Without bowl game eligibility as a possibility for Oregon after its 52-27 loss to the Stanford Cardinal on Saturday, the Ducks are forced to find a new form of motivation going forward.
Offensive linemen Cameron Hunt says, now that there is no potential bowl game to look forward to, the team is “playing for pride.”
“I think guys are really motivated today,” Hunt said. “They’re flying around still. It’s just playing for pride and trying to go out there and perform to the best of your ability.
“We’ve talked about [playing for pride]; we’ve talked about setting this up for this offseason coming up and really using that as a motivation factor to push through certain things.”
The team had a “mental” day of practice on Nov. 15 that involved “more walk-through stuff, less hitting, less running” and more of “a walk and talk type of thing.” The 16th, however, was a “very intense” day of practice, according to head coach Mark Helfrich.
“Today was very physical,” Helfrich said. “We’ve challenged everybody in a few different ways. Yesterday was a little bit more of a mental day. We obviously had a couple of things to clean up from the game over the weekend.”
The Ducks got off to a poor start against the Cardinal this past weekend, something the team hopes to improve on against Utah this Saturday. To best prepare for Utah and come out and get points on the board quickly, Helfrich says the team has “changed it up” in practice.
“Today, we did basically 40 seconds in the game, urgent type of scenario right off the bat. … Just trying to change it up and find that button to create that urgency,” Helfrich said.
It is going to be a difficult feat for the Ducks to defeat the 8-2 Utah Utes this Saturday, but Helfrich says that confidence is the biggest factor for the Ducks on its trip to Salt Lake City.
“I think the biggest thing is just the confidence and going out and absolutely cutting it loose and not worrying about any sort of negative outcome,” Helfrich said. “There are so many guys that are just hesitant. Talking about going into last week, if you’re hesitant on a power play, McCaffrey is going to go 50 and it happened. … It’s the offensive guys just playing together with urgency and not hoping that something happens, or hoping that somebody else will make a play.”
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