Conan: My point was that a lot of the Oregon showing against Boise falls on Kelly's shoulders. He had forever to prepare for that game, he had motivation due to the loss LY and the cheap hits in last years game, and all the pregame hype about having a chance to give Boise a rare home defeat. I agree, one game does not a season make. However, now Kelly gets one week and one week only to prepare for most of the games remaining on their schedule. They have the after game incident hanging over them, and I am sure there is a lot of Boise St hangover in Eugene right now. Sure most teams do not peak on week one and they should get progressively better as the season goes on. They now go without their star RB and that is not a good way to proceed to week two to say the least. there was no excuse for Thursdays performance except that they were not ready. That is now Kelly's job and it is a step up and much more demanding than being an OC and QB guru. Do they go into week two with anything to build on, not much. They get 9 days to get ready for Purdue and it is a home game and then the following week they get Utah at home, then Cal at home. The bad thing about what you said about getting better every week is that holds true for your opponents also. I think Kelly has inherited a possible nightmare and Belotti should not get a pass on this one either. They seem to have dropped the baton on the first exchange and this relay race takes four months to run. Again, not rubbing salt in the wound but I saw what your saw and it was not pretty.
OK whatever Russ.
I don't understand why WHO was to blame (which is so obvious I don't know why you even bothered to say it was the coach)... is more important than WHY? And how on earth can you assume that you know the nature of Chip Kelly as a head coach after seeing him in just one game in possibly one of the hardest stadiums to win at in the whole country?
Nevertheless, I can agree with you that it wasn't a pretty sight. How can you explain a 600+ yard performance vs a top B-12 team in the Holiday Bowl by essentially the same "scoring" personnel, less 3 linemen and one RB and one soso WR only and yet lose 450 yards? There must be more to it than just that.
I believe in my heart of hearts that it is a chemistry lesson and a missing link that I have a theory about because I have spotted something consistent about Kelly offenses that has cropped up time and time again for the past 3 years and counting. I only had a glimpse of it before, now I think there's something more to it.
Keep in mind that Kelly's system has NEVER worked immediately in ANY season. I have noticed that it takes 1 or 2 months for it to gel, depending on how many times he needs to start over during the process with new players. The reason why is because his genius is beyond most people's ability to grasp but not beyond his ability to teach.... ergo, it takes a while.
More than anything else, I believe that process was in effect at the time the game was played and Boise is not a team you want to be caught up in the process for in any way whatsoever.
So if you are saying he's guilty of being unprepared, yes, it's true, but is he guilty of not preparing, no. He has yet to figure out how to speed things up with a very complex system of assignments and QB decisions. It took Masoli 2 months to get it with the players at his disposal last year. Now the group has lost some players and found some new ones. It's true nature being the focus of the 11 starters has yet to emerge. Why?
3 weeks of fall practice is OBVIOUSLY not enough time with as many new personnel involved as there happens to be for a Kelly offense to gel and perform up to its capabilities. It has never been enough time for a Kelly offense to gel and become what its nature says it is. A teams unique identity of you will.
In Peterson's case, his system requires next to no time at all (compared to Kelly's) to polish up and set in motion. I also watched him in his first game and I was virtually shocked at how effective all those new guys were able to compete as well as they did. I never forgot that either, not until a couple of weeks ago when his new guys were shown to be just as plentiful as Oregon's new guys. Then I began to doubt my first take about Boise being just one damn tough nut to go against, especially on smurf turf. Indeed, maybe they were compromised. Apparently not. They did not come out as the same team that beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. But in all fairness and probably in truth too, they were just a little bit too rusty not to notice.
The difference here was the systems that the HC's teach. Kelly's system, in my heart of hearts I believe to be better which for me is a big reason why I liked the Ducks and maybe one day I will get another chance to prove that theory. (I have learned that Oregon State wants another shot at the Broncos.) But in this very situation, Peterson had the advantage of having a system that is quicker to learn. And he is also very very good. Thus the disparaging difference in execution between Boise St. and Oregon.
It's not fair to judge a HC or a team by the mistakes it makes on the playing field in the beginning of a new season. But it's equally fair to judge a team or a HC that continues to commit the same mistakes week in and week out, perhaps even longer than that without correcting anything... assuming that there isn't a big talent issue which then becomes a problem of a different sort, one that may never go away, even if the personnel are above most.
I am almost 100% certain that I have nailed it. I make mistakes but I am determined to learn from them. If you are willing to bear with me to test these theories, you are welcome to tag along. I am a firm believer that a thing is the way it is because that's its nature and it must act by its nature and be what it is. So what is the true nature of Oregon's team an its head coach? I think that answer is obvious but can it perform according to its nature... yet?
Think back to when Dennis Dixon was hurt in '07. Oregon and Kelly's offense would have made it into the NC game and probably won it because they were virtually unstoppable. But for several games after Dixon was injured, Kelly's "tougher than most" learning curve got to Oregon and it took a while for him to reshape his offense with new personnel. They barely made it into the Sun Bowl as the 3rd place team in the conference.
But then he was given a month to prepare and their 5th string starting QB, Justin Roper ran that offense to a tee. Why? Because Kelly was given enough time to prepare it. This is not the same thing as game preparation with game plans and tapes of your opponent to work from and get it done in a week. It was far greater a thing than that. It was back to basics and learning the options that the system offers all from the start again with a new QB who needed to learn it before much game planning was possible. That's the part that takes a lot of time with Kelley's teams. What we saw was a work in progress, not a finished product. Now he will need to continue on with yet another new player who will start at a key position in the backfield.
I wish Ducks were here because he could shed a little light on who has been practicing with the 1's along with Blount and Masoli... without that information I cannot say how much longer it will take for the Duck offensive engine to warm up and get back out on the highway in the fast lane where it belongs. That's not likely for another month, but I bet you it won't sputter as bad as it did when it was started up and driven cold on Thursday.
It's a fair question to ask why I would think that. The reason why is because I have seen exactly that come out of Kelly's work 3 times in a row thus far since he was first hired to coach at Oregon.
Perhaps Boise is also a much better team than anyone suspects, consistently year after year in most cases. That was my first take on Thursday's game and I am kicking myself for allowing my first impression to get buried. Remember, I am not from Oregon but I live here. Ducks attended UO and I'm sure this game hit him much worse than it did me.
The more I look back on it, the more I think srewing up the opinion of the game was a case of making a case for the sake of making a case, (you are guilty of doing that often yourself) where dragging in various facts appears to make a good argument but it obviously isn't the best argument or the most pertinent argument or the right argument. Just a bunch of nicely concocted words that some guys learn to use to win an argument from a losing position. (OJ Simpson's lawyers?) It doesn't mean they were right.
