Get out of the way, Beavers.....

CIVIL WAR KEYS TO THE GAME:

OREGON
The keys for Oregon will be to distribute the ball evenly amongst all their offensive weapons -- their three running backs including Byron Marshall coming out of the backfield to receive passes; their corps of tight ends even without Pharoah Brown; their endless supply of excellent receivers; and of course the one who makes it all happen, Heisman front-runner Marcus Mariota.

On defense, they need to watch out for the Beavers two weapons, the long passes down the center, and Coach Riley's patented tool -- the always dangerous, tried, true, and traditional Fly Sweep.

NO. NOT THE FLY SWEEP!!!

OREGON STATE
The keys for Oregon State will be to run fast, jump up and down, flap and wave their arms, and gosh dang it, just try their darndest to be the best they can be and work really hard to believe in themselves. As long as they show good sportsmanship, their moms will be proud.

On defense, they need to feel privileged that they have front row seats to view the best offense and single best football player that they have ever had the honor to be on the same field with. It'll be a great story to tell the grandkids. 

"Gee Wally, That Marcus Mariota sure is good."
"Ya he's really nice too. He saw me crying as
he ran by me to score and said 'Sorry'."

PAC-12 TITLE PICTURE
Oregon will play for the Pac-12 Title December 5th regardless of what happens tomorrow. Their opponent will be decided as UCLA hosts Stanford and Arizona State travels to Arizona. Both games start at 12:30 today.

UCLA, a 4-1/2 point favorite, will go to the Pac-12 Championship if they beat Stanford. If they lose, the winner of Arizona - Arizona State meets the Ducks.

The Ducks aren't concerning themselves with who wins. They are completely focused on just taking care of their own business to get to the big dance. The Beavers are an obstacle. The Pac-12 South Champ is an obstacle.

SEC CRUMMY OPPONENT OF THE WEEK AWARD WENT TO...
Last week it was #1 best-in-the-nation Alabama's turn to host a crummy opponent in late November as the playoff polls get more critical.

Two weeks ago you'll recall we had SEC teams scheduling a church (Ole Miss vs. Presbyterian) and a labor union (Missy State vs. UTM) . Last week Alabama played against Western Carolina.

OK now they're just making teams up. You got North Carolina and South Carolina. There IS NO West or Western Carolina. Yet there they were, from the WTF league I guess. The Catamounts, they call themselves.

Here we are in late November,
and the #1 team in the nation
played this team:
The Catamounts.

This coming Saturday is no exception to SEC teams scheduling cupcakes. Florida will be going up against what I am convinced is the most overrated team in the nation, Florida State.

Last week Florida State squeaked by a mediocre 6-4 Boston College 20-17 at home with a last minute field goal. This can't last. Eventually they will come up against a complete team capable of playing a full 60 minutes and get blown out.

It'll be a shame if it doesn't happen until the playoffs and locks out a more worthy #5 team, whomever that may be.

ALOITTI SHOULD TAKE THEIR MONEY
This story from The Oregonian's John Canzano last week:
 NFC East teams try to hire Nick Aliotti as consultant to combat Eagles
Former Oregon Ducks defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti said on Monday that he's been contacted by NFC East teams that want to hire him as a consultant to help them solve the Philadelphia Eagles' offense.
Not an NFC East team -- every one of the NFC East teams.
"I have been asked by everybody in the NFC East ..." the retired Aliotti said on Monday. "The Giants asked me to come back when Chip got the first job. I didn't feel right doing that. Some teams have called when they're getting ready to play the Eagles and they call and have certain questions on the thing. Unless I know the guy and he's a good friend, I don't get involved with that."
The Eagles (8-3) are tied with the Cowboys (8-3) on top of the NFC East. [Dallas got crushed.]
Aliotti, who coached alongside Eagles head coach Chip Kelly, saw the offense every day in practice. He turned down the requests, he said, but Aliotti said he's talked scheme with some of his coaching friends such as USC defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox, who played under Aliotti.
"Sometimes it's about scheme, sometimes it's about how you handle what's going on with a situation," Aliotti said. "I have quite a few good friends ... mostly it's X's and O's or how you handle a situation or a player."

I think Nick Aliotti should set up a Pay Pal account and take their money. Once the transaction clears, he could give them the following valuable information. . . . .

1) You need to condition your defense to be ready for snaps every 17 seconds for an entire game. If you start conditioning now, you may be ready for the Eagles in 2015.

