The Full Gameday Experience

My search for a good Bloody Mary in Eugene brought me to Sixth Street Grill, downtown on . . . . . . uhh, where was it? . . . . . Oh ya, 6th Street. It's just across from the Incredible Hult Center.

Excellent tomatoey body, not too watery like so many BM's are. Superbly spiced. They could afford to be bolder on the vegetables and other fixin's. But plenty bold on the alcohol. This beverage is heavily fueled!

While there, I discovered a new viable pregame routine thanks to Oregon grad and longtime Eugene resident Vance Naegle, who asked to remain anonymous for this story. The Hult Center parking structure is free on weekends as long as no events are scheduled. And I doubt they would be fool enough to schedule an event during a game.

The Sixth Street Grill, as I said, is right across the street. It's split in half -- kid friendly dining room on the right and minorless bar on the left. Great food. Not a huge place. But the idea is to park free at the Hult, pre-function at the Grill, then bus to the stadium, which isn't that far.

At the game, we enjoyed the usual . . .

Eric Dargan intercepts.

IT'S A FUMBLLLLLE! Oregon steals it. 

And then, THIS guy again! Or as he is called these days: "Cover Boy". 

"Cover Boy". For the third consecutive
year, Mariotta dons the cover of SI.
Let's just hope this year he shakes
off the curse and takes Oregon all
the way.

Some of us got to hang with Da Duck:

This was the best dressed Duck fan. 

Duck in Bobo Fett helmet.
"Bobo Duck"?

Then we walked back towards campus and enjoyed one of the funnest experiences for an Oregon fan or grad.

After a successful game at Autzen, this is Oregon fans' victory cigar.
Don't bother with foo foo artichokes and basil goat cheese here.
Just order yourself a damn pepperoni pizza and be prepared
to have your eyes roll back into your head. 

If you're going to spend 50, 80, or 100 bucks for each game ticket these days, you gotta mix in those other venues that fill you with the great memories.


SPEAKING OF MEMORY
Does anybody remember when was the last time Washington State had a winning season? Would you believe it was over 10 years ago?!?  In the 2003-2004 season, they capped off a brilliant 10-win season with a win over Texas in the Holiday Bowl. Since then, they've been generally terrible, mediocre at best. 
In all this time, they've had trouble getting a coach to capture the imagination of players and new recruits to rebuild the team. And the jury is still out on whether Mike Leach is that guy now.

He's trying. But before they beat Portland State last week, he was talking of his team's "culture of losing". This excerpt from AP sources:

"There is nobody on our team that has won in college football, and so we have to take that step and that's why it's so important that we're strong internally," Leach said. "There are no players on the team that have won."
The Cougars remain a young team, with plenty of underclassmen and walk-ons seeing playing time. They have already had 12 players make their first career start this season.
"We're younger than nearly everyone we've played," Leach said.
That includes the rapidly improving offensive line that protects quarterback Connor Halliday, the nation's leading passer. The line is made up of walk-ons and first-year players.

Let's get something straight. Connor Halliday is the nation's leading passer for one reason. The Cougs don't run. They just don't. In their win against Portland State, they threw for a whopping 630 yards and ran for 76. Nearly 3/4 of their plays were pass plays. 

Can you think of a team who passed 75% of the time and won the National Championship, or a major bowl, or won their league, or even finished high in league standings? I can't. Those teams are few and far between, and probably had a super QB and at least one gifted receiver. In other words, a fluke. A novelty.
  
So I'm confused about Leach talking about getting beyond this "culture of losing", all the while having his team play a one dimensional system that is doomed to fail. 

Oregonion writer Ken Goe is a football genius (at least for this week) because he's thinking what I'm thinking. Here are his thoughts posted yesterday:

My first exposure to what would become the "Air Raid" offense came in 1990 when a young, cocky coach named Hal Mumme brought his Iowa Wesleyan team in to play Portland State.

Mumme was just beginning to develop concepts he refined into the Air Raid at Valdosta State and Kentucky.

Mike Leach, currently running the show at Washington State, was on Mumme's staff at Iowa Wesleyan, Valdosta State and Kentucky, and part of the offensive brain trust.

