The Duck offense has been a blur these first few games. If you leave your seat when the other team goes into punt formation chances are you’ll miss the whole Oregon drive and possibly a game-breaking play.
Oregon has outscored its opponents by an average of 28 points while losing the time of possession battle each week. Fresno State kept the ball away from Oregon the longest with a 7:58 time of possession advantage, and yet ran just one more offensive play than the Ducks.
So, in almost eight fewer minutes of possession, the Ducks ran just one play less and gained 134 yards more than the Bulldogs. That, my friends, is a blur.
But it could have been worse, and this week many Oregon coaches and players have said points they should have scored but didn’t was an area of concern for this team. The same thing was said about the win at Michigan.
On that note, the Ducks were penalized eight times for a total of 63 yards against Fresno State. Three of these penalties were “Illegal Snap” penalties, one of which took a Duck two-point conversion off the board.
Who is to blame for these penalties? Who will be running laps? Maybe it should be the officials.
“We’re playing too fast,” said Oregon coach Mike Bellotti. “We snapped the ball before the officials were ready for play. The umpire had walked away and was separated and typically that’s been the only thing (we wait for).”
I knew the Oregon offense was fast-paced, but too fast for the officials? Wow.
The frustrating thing for the Ducks is this: The fast-paced style is the key to keeping matchups they want by not allowing the defense to substitute. It also wears the defense down by keeping the same people on the field for longer than they’re used to. That, in turn, plays in to the Ducks’ red zone efficiency, because by the time they get down the field that far the opposing D-line is hallucinating from exhaustion.
Should they be forced to give up these advantages and slow their offense down because of dawdling officials? Bellotti hopes they won’t.
“I don’t know if that was particular to that officiating crew, or just we’ve gotten faster, but we want to play at a very fast tempo,” said Bellotti. “We ran the same things the first two games and never had any issues. I’ve talked to the league office, they’re looking into it, and that’s all I can say.”
And while the spread offense has created a whole new set of issues for opposing defensive coordinators, it is also creating brand new issues for the Oregon coaches.
“I’ve never had that (penalty) called in 35 years of coaching college football… so I’m asking the officials to speed up their preparation for play,” said Bellotti.
Here’s to hoping they do, because I agree with the coaches’ assessment. It might not have meant much in the Fresno State game and it may not against Stanford this weekend, but do you think Oregon can afford to have a possible scoring drive bogged down by one of these penalties next week against Cal? I don’t think so.