Good Luck Ducks, Week 9: Cal

 

It's Fighting Ducks versus Golden Bears in another Pac-12 afternoon showdown. 

 

People are starting to pay attention to the Oregon Ducks all of a sudden. With many writing off this team after being pummeled by Georgia in week one, perhaps deservedly, Dan Lanning and Bo Nix have brought this team back into the national spotlight. Last week, they took the challenge of facing another top 10 conference team head-on and delivered with a big win over UCLA. While the defense will certainly have some areas to look to improve on, the offense was able to do just about whatever they wanted to, which has become a welcome theme of late.

Next up is Cal, who is led by Purdue transfer Jack Plummer (no relation to Jake Plummer as far as I can tell.) The Bears have generally not been great during Justin Wilcox's time at the helm, but throughout the years they've always given Oregon their best effort, which has resulted in some nail-biters. I don't expect the score to be particularly close today, but given that it is Cal, nothing would really be too shocking.

Notes and other things:

• I think I have a new favorite player and his name is Bucky Irving. If you follow B1G football closely, you may remember him as Mar'Keise Irving, who was a freshman at Minnesota last season. The Ducks have many talented running backs at their disposal, but Irving is the most electric in my opinion.
• While Oregon mostly escaped the big rains last week after it was predicted all week, it looks like they'll dodge a late October weather bullet today. When that first bad weather game finally hits, will the Ducks be ready for it? Fortunately, they already got their Pullman trip out of the way.
• Cal's head coach, offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator are all former Ducks standouts. Why would you do that to us, guys?
• It's hard to know exactly where this season is headed at this point, but I'm already nervous about the Civil War football game between the Oregon State team and the Oregon team.

Game time is 12:30 PM PDT on FS1 in Berkeley. Go Ducks!