On Saturday, Leach will pilot the Air Raid against Oregon in a 7:30 p.m. game in WSU's Martin Stadium.

Here is a good ESPN.com story on Mumme, which traces the evolution of his career and the offense.

While he and Leach were at Kentucky, I visited a practice prior to the 1999 Music City Bowl. I asked if there were any rules for reporters at practice. The response? Don't get run over.

After practice Kentucky quarterback Dusty Bonner broke down some of the Air Raid's concepts for me.

As Bonner explained it, the Air Raid is all about matchups. The quarterback comes to the line of scrimmage and examines the defense. Because of the Air Raid's spread formations, it's hard to disguise defenses and coverages. So, Bonner said, he just looked it over, found the matchup he wanted to exploit, took the snap and exploited it.

Because the quarterback usually determines his receiver with the pre-snap read, he gets rid of the ball quickly. This makes Air Raid quarterbacks very difficult to sack.

There is a well-designed method to the madness.

My problem with the Air Raid is two-fold:

-- It's difficult to stop until it gets into the red zone. When it's close to the opposing goal line and space compacts, those quick passing routes don't work as well.

-- In this offense the running game is an afterthought. It's another reason the Air Raid isn't as effective in the red zone. And the lack of a running game makes it difficult to protect a lead late in the game.

It's a stat-friendly scheme for quarterbacks and receivers. But unless an offense can translate yards into points, it's not an offense you win championships with.

So there you go, long suffering Cougar fans. Fun. Exciting. But don't expect a whole 'lotta success. Are you OK with that? 

Gametime: Saturday evening at 7:30 Pacific on ESPN.

--KB

For Cougs, It'll Only Get Worse

BAD NEWS FOR WSU QB CONNOR HALLIDAY
HE'S GOING TO GET PICKED AND SACKED A LOT
From the Oregonian:

UO's defense hopes Washington State throws early, often and into mistakes

EUGENE – Unlike No. 2 Oregon, whose offense perplexes opponents with the duplicity of its read-option attack, teams coached by Mike Leach aren’t coy about their all-out passing strategy.
In his second season at Washington State, and despite an improved offensive line and running back corps, Leach still directs an offense living up to its “Air Raid” nickname. Even when defenders know what’s coming – in 2008 his Texas Tech team won 11 games while throwing 67 percent of the time -- it works.
No team has attempted more passes than WSU’s 339 this season, and the Cougars are 4-2, including a 2-2 Pac-12 record that started with a stunning road upset of USC.
“It’s one of those things that’s confoundingly simplistic,” Oregon coach Mark Helfrich said. “They can lock you into something and they’ll do it till you bleed.
“When they’re rolling, they’re rolling.”
When the one-dimensional Cougars hit trouble, however, they come to an immediate halt.
Though WSU quarterback Connor Halliday is as prolific as any Leach quarterback – he’s the only person in FBS to throw for 500 yards in a game this season – he’s more error-prone, too, by throwing an FBS-worst 13 interceptions. During Leach’s 10-season run at Texas Tech, his quarterbacks averaged 2.2 interceptions per 100 passes. Halliday’s interception rate is 3.8 percent. Forcing him into continued turnovers is a key for Oregon’s defense.
“Against Oregon State he was fine just chunking along, taking short-yardage gains and maybe taking a shot down the field once in a while and as soon as Oregon State got up, that’s when the wheels kind of fell off,” said Brian Anderson, a contributor to the WSU blog Cougcenter.com, which has detailed Halliday’s season in detail. “They were ‘what are you thinking?’ kind of balls.”
Halliday’s three interceptions on consecutive possessions against Oregon State last week turned just a seven-point deficit into a rout but were only the most recent examples of how his struggles are exacerbated when trailing -- and oddsmakers expect the 39-point underdog Cougars to trail a lot Saturday.
When trailing, his interception rate jumps to 6.5 percent as his completion percentage dips to 52.3 percent, symptoms of what Anderson calls “hero-ball.”
“He tries to score 14 points on every pass, and it’s just not possible,” Anderson said. [Can you blame a guy for just wanting it so bad?]
It started in the season-opening loss at Auburn. After the Tigers kicked a field goal to take a seven-point lead into the final quarter, Halliday led the Cougars within eight yards of a tying touchdown with 4 minutes remaining. Then he threw an interception. He’s thrown four picks this season when down seven points or fewer.
That trend offsets Halliday’s otherwise positive developments this season. His overall completion percentage has never been higher at 63.9 percent, and an incredible 10 WSU receivers have catches in five straight games. Vince Mayle and Dom Williams are Halliday’s go-to targets when throwing deep, but Gabe Marks is the all-around favorite, Anderson said.
“You can look at a route and say wow, that was not the right throw but maybe the guy broke the pattern off completely,” Helfrich said of Halliday. “He’s been a very efficient passer from what we’ve seen from him in the past.”
Though at times Leach has chastised the QB in postgame press conferences doing too much, he defended Halliday after the OSU loss.
“We had adversity, and it certainly wasn't just Connor,” Leach said. “He played two-thirds of the game real well. If he can play two-thirds of the game, he can do it a full game."
UO’s secondary starters have been tested a full game just once, though all-American candidate cornerbacks Terrance Mitchell and Ifo Ekpre-Olomu are up for the challenge.
Mitchell has three interceptions this season, and this week Washington coach Steve Sarkisian called Ekpre-Olomu “probably the best defensive player we've seen this season." The UO secondary has drawn a pass interference penalty in each game but one. Ekpre-Olomu said the receivers’ precision on tricky, shorter routes make this a particularly difficult group to cover.
“The secondary is going to have a lot of opportunities to make big plays,” Ekpre-Olomu said. “If we have a great pass rush and good coverage in the secondary we’ll be able to make a lot of plays but if we’re only doing one of those, Halliday is good enough to make us pay.”
So long as the Cougars aren’t trailing. [Oh, they'll be trailing.]

