Congrats to Spencer Paysinger! One year in the league, one Super Bowl ring (If you missed it, here's a piece from yesterday on him playing in the game). And with that, the football season is officially over, at least until the Spring Game on April 28th.
- Oregon dropped a tough one against Colorado on Saturday night. Oregon held a lead at halftime, but couldn't hang on at the end, as Colorado got a foul call as time expired during a tie game, and hit the first free throw for the victory. If you looked through our game thread, there were a lot of people, uhhh, questioning the refs.
- With the loss, Oregon drops to 7-4 in conference tied for fourth place with Arizona. The Ducks are still in competition for the top spot in the conference, but do not have easy games coming up. They host league-leading Washington on Thursday, and then go on the road to the bay area schools next week. There is little room for error for the Ducks if they want to make any kind of postseason tournament.
- Bill Connelly has an interesting article over at Football Study Hall today, on covariance rankings, which attempt to quantify how teams play against good and bad teams. You'll never guess which conference is awesome against the worst competition.
- Oregon did a great job recruiting on the defensive line this year, and according to Rivals brought in the 3rd ranked defensive end group in the country.
- Steve Maher at FishDuck has a piece on one of the unheralded recruits from that defensive end class, Cody Carriger. According to Chip Kelly, he might have been one of the top players in the country if he were from California, but he didn't get much attention living in Butte, Montana. And being from Butte, he's got so much grit, I'm surprised OSU didn't pursue him.
- Also on FishDuck, Brian Libby wonders about future Autzen expansion.
- Lastly, here's a report of LaMichael James at Gatorade's Sports Science Institute during Super Bowl Week.
Anyway, enough with the quack. What was your favorite commercial? Leave yours, or more quack, in the comments. GO DUCKS!