As the Oregon Ducks head into their second game of the season, looking to defend its 2019 Pac-12 Conference Championship, the Ducks have emerged as the conference’s best chance to contend for a spot in the College Football Playoff. With the Ducks, a rising national power, Fox Sports’ team of analysts talked about Oregon’s chances of winning the conference and even making the playoff during halftime of the Iowa – Wisconsin game on Friday night.
Former Heisman winning running back Reggie Bush opened up the segment saying that he believes that the Ducks have the offensive weapons all over the field to make a run at winning the Pac-12 conference and being in the CFP hunt.
I see explosiveness all over the field. I see it at the receiver position, running backs, tight end DJ Johnson 6-4/6-5 285-pounds, the quarterback obviously,” said Bush. “They just have explosiveness all over the place and it reminds me a little bit of when we were at USC. But man, these running backs are special. Travis Dye and CJ Verdell — running backs set the tone for football games and that’s what I saw from these running backs in this backfield and from all the skill positions on the team.”
Following up on Bush’s comments, former USC quarterback and Fox analyst Matt Leinart believes that Shough’s first game at quarterback showed the athleticism needed to guide the Ducks this season.
“It’s life after Justin Herbert — Tyler Shough, what would he look like and how would he fit into the system?” asked Leinart. “I thought on film the physical traits stood out. Really good arms strength but it was his ability to run the football and his athleticism. And it was in a lot of different ways.”
Adding on to Bush’s point about Oregon’s receivers and running backs, Leinart thinks Oregon has a lot of potential.
“So you combine that with all the weapons you talked about, this is a really dangerous football team.”
Concluding the halftime segment was former Florida and Ohio State coach Urban Meyer who praised what Mario Cristobal has done put give the Ducks talent to compete with the nation’s top teams.
“If you have any chance at the college football playoff, the eyes test — you cannot make a mistake, you can not look average in any games left this year. They look like they’ve got a bit of juice. That’s about 3 or 4 good recruiting classes that Mario Cristobal has put together.”
“You can see that juice that Oregon used to have is coming back.” Meyer added, “They’ve got to win big”
The crew mentioned that they hardly mentioned Oregon’s defense including star defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux, concluding that the Ducks will have five more chances to prove themselves before the Pac-12 Championship on December 19th.
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