-- Andrew Greif

WORSE NEWS FOR HALLIDAY:
HE'S GOING TO GET PICKED AND SACKED A LOT BY GUYS WEARING PINK.
 

The Ducks will be wearing pink for breast cancer awareness.

 

 

Game time: Saturday evening 7pm Pacific on FoxSports1
--KB

Greased Lightning, Baby

Washington is all woofin' and hollerin' and feeling like they got a really good team this year. And perhaps they do. They were undefeated before they lost to Stanford by a whisker.

Their rise to a more respectable level of performance came this year when they stopped huddling and sped up their offense. They spread their players a bit and started passing quick outs and screens to compliment their run attack.

Why yes, now that you mention it, that DOES sound kind of like Oregon. Very much like Oregon in fact. But don't say that to Husky fans. They get really really mad when you suggest anything other than it was their own idea and invention.

They also rebuilt their stadium and renovated the locker room. They couldn't do it on Oregon's level because, as one Washington booster put it,
"We don't have that one crackpot eccentric CEO that puts his money where his mouth is," Washington booster Jim Kenyon said.

Now who on earth is he talking about?

Washington's new locker rooms
boast Stainmaster carpets and
fun throw pillows for the boys.

It rings of the same bitter 'Jones chasing' and sour grapes that Washington coach Steve Sarkisian demonstrated when he spit out fireworks after the hard fought battle at #5 Stanford that fell short by three points. More on that later.

But for now, Washington's Keith Price is one of the best QB's in the league. And RB Bishop Sankey is the league's top rusher.  What ever are the Ducks to do?

When you need to just get a good idea who is going to win a football game, ask the experts in Vegas. They're the ones who set the odds; but more than that, they analyze the matchup, the trends, the history, and from all of that they come up with a magic number. In this case, Oregon by 14.

All but the most distempered Dawg fans agree that Oregon will win this relatively close game. But it's not satisfying enough for me. I need the "it" that makes the difference. I need to point at something that says, "THIS is why Oregon is going to go into a new Husky Stadium with freshly rabid fans and snuff out the Dawgs' hot streak like pee on their cigarette."

I read the tremendous amount of blah blah in the blogs. I read all the Vegas sites I could without paying for "inside hot tips". But no one could tell me exactly HOW the Ducks would be capable of separating themselves from an upsurgent Husky team.