2) Because the Eagles QB is just letting the movements of your defensive players decide where the ball is going, you need to have all your men play straight up and honest. Don't lean to the right or left. Don't cheat up or back. Play your position, mind your own gap and territory. If you don't have 11 players on the field that can handle their own for the entire game, Kelly will exploit your weakness. And so your best chance is to just find better players in the next draft.

Really, do you think Chip would care if
Nick offered his opponents some "secrets"?
I think they both would just laugh.

In short, there's no trick. No scheme. No gimmick. If you're worried that Kelly's Eagles are going to shred your defense, you need a better defense.

That's it. Thank you for your business. Good luck.

--Nick Aliotti.

Civil War game time Saturday, 5pm Pacific on ABC.

--KB

Think you wanna play Oregon?

UCLA was up 7-0, they had just stopped Oregon on their second consecutive drive. The Bruins owned the momentum. Facing 4th and 14 on their own 25, the Ducks were forced into only one choice:

Proof that if you bring the Ducks to their knees, they'll punch you in the gonads.

While this brilliant special teams play sparked the offense to their first score, the talk of the game was the defense.

Nick Aliotti, after cussing out Washington State for continuing to pass with their first string in the closing minutes of that game, took a different approach in this game. Yes, UCLA's QB Brett Hundley was still slinging away in the fourth quarter, but in the end he only netted 64 yards passing for the game.

Oregon's coaches noted that their players were even more eager to get back out on the field in the second half than at the start. In this story by goducks.com Rob Moseley, the players talked about shutting out UCLA for the second half.

Ducks couldn't wait to get their hands
on Bruins in the second half.

Oregon got matched in the first half. They were squarely faced by the Bruins. But they came out in the second half eager to pretend the first half never happened. If the first half was a nightmare, the second half was tying Freddie Kruger to a cactus and beating him with rubber hoses.

Stripped.

Oregon's incredible taking of a punch and delivering back a wallop was an impressive show of resilience and dominance. So it surprises me when I read misinformed ignorance like this:

BAMA BRAINIACK
AL.com (All Alabama!) writer Kevin Scarbinsky (That's a stupid name. How can you take any writer seriously with a name like Kevin?) wrote the following about which team Alabama might prefer to play in the Natty.

Live at 9 with Kevin Scarbinsky: Alabama wants Oregon, too, not FSU

Oregon wants Alabama. We get it. When the Duck fans aren't chanting it at their games, they're printing T-shirts with that slogan.
But what about Alabama?
What, or more precisely, whom does the Crimson Tide want if they run the table to earn one of the two spots in the BCS Championship Game?
Alabama has to want Oregon, too.

If the choices are Oregon or Florida State, the two teams who've swapped the No. 2 BCS ranking behind Alabama the last two weeks, it's no choice. Give the Tide the Ducks.

Why? Florida State has a much better chance to man up to Alabama.

FSU has SEC-style talent on both sides of the ball, including up front. FSU has a special quarterback in Jameis Winston who doesn't get rattled in big moments.

FSU has a head coach in Jimbo Fisher who's worked for Nick Saban and modeled his program after Alabama's. FSU has a defensive coordinator in Jeremy Pruitt who worked for Saban until last year and knows the Alabama program inside and out, from schemes to personnel.
Pruitt, by the way, has done an excellent job in his first year as a college coordinator.

Of the remaining unbeaten teams, Florida State has the best chance to compete with Alabama for 60 minutes, which no team has done in any of Alabama's three BCS Championship Games.

Of course, it's likely that if Alabama, Florida State and Oregon run the table, Oregon will finish second behind Alabama, and FSU will be unbeaten but unrewarded like the 2004 Auburn team.
That's my story, and I'll stick with it all the way to Pasadena. What's your take? Bring it on Live at 9.

OK first let's sort through the things we can agree with.

Student entrepreneurs at Oregon.
Pssssst..."Hey guys, you're not helping."

"We want BAMA" shirts sold at Oregon?  Bad. Dumb. Embarrassing. It completely violates Oregon's "Win the Day" mantra. It becomes a joke and a dust rag should either team fall between now and then. 

What's more, if these two honor students took any combination of advertising and political science classes, they would learn that calling out your perceived chief competition like that only legitimizes them. You set your own self up as the underdog. You give them the power and position to smack you down in a war of words.

The other thing we can agree on? This all screams for a real playoff system. Florida State, Bama, Oregon, Baylor, Clemson, Ohio State. . . . . . only head-to-head games can truly decide who deserves to play whom through to the championship.

