the memory of his game-tying (or go ahead?) homer on Turn Back The Clock Day a few years ago. I seem to remember trailing and making a late-game rally in the 8th inning or so and Ben Broussard pinch hitting and taking the first pitch into the stands. It was the one where he pointed over in Red's general direction and Safeco went nuts. I may be getting some of the history of it wrong; memory is fungible. I recall it very fondly as a sunny Seattle day in our powder blue uniforms with a sort of FanFest-like atmosphere. Most of all, I always loved Ben Broussard.

So, I was wondering if there was anywhere I could find a video of that home run, that game in its entirety, or any sort of highlight reel? I couldn't find it on seattlemariners.com (which was a probably a futile effort anyway, but whatever), nor Youtube. 

If there are any old torrents that may have it, I'd love to get my hands on it. I think it was 2006 or 2007.

Thanks.

This is your thread to span the 15 hours of hype and 3 hours of actual football. Not sure how many people are going to be hanging around and not at a watch party or something, but whatever. Off-topic welcome.

My personal prediction is that the Saints will come out flat. I think Drew Brees will have a rough first half, and I also think Peyton Manning will play at as high a level as ever. I'm rooting Saints, but my gut tells me that Brees may have a dry spell for most of the game.

An experimental and somewhat silly series of timeline-style hypothetical seasons and players by qrsouther. Have some fun with it.

=========================================================================================

Following the graduation of Jeremiah Masoli, the Oregon Ducks were coming off another impressive season. They did not reach their goal of the 2010 National Championship, but they made their second consecutive trip to the Rose Bowl where they squared off with Joe Paterno's Big-10 champion Penn State Nittany Lions. This time, the Oregon team would come out prepared for a Big-10 opponent and would emerge with a victory and a Rose Bowl champion trophy the size of Marcus Lattimore's arms. 

In the fall of 2011, though, they would turn to their long prepared underclassman quarterback, Darron Thomas. Thomas was recruited and signed on to be a Dennis Dixon-like athlete in Oregon's spread system in the spring of 2008 after Dixon graduated. In his first career game, Thomas had thrown for 210 yards and 3 touchdowns in a losing effort against Boise State his freshman year. In 2009 he would redshirt, thus making him a redshirt sophomore going into the 2010 season when he would again sit behind Masoli and Costa. He would receive minimal snaps throughout the year, still waiting for his time to step in. After Oregon's January 1st, 2011 Rose Bowl berth, Masoli graduated as one of the most effective and esteemed quarterbacks in Oregon history. He may have been 5'10", but he had impossibly large shoes to fill. Nonetheless, Thomas would rise to the task and take control of the starting quarterback position on the depth chart with ease over the summer.

Thomas' first career start would come against the Kansas State Wildcats in Manhattan, Kansas on September 3rd, 2011. Also making his first start at quarterback -- this time for the boys in purple -- was one Chris Harper.

Continue reading this post »

What was awesome, and what sucked about this decade for you? It doesn't have to be college football related really. Actually, anything non-college football is preferred tonight. Feel free to make lists and whatnot of top-10s of the decade. If you have any pictures of your New Years parties or whatever, that'd be cool to see. This thread is your official take-your-mind-off-the-elephant-in-the-room-even-though-you-got-on-ATQ-today-for-whatever-reason place. Catharsis welcome as well.

I'd just like to say on my behalf that this decade sucked and good riddance.