Seven touchdowns on seven straight drives. Fifty points in 11 minutes of possession. So what did head coach Chip Kelly think of the Ducks’ tempo against Arkansas State?
“It was adequate, I think,” Kelly said. “We’re getting to where we need to go.”
That being said, Kelly said he hopes the Ducks will continue to improve across the board as the season progresses.
“I would hate to think that the finished product we put on the field was Sept. 1 and that was the best we ever played.”
With a Fresno State team coming to town that has long emphasized the kicking game, albeit before first-year head coach  Tim DeRuyter took over, Kelly said the Ducks will need to continue to fine tune their own special teams units. Against Arkansas State the Ducks missed a field goal that may have gone unnoticed in the course of the Ducks’ big win on the field, but leaving points on the field nonetheless didn’t sit well with Coach Kelly.
Kelly did praise the Ducks’ kick coverage unit which held Arkansas State to fewer than 20 yards per kick return and said it was hard to gauge the readiness of his own kick return unit because of Arkansas State’s “white flag” strategy of kicking away from De’Anthony Thomas.
“We’ll see how that goes,” Kelly said. “If guys during the season are just not going to kick to us or are they going to kick to us, so I think kick return is sort of inconclusive.”