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As a math major in college, I've always been a fan of finding the best metrics to measure the success and failure of football teams, and as technology has progressed in sports, it's given fans new ways to quantify what we're seeing on the field. While this hasn't taken off in football as it has in basketball, Bill Connelly has been doing great work over at RockMNation and Football Outsiders for a while now. And the big stat that he has used (and I frequently reference) is S&P+. If you're unfamiliar with this stat, he has a great primer on it here.

This stat has been very useful for the last few years, as Oregon's pace has created a need for analysis on a per play basis, rather than the standard metrics of total yards and total defense. But after a few years of love, Oregon has taken a significant dip this year.

According to the recent S&P numbers, Oregon ranks only 20th in the country, with the 24th ranked offense, and the 34th ranked defense. This has been a bit baffling to me, as Oregon's offense has been nothing short of dominating, and their defense has been at least very good, no matter how you define it.

So what does this S&P+ ranking mean, and what does it show about beating the Ducks? We'll explore after the jump.

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Yesterday was fairly quiet for most of the afternoon, and then, Cam Newton blew up twitter. A few "rumors" turned into wild allegations against arguably the best player in college football this year.

And, as has happened countless times over the past few years, the internet ran wild. With little concrete information, message boards exploded, everyone (myself included) laid out their ill-informed opinions, reporters jockeyed for that big scoop, and national columnists tried to be the first to act like this incident (if we can even call it that at this point) is something that will carry importance for more than just this season. Pete Thamel of the New York Times wrote that college football fans should be 'disillusioned' by the Newton investigation. Stewart Mandel wrote that these allegations could be a blow to college football. 

Wait? What? I'm supposed to change my thinking on college football simply because of allegations against a single player? Give me a break guys, and let's just take a dash of perspective before acting like this event has some grand meaning.

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The Oregon defense has been a bit uneven this year. They've had dominating performances and made plays at the biggest times, but they've also looked very vulnerable. But despite that, I'm feeling pretty good about the Oregon defenses chances against USC. 

One of the things that is great about being a fan today is that we have access to video that we didn't have even 5 years ago, and sharing that video can happen with incredible ease, and with a bit of extra time, you can do some pretty great video editing. While I can't go into Matt Daddy levels of analysis, I do want to take a look at a play from the Stanford game, and show why I think the Oregon defense will be successful tomorrow.

The key for Oregon's defense tomorrow will be simple: stop the USC running game. To some degree, this is counterintuitive. Matt Barkley and the USC receivers have received just about all the attention leading up to tomorrow's game, and there is no doubt that USC presents the best combination of QB and receiver talent the Ducks have faced this year.

But when the Oregon defense knows what is coming, they are very tough to move against. There is a reason why Oregon is 3rd in the nation in interceptions, second in the nation in red zone defense, and 12th in the nation in 3rd down defense.

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