If the college football season were to be condensed into a single game, Oregon is at halftime.
The Ducks have a bye week at exactly the midway point of the season and so far, it’s been a good season going 5-1, 3-0 in conference play and on a five-game winning streak. It’s the perfect time to have a bye and Oregon is using the so-called week off to focus on what the players can do individually to improve and it turn, can make the team as a whole better.
“It’s a great opportunity to focus on us. It’s really been our focus the entire year so far,” head coach Dan Lanning said. “I think we’re trending in the right direction.”
The direction is up and that’s where the Ducks are in terms of the two polls. They’ve rebounded nicely after that initial loss and are now where they were before the Georgia game. Oregon is No. 11 in the USA TODAY Coaches poll and No. 12 in the AP poll.
Now with the bye week, the Ducks don’t have to put individual improvement on the back burner in order to prepare for a specific opponent. Several positions are still in flux with competition in practice still determining who gets the majority of the snaps.
Running back, the secondary, and the punter are all spots that use a multitude of players with no one single player taking the reins. It might be a little unorthodox, but it’s working.
“We generally talk about we’re going to play the players even before the game begins,” Lanning said. “There are certain plays we like to run with certain guys.”
With the secondary, many players have seen the field whether it be because of targeting calls and someone is just unavailable or even being moved around, such as the case with corner Christian Gonzalez.
“He’s the kind of player we can put in a number of positions,” Lanning said. “They (Arizona) had a really talented slot receiver. We wanted to see how he handled that and I thought, in the first game of doing that, he did pretty well.”
Both James Ross and Adam Berry have punted for the Ducks and unless something dramatically changes, Oregon will have two punters the rest of the way.
“You have to continue to perform at a high level and we have guys on the roster who can compete,” Lanning said in assessing the two punters. “We’re going to keep the competition going. But it’s not just that position. It’s every position.”