Having said all that, this fool just proves that slashed state education budgets and malnutrition have truly robbed Alabamans' brains of any useful means of common sense, let alone critical analysis. He probably brushes his teeth with his finger. I'll bet he'd pee on an electric fence if you told him Nick Saban said it was safe.  His whole kingdom is bordered by the Rocky Mountains, the Gulf, and the Mason-Dixon line.

 "Hey Scarbinsky, when you tithe at your church, do you write 'to SEC' on your check"?

He said that FSU coaches Jimbo and Jeremy are Nick Saban students. Therefore only they can pull Saban's sword out of the rock. He, of course, is assuming that Nick Saban is The Lady of the Lake, and thusly Coach Jimbo is King Arthur and Jeremy is  . . . . I don't know. . . . Brave Sir Robin I guess.

What he doesn't realize about his beloved Bamalot is that the white rabbit with big  pointy teeth is coming. But he's too dim to realize it, because he said his favorite color was red when it was actually blue, and the duck weighs more than a witch. . . . .

OK sorry, I'll drop the Monty Python metaphors.  But clearly, this guy hasn't even watched -- I mean REALLY watched -- the Ducks play.

Tennessee played both Bama and Oregon. Ask those like ESPN's Alex Scarborough who paid attention to BOTH games. He'll tell you that Oregon compared, at the very least, equally to Alabama.

I loved this line supporting his logic that FSU is better than Oregon: 
 FSU has a special quarterback in Jameis Winston who doesn't get rattled in big moments.
Oh, a SPECIAL quarterback. And he doesn't get rattled, you say? Even after he threw four interceptions? So has Scarbonesky seen any other QBs who don't seem to get rattled?

Why doesn't he ask UCLA coach Jim Mora if he's come across a QB who doesn't get rattled. Ask the entire Washington defense.

Why doesn't he ask FOX Sport's Coy Wire, who wrote the following in this good story complete with videos (Thanks RW for sending it to me.) :
So despite Jameis Winston’s burgeoning star and Johnny Manziel’s weekly brilliance, among many others, if we’re discussing the “best quarterback in college football,” it’s Oregon’s Marcus Mariota against the field.

Finally, I'm calling out other sports writers like Goe or Canzano at the Oregonian, Ray Ratto at the SF Chronicle, Bud Withers in Seattle, or Mitch Albom in Detroit. Why don't you end your stories with such bravado and pizzazz like Scardunceski when he says,  "That's my story, and I'll stick with it . . ."?

OR ASK STANFORD WHO THEY'D RATHER PLAY
From the SF Chronical

Stanford-Oregon should be worth wait

Jake Curtis

For the next 10 days, the question will be: Can Stanford's defense stop Oregon's explosive offense again?
Neither team plays until they meet at Stanford on Thursday, Nov. 7, with the winner improving its chances for a berth in the national-championship game.
Here are the numbers worth discussing as the game approaches:
34: Consecutive games in which Oregon has scored at least 34 points - with one conspicuous exception: The Ducks scored just 14 points in four quarters plus overtime in Stanford's 17-14 victory in Eugene last year.
0: Points the Ducks scored in the final 21:35 of regulation plus the untimed overtime in last year's game against Stanford.
1887: The last time a team had started a season by scoring at least 45 points in each of its first seven games before Oregon achieved it this season. The Oregon streak ended when the Ducks were "held" to 42 points in their 42-14 victory over UCLA on Saturday in Game 8. Oregon fell one game short of the 1887 streak achieved by Harvard, which extended its run to eight games of 45 points or more when it edged Wesleyan 110-0.
12: Points Stanford yielded Saturday to Oregon State, which came into the game averaging 44.1 points and had scored at least 33 points in each of its first seven games.
8: Sacks by Stanford against Oregon State.
9: Sacks allowed by Oregon State in its first seven games.
2: Stanford starting defensive ends whose status is in question for the Oregon game. Henry Anderson, who had 2.5 tackles for loss against the Ducks last year, might be ready to return after missing the past six games with a leg injury. Ben Gardner sat out the fourth quarter of Saturday's game against Oregon State with a recurring arm problem that leaves his status in question. Both Anderson and Gardner were second-team All-Pac-12 selections last season, when they combined for 27.5 tackles for loss.
88: Yards passing against Oregon State's mediocre defense by Stanford quarterback Kevin Hogan, who passed for 211 yards against Oregon last year.
123: Receiving yards by Stanford tight ends against Oregon last year.
30: Receiving yards by Stanford tight ends this season.
4.41: Yards per play allowed by Oregon's defense this season, which is seventh best in the country and better than either Stanford or Alabama.

