Tag: Ducks

Oregon Sports Minute: QB Justin Herbert Likely to Stay for His Senior Season

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CBS – Oregon quarterback Justin Herbert is becoming a consensus top-overall pick candidate in the 2019 draft, but multiple league sources indicated it is far more likely that the junior actually remains in school for another year.

Teams have begun falling in love with the strapping prospect – a 6-foot-6, athletic, former multi-sport star who is evolving into a pure passer – and his prospects continue to rise by the game, but numerous sources said that there is a very strong sentiment from the Oregon program that Herbert will remain in school for 2019. Several scouts from NFL teams who have held informal discussions with friends and contacts on the Oregon staff said they would be very surprised if the quarterback opted to turn pro this spring.

Furthermore, there are strong signals throughout the agent community that Herbert is going to stay in school. Several of the top agencies generally in line to represent such talents are becoming pessimistic about him entering the draft.

I love this if for no other reason than it will punish the New York Giants for being morons and taking a RB at No. 2 overall this year when they desperately needed a QB. Well it looked like they were going to fall ass backwards into another stud QB prospect with the No. 1 overall pick this year, thus causing them to learn nothing. Now, according to reports Justin Herbert is likely to stay for his senior season and the Giants are back to being hosed under center.

Now if Herbert does stay at Oregon, it’s for a number of reasons. I won’t bore you with all the details so here are reasons No. 1 and No. 2.

Herbert is a native of Eugene, Oregon, who absolutely loves the school, badly wants to win there and is very eager to play with his younger brother. Patrick Herbert is a four-star tight end prospect who is committed to going to Oregon in 2019.

Herbert is legitimately born and raised in Eugene, Oregon. How a kid from Eugene turns into one of the best quarterbacks in the entire country and winds up playing at Oregon is incredible. Usually those guys go to Florida and Georgia and Oklahoma. The last great QB the Ducks had was a guy named Marcus Mariota and they had to pluck him from the ends of the Earth aka Hawaii.

Reason No. 2 – apparently his brother is a stud Tight End prospect who has committed to play at Oregon next season. Imagine going out on top leading the school you bled for since you were a kid to its first ever national championship while throwing to your kid brother? Yea this guy ain’t going anywhere.

Maybe the Giants can take another RB this year and build the greatest 4-12 team this league has ever seen.

I don’t know if I’ve blogged about how a guy from Boston became an Oregon Ducks fan, but allow me to elaborate. Aside from 2007 when Matt Ryan was tearing up the NCAA or in the 80s when Doug Flutie was at Chestnut Hill, Boston College has never been a legitimate college football team. And they never will be. The best seasons they’ve had were when they dipped into the post-grad pool to pluck former SEC guys like Tyler Murphy. Wouldn’t you know having actual talent at positions other than OL and MLB lead to an upset win over a national powerhouse like USC in 2014?

So I came to grips with despite the fact that I live a mile from the BC football stadium, they ain’t ever gonna compete for anything bigger than a Meineke Car Care Bowl trophy. Enter Chip Kelly in 2009 who was running his team like I ran my Madden franchise in college. 90+ plays a game, HB screens all day, 5 wide receiver bubble screens, mobile QB, speed, speed, speed. And. The. Jerseys.

For a free agent college football fan I was sold, which explains the bright yellow Mariota jersey hanging in my closet.

This has been the Oregon Sports Minute.

I’ve Somehow Developed a College Football Addiction in Boston

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Maybe its just Baker Mayfield being like Johnny Football-lite and filling the massive Manziel void in my life, but I’ve recently developed a college football addiction.

Not a ton of people around here are big college football guys, probably because we’ve had ONE good year of college football in Boston since the 80s. Back in 2007 Matt Ryan was at Boston College and they got as high as No. 2 in the AP Poll.

That was fun as hell because it was the first time BC had been ANY good since the days of Doug Flutie. After Matty Ice moved on to the NFL though BC went right back into the tank.

So its hard to have a lot of love for a sport thats basically nonexistent in your market. With legitimately every major team in this city being so good (all having won a title since 2008) theres no time for shitty teams, especially shitty teams that have no intention of bringing in the players necessary to be any good. Kind of like being a Mets fan.

If I wanted to get in my car and drive to a big time college football game, I think the closest team would be Penn State; a cool 7 hour drive from Boston. Fuck you, UConn and UMass do not count, neither does Syracuse. I’m talking BIG TIME college football where they sell out 70,000+ seat arenas. It just does not exist up here.

So not long after BC went back into hibernation I declared myself a free agent and started looking for a team to call my own. I was looking for a team that was fun to watch, played fast, scored a ton of points, spread out the field, threw it a lot, recruited mobile QBs, and of course had some fire flames unis. Basically I was looking for a team that played the same style as me in Madden. Now what team matches that description to a T? The Oregon Ducks of course.

