A win, is a win, is a win!
After Saturday’s narrow 38-35 win over UCLA, Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal told reporters in his post-game briefing that he’ll never apologize for winning a football game, no matter how it looks.
Albeit a game littered with turnovers, stretches of inconsistent play, and an Oregon defense that certainly didn’t play up to its standard, the Ducks still left Autzen Stadium undefeated at 3-0 and remain in the hunt for a conference championship.
“We were a little bit out of sync” explained Cristobal after the game.
“And like we told those guys, look, when you win, you don’t apologize for
winning, you don’t get down for winning, you just recognize where you got to get better. And we weren’t at our very best today, and we know that we have to improve certain things. And we weren’t, we weren’t as stout as we had been, but I don’t blame the players. I blame that completely on me. We’ll find a way to prepare them better so that we come out with a better
result in certain schemes.”
One of the areas where Cristobal will look to regain the Ducks superiority is on the offensive line and the rushing attack.
Over the last two games the Ducks offense averaged more than 200 yards on the ground. Against UCLA, the Oregon offense tallied just 88 yards and 1 score. That’s nowhere near the high standard Cristobal expects his offensive front to be.
“We’re looking at loaded boxes and if I could calculate pressure off the top of my head, it’s high. It’s up there” explained Cristobal.
“I know on first down it was almost a hundred percent at some point in time, on P and 10, first and 10. So it’s an outnumbered box and the quarterback’s going to have to run a little bit sometimes. But also, there were some really big play opportunities in the passing game. It’s one or the other. And at times we took advantage of that and we hit some big plays, dropped a couple passes that could have kept some drives going, but certainly there were some things in the passing game that opened up
because of the loaded boxes, because of the extra man committed to the run and bringing pressure.
“So sometimes you have to do that. But to your point, we really didn’t do as good of a job running the ball. That’s obvious. We take a lot of pride in that, so obviously, inside, man, it’s painful. But it’s something that, look forward to just looking in the mirror, getting back to work on and improving to give our guys the best chance.”
POST GAME; MARIO CRISTOBAL DISCUSSES WIN OVER UCLA