Finally I looked at this post on Addicted to Quack. No, it didn't really have the answer either, but got me there.

It contained two scientific analysis of football teams: The FEI and the S+P.  FEI is the "advanced statistical measure that tracks drive efficiency instead of per-play-success."  S+P is the "advanced statistical measure which combines success rate, explosiveness per play and opponent adjustments."

Bottom line: Oregon is ranked significantly higher than Washington in almost every category of both measurements. And if I understood what the hell either one was talking about, all of that would mean something to me. Truth is, I got blurry eyed reading about it.

Then I went down to the comments section where someone brought up how the stats can be affected at the end of the game when the score gets out of hand and Oregon's 2nd and 3rd stringers come in. The writer responded that both of these measuring systems throw out garbage time.

Garbage time? . . . . THAT'S IT!!!

PINK SLIPS ON THE DASH.  IT'S GARBAGE TIME!
Oregon has not only blown out it's first five opponents, they've done it in three quarters every time. Washington hasn't. In at least three or four of their games, they had to leave their starters in to the end to score in the 30's.

One could say, well Oregon is in trouble then because their starters don't have fourth quarter experience. Sure you can make that argument, if you're an IDIOT.

What we have here in Oregon is a super charged hot rod. Say you have a Corvette Stingray, Mustang Cobra, Gran Torino, Dodge Charger, Chevy SS. . . . . Pick your beast. And at your high school, you have beaten every other kid you've dragged raced handily without even having to shift beyond third gear.

Now comes some bully from across the border who has been tinkering with his car. He's heard about some of the things you've done to your engine and tried copying them as best he can. He's won same races himself and now he's calling you out.

The race is on. You're lined up with this A-hole. His girlfriend stands between you two, ready to drop the scarf in her hand. It drops, and off you go. He's off to a great start, pulling ahead. He put everything into his gear ration and throttle to give himself the best starts.

Now it's neck and neck. Three quarters of the way to the end. It's anybody's race, until you do something that no one has ever seen you do before. Something that blows him away.

Fourth gear.

How silly must it be for Washington to study a scouting report and build a game plan around everything a serious Heisman candidate and his star entourage does in only three quarters?

Sure, computer programs can throw out fourth quarters and call them "garbage time". But football teams can't. Washington will have to play that fourth quarter.

This Saturday, fourth quarter, the Huskies will BE THE GARBAGE.



Oregon's yellow is called 'Lightning'.
This week it's 'Greased Lightning'.
Let's do this, Dawgs.

The Sarkisian Sulk
Last week at Stanford, the refs overturned a pass play that UW coach Sarkisian says shouldn't have been overturned. Sarkisian didn't watch the replay when he made this claim but he obviously didn't feel he had to. He was sure it was a bad call.

And then there was the alleged fake injury incident. Sarkisian accused Stanford of faking injuries to slow down play. For his trouble he got wicked rebuttals from Stanford's staff along with plenty of criticism from the media.

Oregon got a taste of that when Cal faked injuries and when USC deflated the footballs. The difference is Oregon won those games. And Chip Kelly responded very Kellyesque like when he said, "We don't care about that stuff. We're moving on." And I believe he would've said the exact same thing had the Ducks lost.

Sarkisian has no such class and maturity. Lost is the admirable performance of his players in the noise of his whining.


DUCKS AND COUGS UNITE FOR GAMEDAY!
If you've watched ESPN's early morning college show Gameday, where they show up at campuses of great games all over the country, you know that for the past 10 years the Washington State Cougars have represented with at least one Coug flag waving in the background.

According to this story, with Gameday's first visit ever to Seattle (First visit! Really Huskies? That's kinda sad.), the Huskies are worried that the Cougs might have an entire state full of Coug flags in the crowd. Combine that with Duck flags, Gameday could see "Operation Outnumber", where the number of Duck and Coug flags outnumber Dawg flags.

Wouldn't that ruin the Huskies party? Couldn't happen to a nicer team.

Game time Saturday, 1pm Pacific on Fox Sports 1, or Fox 1 Sports or whatever.