It was right at the start of the Chip Kelly era too so it was perfect timing to get into and follow a team that was actually good at playing football unlike BC. Not to mention a couple of trips (read: losses) to the National Championship and then Marcus Mariota later wins the Heisman in 2014 and I’m pretty invested in the Ducks. I still wasn’t about to sit down and watch college football all afternoon though.

But I think I reached that turning point this past Saturday. It was the first big weekend of the year with some prime matchups. I know CFB kicked off the week before, but this past Saturday we had Oregon vs Nebraska, Louisville at UNC, Georgia at Notre Dame, Auburn at Clemson, Oklahoma at Ohio State, Stanford at USC, and if you’re a real night owl type degenerate, the triple OT #Pac12AfterDark thriller in Boise St at Washington St.

Long story short, I found myself watching college football on the couch for 8 hours straight. There’s so many great characters this year led first and foremost by Baker Mayfield, who took down Ohio State almost singlehandedly on Saturday.

Maybe its something that is just fresh in my mind after a particularly lousy Week 1 in the NFL, but the majority of these college games are always exciting with the added benefit of projecting who would be a good fit where in the NFL. Sam Darnold or Josh Rosen on the Jets is not something I look forward to.

But also, just getting to watch the Heisman Race from Day 1 and witnessing all the big signature moments these guys need in an effort to win the trophy is exciting as hell.

You got comeback bids with insane catches.

You got former NFL quarterback dopplegangers.

Baker Mayfield just putting Urban Meyer right to bed.

College football, I get it now. Which is a problem since I also just spent 10+ hours watching NFL Football on Sunday, getting my money’s worth from Sunday Ticket. So this could devolve into an incredibly sedentary lifestyle quick.

Chip Kelly is Meeting with Belichick and the Patriots After Not Getting Jaguars OC Job

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Man I feel like I saw someone predicting this weeks ago. Oh right it was me.

Sure McDaniels may not be off to San Francisco, but tell me the Patriots and his good friend Bill Belichick would not welcome the offensive brain of Chip Kelly. I predicted Chip coming on as an offensive analyst for the Patriots earlier this month after SF dumped him. The guy needs to reboot his career after a couple of rocky years in San Fran and Philadelphia. Most of the NFL jobs are already dried up and I don’t think he wants to go back to college. Plus Oregon hired a new coach like 2 weeks before he got fired by the 49ers, which may be the only reason he’s not back in the NCAA ranks already.

Bill has a history of bringing on guys he trusts during playoff runs too. In 2011 he brought McDaniels on as an offensive analyst while Bill O’Brien was still the OC. Maybe it doesn’t happen in the playoffs, but I still see him ultimately joining the Patriots staff. It just makes too much sense.

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Does Chip Kelly Firing Pave the Way for Him as the Next Patriots Offensive Coordinator?

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Black Monday came early this year with several coaches getting axed, some more deserving than others (looking at you Gus Bradley w/ the 14-48 record). Among those was Chip Kelly who got fired after just one year as the 49ers head coach. The 49ers are starting over again after the abortion that was the Jim Tomsula 12 month era. Props to the reporter for asking the owner why he shouldn’t be fired himself and drawing this hilariously tone-deaf response:

On the other end of the spectrum we have Josh McDaniels who is getting tons of interest from other teams (which I touched on a few weeks back) as a head coach. It would seem like McD is probably as good as gone, leaving a big void in the Patriots staff.

With all the history Bill Belichick and Chip Kelly have, it doesn’t take a huge leap to see BB inviting him to come join the best team in the league. These guys go back a long way as they’ve always seemed to admire the other’s football innovations. Back when Chip was at Oregon, Belichick would regularly have him in to talk shop. And it wasn’t just for show, you regularly saw the Pats adopting offensive philosophies made popular by the run n gun Oregon Ducks. The 70+ plays a game running the no huddle almost exclusively throughout the game being the primary one. Lining up for a 2 pt conversion, to test the defense, only to audible back into a traditional extra point FG formation. A lot of things designed to keep the defense on its toes all game long. Now theres finally an opening for the two to work together?

Its a perfect scenario for Chip, who has repeatedly said he doesn’t want to go back to coaching in college. He gets to right his own ship by learning under the best coach in the NFL while also working with the best QB in the league. It’s tough to blame him for the 49ers lack of success this year with that disaster of a roster (49ers GM got canned too).

I always held out hope that Chip would continue to run Oregon, win a couple national championships until Belichick decided he wanted to retire and hand the keys to his buddy Chip.

Now the only thing standing in the way is actual historical precedent. Belichick almost always promotes from within. Matt Patricia, Josh McDaniels, Bill O’Brien, all the way back to Eric Mangini. It seems BB prefers to hire young guys, mold them to the system and then slowly promote them up the ranks. He rarely brings in a big name from outside the organization. Hell I remember a few years back the Patritots intentionally didn’t even have a defensive coordinator. Bill just left the role vacant and had his staff of younger coaches act as assistants while he took over a larger role in play calling.

So thats probably the most likely scenario if McDaniels does in fact take a HC job; we’ll see Chip potentially come in as an offensive assistant/analyst. Quack. Quack.

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