I’m curious to hear if you guys see similarities in the two.

To me, there are several:

• Beav/Oregon ties, so their heart is more in it, and that shows.
• Both seem like coaches the players like.
• Both have a vision and confidence in that plan.
• Intelligent and methodical.
• Aggressive.

Do you guys see this? Do you see differences in Smith that will result in him not attaining high goals like Rueck?

Let’s have some fun.

Stick to one word. Have at it.

Go Beavs.

It’s hard to believe this is the end. This season was a blur. I guess time flies even when you aren’t having fun?

The positives from this season:

• Getting the road albatross off our necks.
• Smith and his staff seem competent — it seems the biggest issue is just landing game changing talent, especially on defense.
• Despite the poor record, our recruiting class should be decent thanks to transfers.
• We landed a 4-star QB who actually looks the part on film.
• Play calling was good all year…very few complaints in the comment section. This is pretty amazing given the issues with play calling over the past decade.

With all that said, it was obviously mostly a negative season yet again. The Beavs have a shot at redemption with some fans this weekend. The base who thinks, “Record doesn’t matter so long as we beat the Ducks” will have their college equivalent of the Super Bowl on Friday. For those of us who don’t think that way, it’s still a big game, but mostly for recruiting and to end on a high note.

The Beavs path to winning is ball control. Ducks offense is too fast for our defense — that’s the biggest problem. Have to have long, sustained drives using the run game. Oregon is not very good, so it’s winnable if we can do that. The home crowd should help a bit. I’m excepting a fairly close game that can break either way if we go the ball control route, and and a double digit loss if we try to win by passing. Smith is too smart not to know this, so I’m going with the former scenario, which should keep our atrocious defense off the field.

30-27 one of the teams from Oregon.