Ducks v. Cal. At least they won, right?

Yeah I know, the game ended like 24 hours ago. But much like a huge plate of steak, potatoes and bread–it was tough to digest.

But hey, better late than never. Isn’t that right, Gus?

Though, much like the Oregon offensive line, I’m pretty much just going to mail in large portions of this post. So if you continue to read-on, you get a gold star!

A win is a win. Especially when you are #1 in the nation this late in the season and style points mean nothing. Listen I get that, but come on now. A blood diamond is also a diamond, it’s just most people are too embarrassed by them to actually show theirs off. While I would stop short of calling Oregon v. Cal an ‘embarrassment’, it certainly wasn’t much of a confidence builder.

I know what you are already thinking, but stop it. Sure the Oregon D played well, but it was against some turd named Brock Mansion who had his plays called by an even bigger turd, in Andy Ludwig. Mansion finished 10 of 28 for 68 yards throwing the ball, and it was probably even worse than the appalling numbers suggest. Play like the Ducks did offensively and even the “corpse named Mansion” had a shot to pull out the win. But hey, give the Ducks credit for shutting down a completely one dimensional team that only put up 7 when fully healthy against Lunch Pail U, right?

Darron Thomas is a sophomore with only 10 starts under his belt, so it should have really been no surprise that he was due for just ‘one of those days.’ Though I will say he channeled some of the 06 Dixon and early 2009 Masoli the way he was just kicking the ball around the yard at times. And that my friend, is never fun to watch.

Anyone else think the Ducks offensive line beginning to show itself as a quasi-liability? For all but the last 9 minutes of the Cal game, 2+ quarters against dreadful UW, stretches of the Wazzu game, the entire ASU game and most of the 1st half against the Vols, the Oregon o line has been either manhandled or neutralized. Regardless of the description, we’ve seen them be out of sync enough to realize it’s probably going to be a reoccurring theme. I think Thomas has only been sacked 5 times this year, but how many times has he just been blasted right as he gets rid of the ball? If anyone has time to look up how many holding penalties the line has got the last 2 weeks I would love to see it, as it seems they are getting beat and holding guys about 4-5 times a game. I almost shutter to think what a d-line like TCUs would do to the finesse blocking scheme of Oregon with 5 weeks to prepare.

Hopefully James isn’t injured (thank goodness for the bye) too badly. My question is what was he doing out there at the end of the game? Guy was dragging his leg around more than Dr. Lawrence Gordon trying to crawl away from jigsaw, and Barner clearly looked to have fresh legs. Speaking of James, is Kelly employing the Smiley Riley school of thought when it comes to overusing his backs? The team that ended WSUs 16 game Pac-10 losing streak yesterday has seemingly made a habit out of riding Quizz into the ground. Is it fair to wonder if the same is happening to James? 28 carries against ASU, 31 against Stanford, 25 against WSU, 36 against USC, 26 against UW and 29 in the Cal game. That seems like a lot of mileage. Last year James had 230 carries all year. He has 225 in 2010 with 3 to go. Hmmm…

Speaking of the last couple games, Oregon is going to roll in the last two and find their way to Glendale. While Zona is a top-25 team, their top-10 ranking was fraudulent. And the Beavers? Well….the Beavers are lets just say…in a free fall? Oregon has flaws no doubt–though, no Cal didn’t lay a blueprint down on how to stop them–but that won’t stop the Death Star from rolling into Glendale with the eyes of a nation upon them in the second week of January.

Go Ducks, and in regards to the Cal game; Forget The Day!

PS-Yes Google people, Chip Kelly is an asshole. But you know what? He’s our asshole. So fuck you, and next question.