He wasn’t the first to say it, but Chip Kelly liked to say that a quarterback was like a tea bag, you didn’t know what you had until you put in hot water. In a similar way, a new head coach is unproven and untested until his team faces a big game, and he really hasn’t proven himself until he has to refocus his team after a difficult loss.
The last four games of the season will determine what kind of hire Oregon made in Mark Helfrich.
The former offensive coordinator from Coos Bay is smart and congenial. He understands the game and maintains a great perspective. He shows composure getting asked the same dumb questions in 50 different ways. His players like him. His staff believes in him. But the team he inherited has the talent to finish in the Top Five in the country, and fairly or not, that’s the standard he’ll be judged by at the end of the year.
Undefeated seasons are rare, and it’s unrealistic to make that the expectation for a given season. Oregon came into Palo Alto with a banged-up quarterback and a defense that hadn’t faced anything like the Stanford power game, and the Ducks didn’t handle it very well. They faltered in execution. They were swarmed under by The Cardinal’s big offensive line and fearsome Jumbo packages.
This week Nick Aliotti, candid as ever, said he thought about countering Stanford’s 7, 8, and 9-linemen sets with extra defensive linemen, getting beef and strength up front, especially near the goal line. He opted not to use them, concerned that he wouldn’t be able to recongize the host’s personnel groupings and get the packages in on time. The Ducks went with what they had and what they’d practiced the most. It’s tempting to pick apart that decision now, but not productive: Aliotti had to make it in the heat of a very big game.
Clearly the Ducks need a new plan for Stanford, because their conference nemesis has taken them completely out of their game two seasons in a row, derailing national championship hopes twice. That’s a project for February to July. For now, Coach Helfrich and the staff have to concentrate on regrouping a team that has a battered reputation and a gimpy quarterback who no longer has 4.4 speed in the 40. The Ducks have to find their soul as a football team. They have to be prepared for Utah, the only team to beat Stanford this season.
Fans will be watching closely to see the plan, execution and resolve Oregon brings to these last three games and the bowl. Good teams grow within the year. Leaders emerge. A top coach frames their purpose, gives them a message and a method the can take into battle.
This Oregon team really doesn’t have a identity yet. They can become another great team or a disappointing one. Mark Helfrich said at the beginning of the year that he didn’t have a stamp, that he had no burning desire to make things different to show he had changed the program following behind Chip Kelly. While he doesn’t have to come up with some radical new design in x’s and o’s, the time has come for him to show he can lead, motivate and teach with the same clarity Chip Kelly brought to the job. Being an affable, knowledgeable guy isn’t enough.
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