Makes your mouth water, don't it?
That's my story and I'm stickin' with it. More later.

Well, OK. That's just funny right there.
At least it's Miley amusing.

--KB

He's leaving. He's staying. He's leaving...OUCH. My neck hurts.

Chip Kelly: Coach of the Eagles. Are you sure this time, Chip?

I've just been rummaging through files and the trashcan looking for whatever I was going to say about Kelly leaving the Ducks two weeks ago.  I tossed it aside when I heard he was staying.

That's been the problem for all of us Duck fans. This news gave us double whiplash.

For two or three months, we had everyone telling us that Kelly was sure to be gone after the Fiesta Bowl. No way he's staying. The NFL will be calling for him. Get ready for it.

And so we did. When the Duck players doused him with Gatorade in Arizona, we knew it was the end of an era.

"Thanks for everything, Coach. Good luck. Don't worry about us. We'll be fine."

And then . . . . . "What? You're STAYING?!?!?!  Well . . . . OK then.  That's uhh. . . Great!  WONDERFUL!!!"

He had to forgive us if we hesitated at the news. But we had just spent all that time mentally preparing ourselves for his leaving. We were getting used to the idea, even steeling ourselves to the task of getting on without him.  It's like he lived in our house, and we had already converted his bedroom into a library/office.

"But that's no problem, Coach. We're glad you're staying!  We'll just take these bookshelves down and return them to Ikea. Hopefully they'll take them back after we've already assembled them and thrown away the boxes. But no matter coach. Your room is just like it was. It's like you had never left . . . which you didn't.  Welcome . . . . again, sort of."

And then, "What's that . . . . . You're LEAVING?!?!?!  Well . . . . OK then. . . . . . . Good luck . . .  again."

And now we have to call Ikea and see if we can buy back those bookshelves at the same price because they went off sale last week.

OK. Let's pull this spidery story apart leg by leg:

Chip said he was staying. When and why did he change his mind?

John Canzano wrote in today's column:
 It was interesting in the days after he apparently walked away from the Eagles and Browns on Jan. 6 that we never heard this from Kelly himself. No public statement, no interviews, no votes of confidence. In the end, this is how he liked it, a situation left as ambiguous as fourth and three from midfield.

Kelly went for it. Were you really surprised?

I noticed the same thing; perhaps we all did. We never saw Kelly's face again after he informed Oregon he was staying. Oh sure, he was busy recruiting. But no statement. He never closed the door. His 'No' to Philly wasn't final. Perhaps he went back to work with the Ducks while his agent kept the line open with the Eagles.

I don't think he actually changed his mind. He just kept an open mind.

 Did Chip Kelly BETRAY Oregon?
 No. He gave Oregon his all, and his all was more than Duck fans had ever been given before. What's more, this is life in big time sports. Successful coaches are loyal to their organizations until a better opportunity comes along. And organizations are loyal to their coaches until the loss column count is too high.

How will he do in the NFL at Philadelphia?
 Everyone is all over the board on this. But my money is on Kelly to succeed. I want him to succeed, not for Philly, but for the game of football.

Since his four years as head coach at Oregon, the entire landscape of college football had changed. This past season, Oregon's first four opponents -- Arkansas State, Tennessee Tech, Fresno State and Arizona -- all operated with some variation of spread option and/or no huddle. Ark. State's coach Gus Malzahn led them to win their conference and bowl game before going back to Auburn to be their head coach.

In the Pac-12, ASU and UCLA joined 'Zona in switching away from the traditional pro set for a more Oregonesque style or pace. After the season, Cal fired Tedford and hired a spread guy.

Texas A&M took the concept and, with their Heisman QB, made Oklahoma look absolutely Stoopid in the Cotton Bowl.

No, Kelly didn't invent these offensive elements, but no one has blended them better. And more importantly, no one has changed the pace or conditioning demands of practice like Kelly.

In the pros, Denver and San Francisco have experimented with it. New England's Belichick regularly consulted with Chip Kelly. Now Philadelphia has said, "Ya, we get it." and gone straight to the source.

My dream is this. One day in the not too distant future, I'll be watching a football game with a young child who will ask me,

"Great Grandpa Killer Bee, what is that team doing?"

And I'll say, "Well I'll be. I haven't seen that in years. I believe they're in a huddle!"

"What's a huddle, Great Grandpa Killer Bee."

I would begin the story, "Well, way back in the insane 20th century, cars burned only gas because nobody believed oil was killing the planet. Health care coverage was completely controlled by private stock holders. And you could buy military assault rifles at Wal-Mart."

