Oregon VS Michigan State

College Game Day will be on hand as the #3 and #7 teams in the country face off tomorrow night. No matter how you slice it this is a huge game for both teams with the winner being a solid early contender in the 'way to early' playoff talks. Both teams will also still have a full season to make it through.

Keys to the game -
#1 - To me the biggest match up is to watch the Duck backs (QB and all three RB's) vs the linebacker corp from Michigan State. The zone read runs of Oregon work to isolate our playmaker against one defender, usually a linebacker. Michigan State is a fundamentally sound tackling team and they will make it tough for us in our run game. In our past losses against Stanford, LSU and Auburn our run game was stopped almost completely. Yards will be tough and we will need to make them miss or break a few throughout the game to keep our offense on the field. Our RB's are much bigger than in years past, I think even if we can take some of those three yard plays where we get tackled and make them five or six yards gains by pushing and dragging people and knocking them back, the night will be better and first downs will be gained.

#2 - Over the years I've said it many times, our TE's are underutilized. From Dickson to Paulson to that other guy (UGH) to Mundt to Brown. USE THEM. The way we stretch the field long and wide our TE's are typically available up the middle. When we are playing lesser teams our speedy playmakers can make a few miss and turn something into a huge gain. If yards are tough we cannot forget about the TE position. Perfect example was in the KSU game two years ago. The first half was tight and KSU was playing us tough. Right before the half there are back to back big gains to the TE, we score and the halftime adjustment had to be made to cover the TE better. This gave a few extra inches here and there, if you know anything about the Ducks its that if we find an inch we can take it to the house.

#3 - I'm looking at you D-Line and Linebackers. The coach should pull everyone's man card at the beginning of this game and let them all know if they want it back they must go out there and earn it. In our scheme the defense doesn't need to play shut down ball. But we do need to make some plays, whether they be big stops or turnovers. Stanford was 14 for 21 on 3rd down and 1 for 1 on 4th down. We need do better that that in key times. I think our defense is MORE athletic than the the D that lead us into the National Championship, yes, MORE. But Casey Matthews and company made big plays in big moments. In that game when we needed a turnover Casey made Cam fumble. We forced a fumble on Cam early in the game that the review booth hosed in my humble opinion.

Marcus will be his cool calm and collected self. The lines have put on the bulk on the offseason. Going into this season I'm as excited as I've ever been about our team. I feel we are the full complete deal poised to make a run. Now we just need to go out and play!

GO DUCKS!!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad