Oregon football looks to bounce back from its 45-20 loss to USC and prepare for running back Christian McCaffrey and the rest of the Stanford Cardinal this Saturday.
Defensive Coordinator Brady Hoke said that practice has been “good” this week, similar to his sentiments most every week. This week, however, the Ducks must prepare to for last year’s Heisman finalist and the NCAA single-season record holder in all-purpose yards, Christian McCaffrey.
“He’s not bad,” Hoke said jokingly. “He’s very good, as you know and what we’ve got to do is play team defense.”
Stanford is a team that is known to rotate anywhere from six to eight offensive linemen. Hoke and his defense are doing their best to “try to” prepare for it.
“It’s something, when you play Stanford, you have to be ready for,” Hoke said. “So I think we’ve done a good job this week. We’ll look at the tape from today and maybe there’ll be an adjustment here or here. But as far as that goes, I think we have a good plan.”
Head coach Mark Helfrich said that the scout team has been a “huge deal” this week to prepare both sides of the ball for what Stanford will bring.
When asked about the Cardinal’s offensive linemen, Helfrich said that Oregon could “tape a couple guys together and try to make them look like one of those guys.”
Another factor for the Ducks in the upcoming game against Stanford is Cardinal quarterback Keller Chryst. As the Stanford offense began to struggle, Cardinal head coach David Shaw decided to start Chryst over former starter Ryan Burns against Arizona on Oct. 29.
This quarterback change has added a bit of a spark to the Cardinal offense — Stanford has defeated Arizona 34-10, as well as Oregon State 26-15 since inserting Chryst into the starting lineup.
“He’s done a great job of managing their run game, checking things at the line of scrimmage and being more involved in a true pre-determined quarterback run,” Helfrich said. “Offensively they’ve just been more diverse in involving those guys and in wildcat packages and all their various multiple offensive linemen sets.”
Despite the underwhelming season thus far, Helfrich is confident in his teams’ ability to keep moving forward.
“Like life, and the ups and downs, we’re having some downs right now,” Helfrich said. “But the people here will get it back to up.”
Follow Kylee O’Connor on Twitter @kyleethemightee