Yes, the Arizona game was only Game No. 4 in a long regular season, but conventional wisdom says you’d like to see a team consistently trending upward as the season progresses.
While Oregon ( 4-0 / 1-0 ) has shown tendencies to be brilliant in many areas, they’ve also shown tendencies to be extremely vulnerable, especially in their run defense.
Where work really needs to be done for this Duck team is being consistent in defending the run. Arizona completely pushed the Oregon front around leaving gaping holes and lanes for the Cats to run through.
The Cats did an impressive job of being able to consistently move the chains, evidence of that was converting a total of 31 first downs to Oregon’s 17.
The difference in the game came down to making big plays when they counted, and that was in the turnover department where the Ducks took the ball away five times.
“It was certainly not our best on Saturday” said Duck head coach Mario Cristobal on Monday.
“Its something we weren’t very pleased about. We didn’t control the line of scrimmage as well as we have in other instances. And we didn’t allow ourselves to get off the field on defense, therefore not getting the ball for very many plays in the 3rd quarter – and when we did we didn’t do much with it.
All in all, certainly an area that we can never allow to slip. It’s been hot and cold. It’s been a plus and a minus. But certainly we want to forge, and push forward and improve that area.”
Defensively, the Ducks currently rank nationally at 103 in total defense which isn’t nearly good enough to be a playoff contending team.
Stanford ( 2-2 / 1-1 ) is big and powerful and a team that prides itself on taking control of the trenches and running the football. There’s no doubt the Cardinal have seen the film and will be looking to exploit the same running lanes the Ducks gave up to Arizona.
“Stanford is a very big, physical team – they’re very explosive at the skill positions” explained Cristobal when asked about the Cardinal.
“Their wide receivers are just,…they’re large guys that can run,…a tremendous amount of speed,…they have guys that can run through you, around you – they do a great job of coming down with contested balls. They really do, they go over the top of guys, haul them down.
We’ve seen them in one-on-one matchups in the past several opponents they’ve played, they’ve made some monster plays, and they’ve got some speed to go with that.”
MARIO CRISTOBAL DISCUSSES GOING TO PALO ALTO TO PLAY STANFORD