Good Luck Ducks, Week 3: Time for a Tune-Up

Time to regroup, FCS style.

Oregon looks to rebound this week after a very disappointing loss. It didn't seem at all likely that the Ducks would beat the Spartans after how leaky their defense was in the opening game, so it was all the more difficult to stomach when the defense stepped up but the offense still couldn't get it done. Team Duck made a valiant effort to come back in the second half and was a hilariously misthrown pass away from maybe... just maybe... pulling the thing off. Tough.

Vernon Adams Jr. has been disappointing so far, but it turns out he's been dealing with a broken finger since the first game. It's tough for anyone to step in after the perfection that is Marcus Mariota (did you get a look at his NFL debut?!), but Adams was designed to be a one year wonder that lead the strong Ducks offense to another big postseason game. For this week at least, it may well be Jeff Lockie's turn to run the team as Adams rests for another day.

Fortunately, today's opponent is the Georgia State Panthers as we're still a week away from conference play. This is another paycheck game, something that has a staple in nearly every big time program's schedule in the new BCS/post-BCS era. The games aren't nearly as much fun to watch, but it will finally give some much needed playing time to the reserve players, up-and-comers and walk-ons. These games aren't the prettiest to watch, but it will be nice to get back in the win column after last week's rough result.

The Panthers do feature the nation's 9th leading passer in Nick Arbuckle, so it will be another test for Oregon's young secondary. They will get plenty of work in before Utah comes to town next week.

Former All-American corner Ifo Ekpre-Olomu saw his first extended action in a similar game back in 2011 against Missouri State.

Game time is 11:00 AM PDT (so early!) with national coverage on the Pac-12 Network. Go Ducks!

Good Luck Ducks: The Fiesta

One of the things I hate the most about college football is the incredibly long break between the end of the regular season and the bowl games. Bowl games have become so dragged out that they turned into a season into themselves. I can't blame it all on the complacency that comes from Oregon's fourth straight appearance in a "god tier" bowl game, but were it not the final time to catch amazing players like Kenjon Barner, Michael Clay and Kiko Alonso as Ducks, I would be really underwhelmed about tonight's game.

It's also, probably, the last time we'll see Chip Kelly roaming the sidelines in his 'O' visor. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that Kelly is gone after today's game, and I swear that's less the Ducks fan in me than it is knowing that Chip plays his cards close to the vest. He's also often showed that he doesn't always take the most popular or best assumed route when it comes to important decisions that he's faced. Still, I'm well aware of the scary new reality that will face Oregon fans when the day comes as it well could very soon.

Oregon faces a dangerous Kansas State team today, but it's a team that should be overmatched based on the way the Ducks have performed as well as the experience they have. This is not as close of a matchup as the rankings would indicate. The Wildcats have a Heisman finalist in quarterback Collin "Don't Call Me Calvin" Klein. They've been just as opportunistic as Oregon at forcing and capitalizing on turnovers. They have talent on both sides of the ball. I just don't think they have what it takes to stop every threat the Ducks can throw at them, and Oregon can hurt a team in so many ways that it's scary. And no matter what is being said to the media, I think some of the more experienced Ducks players sense the end of an era is coming. Kansas State may well be the final team devoured by Chip's relentless offensive machine.

Oregon's last trip to the Fiesta Bowl (2002) ended in a rout over an undermatched Colorado team. It also led to the first major tweaking of the BCS system, which if played out again would have put Oregon in the title game.

Game time is 5:30 PST with national coverage on ESPN. Go Ducks!

Good Luck Ducks, Week 4: Late Night Desert Fight

5th-ranked Oregon opens conference play tonight against the Arizona State Sun Devils down in the desert. The temperature at kickoff is expected to be in the mid to high 90s, even with the late start time. ASU's leading receiver is Aaron Pflugrad, a former Duck who transferred when his father was fired as receivers coach when current Ducks coach Chip Kelly took over the team a couple of summers ago.

I'm expecting a fairly high scoring game, even though the Ducks have only allowed one touchdown all season. I do hope the high powered offense can get off to a fast start to let the defense take over and shut the Sun Devils down. We'll see. We've already seen some crazy stuff today, with UCLA dominating Texas in Austin. Arizona State looks tough, so it will be an interesting test for the Ducks, although I expect them to be no match for the Ducks' D.

Here's a report on what happened last time the Ducks were in Tempe:

Game time is 7:30 PDT with national coverage on FSN. It's worth staying up for, trust me!

Good Luck Ducks, Week 2: Football... Finally!

Today is a great day. All across the country, tens of thousands of young helmeted men will gather at flat stretches of land and line up to play a game known as, to few outside of the United States but especially to those in this country, football. Today also marks the end of one of the longest weeks of my college football rooting life. The fact that the last time the Oregon Ducks played was on a Thursday makes it longer in calendar years, but it is primarily the events that transpired during and after last week's game that made this past week so incredibly long. Finally, up and down the Willamette Valley, we can talk about a football game and not Boise State.

In the interest of looking forward instead of backward, I'm not going to say much about the last game. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can start by searching "LaGarrette Blount" (whoever that is) on YouTube . The game became one of the top stories in all of sports last week for all of the wrong reasons. I was embarrassed to be a Duck, frankly, and now I no longer have a favorite player on the current team. Hopefully this won't last long.

Purdue is up next. This will be the home opener, and I'm hoping the Autzen Stadium crowd is no less than 100% supportive. Last season's game was an overtime thriller, though both teams have new coaches and very different looks to them this time around. I've alternately heard that Purdue is a very good football team and that they were picked to finish 10th in the Big Ten.

Haloti Ngata thinks this is serious business. Ngata was a first round pick, #12, by the Baltimore Ravens in the 2006 draft. He had perhaps the best mobility to human mass ratio I have ever seen in a football player, at least at a college level.

Tonight's game is at 7:15 PDT and is being shown nationally on FSN. Locally, a portion of the game is being pre-empted by a Seattle Mariners game, but the game is being carried in its entirety on FCS Pacific. If you have Comcast, they're showing a free preview of the three FCS networks this weekend due to the programming conflict.