Per Gina.

This is an interesting development.

• I was a huge Gary Andersen fan. That cooled off quite a bit today. Gotta play the backup QB in this game and get them experience. Not only this, but he panicked and made several horrible coaching decisions.
  • Onside kick when his team gained momentum.
  • Punt fake on 4th and 2 inside the opponent’s 20.
  • These two calls alone resulted in a 10 point swing.
  • Did not give his backups valuable experience they will need down the road.
  • Not overriding Sitake and that awful 4-2-5 that was leaving gaping holes early in the game.
  • Slow to make personnel changes on defense, leaving Fred L at guard, etc.
• Seth Collins must be benched. I won’t be watching the Colorado game, or any other game, if Seth Collins is the QB. I said at the beginning of the year, this QB battle would take 6+ weeks to pan out. Here we are week 6, and it is very clear to me Collins is not a D1 QB. No other team in the conference offered him as a QB. He throws off his back foot, he runs in circles, he misses easy completions giving the WRs no opportunity for YAC, and he is now throwing interceptions (which I said, he was long overdue for and getting lucky early in the year).
• Seth Collins is dangerous — he might actually get a WR/RB seriously injured (concussions, spinal injury) or killed. It is irresponsible to play this guy. I don’t care if it’s McMaryion, Mitchell, or even VanderVeen. Someone else has to run this ship purely for safety reasons.
• This defense is awful, but in the second half when the personnel changed and Washington State gave up, they did look better, so I’d start those guys next week. I mean why not? Sure, most of that was WSU giving up, but those players were at least competing.

This team is very bad. I thought the coaching staff would be good for several wins, but now I don’t think that. These coaches…well, we are learning about them still, but I used to think extremely highly of GA. I thought he was a perfect coach, tbh. From what I saw today, they are flawed in that (a) they stick with ‘their guys’ too long but are willing to change out Riley’s guys, which is obviously going to lose the team because it’s favoritism (b) slow to make in-game changes (c) impatience/frustration that leads to hasty/risky coaching decisions (d) need to look in the mirror, because a lot of today came down to coaching (e) piss poor play calling, that GA delegates to Baldwin and then never overrides? Simply can’t have a QB running the ball 25 times.

Speaking of which, this is a FINESSE team. Holy crap, it might be the most finesse offense in all of NCAA sports. Even the two point conversion required some type of double pass, trick play. This is the anti Stanford, anti Michigan, etc. People say the Ducks are soft? No, this is soft. This is softer than Riley’s offense, if we are being honest.

Overall, this game went nothing like I envisioned. Boy was I wrong.

I’m not jumping ship on GA entirely, but I definitely need to reassess. He has some major flaws that are coming out as we go. Saying he takes accountability isn’t enough. It’s not that the Beavers lost, but how they lost, and how he managed the game and the personnel that I am so bearish on.

Go Beavs

ESPN has a respectable writeup on the game. I don’t have any profound insight on this game.

My general feeling is the Oregon’s defense might be worse than Oregon State’s so I’m not taking much stock from that game, WSU might experience a let down after that win, and the Beavs have the coaching advantage.

Luke Falk has played well, but my personal feeling is every Pac-12 team is overrated, and he hasn’t played any good defenses yet. They are all mediocre, so his numbers are inflated. We see every week an “unexpected” loss or under performance. None of this should be new. So the Beavs could and should be right in the mix on Saturday.

The Beavs are at a mental crossroads. Some players have bought in, some haven’t, and some are checking out because times are tough. GA should use the next few weeks to see who quits and pull their scholarships. The less dead weight from the Riley era the better.

All that being said, I marked this game as a win in the pre-season, and I am sticking to that since I am 5-0 on the year. I don’t have any good reason after seeing both teams play last week, but I just can’t shake the feeling that the unexpected always seems to happen, and up until a  few weeks ago everyone thought Leach and WSU were garbage + the Beavs had a better program. I’m not going to let a handful of games change that, but rather, I’d like to see WSU do it on the field before conceding the Beavs are the new bottom feeders.

27-24, Beavs

He doesn’t sound very happy. Nice shot at Riley’s recruiting and culture, too.

Good stuff.

Sounds like there is a lot of Riley left in these guys.