The Oregon Ducks (8-3, 6-2) are riding a five-game win streak heading into the Civil War matchup against the Oregon State (2-9, 0-8) on Friday. After practice on Tuesday, head coach Mark Helfrich discussed the team’s preparation for the Beavers on a short week.
Oregon State is going through a similar quarterback rotation and uncertainty that you went through earlier in the year. What is that like for you, as a coach, and for the players?
When you have one guy who’s playing really well and is a great practice player at quarterback, that affects everybody. That makes everyone have a little bit more of an edge — your special teams are better, your back-ups linebackers are better, all those things — that’s contagious. If you’re finding your way through things and you have to have a distinct package for each guy… that could inhibit the growth rate and efficiency of things. At the same time, that can happen instantly sometimes, as well, so it just depends on the situation.
This is a short week, maybe even shorter by the holiday. What adjustments do you have to make schedule-wise, as coaches, and how do you get the guys to regain their focus at the appropriate times?
We try to keep it as similar as we can to a normal week. We basically mashed Sunday and Monday into Sunday. Our biggest thing is, when we watch a film or have a team meeting, that week is done. Whether that’s USC or Stanford or whoever we just played, you turn the page toward correcting what you did wrong and building on what you did do well, and start game-planning. Playing a Friday game is not that drastic of an adjustment… Two days is significant. One day you can hybridize pretty easily.
Mike Riley was the face of Oregon State for a long time. What’s it like preparing for a Beavers team that doesn’t have him on the sideline and for a new coaching staff?
There’s a lot of familiarity with their staff, even with Coach (Gary) Anderson being new: the sort of Utah component with Coach (Kalani) Sitake and the defense and Coach (Dave) Baldwin and the offense. There’s enough similarity from a schematic standpoint that we know about. But with Gary Campbell and Steve Greatwood and some of these guys who have had 30-plus Civil Wars, there’s been a few other guys on that sideline. You’re so much more concerned with what you’re doing and not who’s on that sideline. Who’s between the white lines? That’s more of a concern.
You said in the past Vernon Adams Jr.’s game against Oregon State in 2013 was the first time you really took notice of him. When you were recruiting, what led you to believe you could do that kind of stuff week and in and week out, like he’s been doing these last four or five weeks?
I don’t know if we really did know that necessarily. It’s easy when things are going great and they keep working, but when things aren’t great how do they respond? Or maybe if things are going well, how do they continue to do that? If there was any insider knowledge, it was from a couple guys on our staff who have a relationship with his high school coach. At the time he was coming out, he was selling Vernon. Every high school coach does that, but all those kind of things — the competitive things, the intangible things — were very positive.
Follow Kenny Jacoby on Twitter @KennyJacoby