"HA HA HA HA . . . . People sure were stupid dumbasses back then, weren't they Great Grandpa Killer Bee?"

"Yes, but do you know what was even stupider?  Football teams did this thing called a 'huddle'. The team would gather together for about 30 seconds while the clock ticked and decide on just one play; and the quarterback wasn't allowed to change the play after the ball was snapped."

"That must have been painful to watch, Great Grandpa Killer Bee."

"Well not really, because we didn't know any better. Then one day in 2008 came two great men. One became Coach of Oregon, and the other became President."

(Hee hee. I'll take this minute to let some of you wipe the tobacco spit off your screen.  I promise from here I'll just stick to Duck football.)

Will Mark Helfrich become Oregon's next coach? Should he?
Yes and yes. From his press conference, it appears that AD Rob Mullens is being careful to follow all the selection and hiring rules, but he is following them as fast as he can. Kelly told Mullens he was leaving in the morning. By lunch time, Oregon had a 'help wanted' ad out.

Job search requirement #1?  Check.



I have to feel for Mullens. What if he woke up Wednesday
morning with the thought, "Maybe today will be a slow easy day."
And before he was even at the office, he got a call and saw Kelly's
name on his cell phone, and he just knew . . . .
"Awwwww CRAP."


The hurry is that new recruit signing day is just weeks away. And some oral commits who were solid just 48 hours ago are now wavering. They need to be shown consistency and stability. Oregon needs to show them that little has changed. Kelly isn't Oregon. Oregon is Oregon. And everyone else is staying.

Regarding Helfrich, everybody likes him. He's been at Oregon during Kelly's entire tenure. He doesn't want to change things. In a Ted Miller story at ESPN, Chip Kelly is quoted as saying about Helfrich.
"He's really smart, really intelligent," Kelly said at Fiesta Bowl media day when asked why he made Helfrich his first offensive coordinator. "He brought a different perspective to our staff, because he had a different background. He wasn't a spread guy. I wanted to bring someone in who wasn't going to tell us what we already knew."

A non-spread guy, a former QB and QB coach who knew about passing offenses, and he just spent four years in Oregon's successful spread system. Who else would you want? Dare he balance the number of pass plays to runs but keep the total production high?!?

I can only think of two other people on the planet worth considering. Gus Malzhan, but he just went back to Auburn; and Nick Aliotti.

I know a lot of people dislike Aliotti, and I don't get that. I'll put his tenacity and work ethic up against any other coach. And no other assistant coordinator in the country has seen it all like he has.

Nevertheless, I think Helfrich is the next coach.

BREAKING NEWS: At the time of this writing, the story broke that USC coach Lame Kiffin asked Aliotti if he was interested in their defensive coordinator position. 

Aliotti replied:
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What about Oregon's future in general?
Back during the first time we thought Chip was gone, before we knew he was going to stay at Oregon when he really wasn't, Aaron Fentress absolutely nailed it in this Oregonian story:
Finally, life at Oregon after Kelly would be just fine if he indeed leaves. Don't forget:

Kelly didn't build Oregon's facilities.

Kelly didn't invent or bring the spread-option offense to Oregon.

Kelly didn't invent the no-huddle.

Kelly, as head coach, didn't recruit the vast majority of the players responsible for the team's four-year run of success.

Kelly didn't hire most of the coaching staff.

Kelly didn't invent the "Swoosh."

Kelly didn't come up with the idea of using multiple, state-of-the-art uniforms to attract recruits.

Kelly didn't pay money to former USC running back Reggie Bush, leading to the Trojans facing serious penalties.

Would a 45-year-old Kelly have had the same success at Oregon had he taken over the program in 1995 instead of 2009? No chance.

Would the Ducks of the past four years have dominated the conference during the Bush-Pete Caroll-Matt Leinart era of last decade? Not likely.

In other words, while Kelly certainly did his share to elevate Oregon to another level, an argument could be made that the Ducks were headed in this direction anyway. Therefore, an equally compelling argument could be made that Oregon would continue to be successful without Kelly.

I feel good for Kelly. I feel good for Philadelphia. And I especially feel good for Oregon. I got an email from one of you yesterday saying, "Wouldn't it be perfect if next year Oregon won all their games and the National Championship?"

"Yes. Perfect," I replied. And by no means a stretch. It's certainly happened before where great old coach leaves and new young coach comes in and rockets the team to the next level. Oregon's opponents are breathing a sigh of relief that Kelly is gone. But that is premature my friends. Oregon hasn't left. Oregon is still Oregon.

--KB