Here are some game day notes for your reading pleasure.

Ducks take on Cal tonight

This team wasn't 4-8 last year just because of coaching. Mariota showed he and other talented players could win a lot of games with the same coach. In winter most people believed improvement was the goal and that bad losses would still happen. So the question I have is whether, at this point, the team is ahead of, behind, or on schedule with your hopes for improvement BACK THEN. Not at the start of the season or after the hype of great recruiting and energetic coaches on the trail. But is this team where you would have hoped they would be after 4 games back during the doom and gloom days of december, January, and February. I know I was hyped up and changed my expectations for the time line of improvement of this team after the first few games and that made the asu loss harder to swallow. But last winter, 3-1 would have been on schedule to me.

Hey all, with much gratitude t SR Duck, we will once again be in the Autzen Parking lot, on the East side of the stadium in space 6543. I will be there right at 3:30 ready to set up. Will definitely ahve teh TV going with some beverages to share@!

Going to do something with appetizers, not sure what, though!

Hope to see lots of people there Saturday afternoon. Remember, football is entertainment and we should come and have some fun prior to the game.

Tailgate Start Time: 3:30pm
Food: Handcrafted burgers, dogs, brats (bacon wrapped again!
Beverages: We will have some beer, sodas, water, and I could bring the blender this week if people want
Donations: Accepted at the game or via PayPal

Amazing group of athletes will be in town for the Ducks this weekend. Here is a full list with profiles with three basketball OV's and one football OV, plus tons of other football prospects.

Big recruiting weekend for Cal game

What will happen saturday?

Will the NFL actions translate to CF?

My suggestion is play "America The Beautiful" if it is necessary to play anything. At least most people know the words and they are "singable". Or a John Phillip sousa march if rousing is needed.

Oregon/Cal is a likely match up to bring this about. Ie, Berkeley and Eugene.

Dook, Kentucky and.....


http://www.oregonlive.com/recruiting/index.ssf/2017/09/rj_barrett_no_1_basketball_pro.html

I'm not too sure what to think of this one. Oregon (3-1) will go into the game against Cal (3-1) as two touchdown favorites. You look at Oregon's three wins and none of them were overly conclusive about how good this team is. Then at ASU we saw that with enough mistakes and sloppy play they can lose to anybody.

Still, we've all noticed the improved defense and the fact the offense can really go when it is clicking.

Cal also has three wins which really don't tell any story:

35-30 win at North Carolina. But North Carolina is a very bad football team.
33-20 home win over Weber State. I imagine Big Sky Weber covered the spread on that one.
27-16 home win over Ole Miss. Ole Miss has two wins this year: South Alabama and Tennessee Martin
20-30 home loss to USC. This of course is the crown jewel of their season so far. But how good of a loss is it?

The one thing we know is that they are better coached than they have been recently.

So if you are a bettor, do you take the Ducks and give the points?

Alright, some notes on recruiting, plus some thoughts about the preparations this week and how that might impact the performance this weekend

Wednesday War Room: Cal

I know this won't be popular but this is 100% on the coaches.

My biggest fear with our hire of Taggart that I had was we hired a guy who can talk the talk. Can recruit like crazy and can't coach worth a damn.

Our coaches jus got their asses handed to them by ARIZONA STATE. Let that sink in for a second. The coaches got their asses kicked by ASU!!! Todd Graham has been out coached more times than I can count and he just kicked this shit out of our staff.

They are young and energetic. They say all the right things and to make people happy are all over Twitter and other social media.

I had one question when this staff was hired. Can they coach. So far after four games that answer is a resounding no (on offense...defense is making improvements across the board).Oh sure they can recruit and do all the pretty stuff. But what matters is results in the field and I for one am not seeing it. Specifically on the offensive side of the ball. Did we run the same three plays over and over all night long?

I know some here are so in love with this staff because of how much "juice" they bring. How about turning that juice into actual teaching and improvement on the field.

I know how much they scored and all the stats. Only one stat matters and that is the final score.

They barely beat a Nebraska team that will be lucky to survive the season. An awful Wyoming team and Southern Utah. This is not a good football team.

Did we hire coaches or salesmen?

Some thoughts today on the scandal; the edge for week 5 and finally an official visitor!

One thing of note - I had heard that Nick Pickett might not play this weekend; after checking in with some more reliable sources, there is still some concern he may not be able to play this weeke. So far, it seems nothing long term, just something on which to keep an eye.

Flock Talk: Money for Nothing

I'm hearing that Penei Sewell will be on an official visit this weekend.

Unofficial visitors:

Braden Lenzy
Teagan Quitoriano
Travis Dye
M.J. Cunningham
Willie Taggart Jr.
Raymond Woodie III
Michael Johnson
Patrick Herbert
Taji Johnson
Reow Jackson
Andrew Faoliu
Nathan Logoleo
Xavier Miller
Micah Bowens
Caleb Jordan
Miles Jackson
Justice Pagan
Tyrehi Valvao
Joanavin Salavea

Brenden Rice, the son of NFL all-time great Jerry Rice. The son is a sophomore at Hamilton High School in Chandler, AZ.

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Okay, we are less than a week out. There are a lot of new members around here and we have this 'hunch' that game day excitement will return once again this season.

DSA has been hosting a tailgates since 2005. I took over the task at a great time - 2009 - we saw some really great tailgates and grew the concept; then we got kicked out of the parking lot (we had been using a General Admission pass for parking) in 2011. Things started to taper off after that.

We love, and I mean love, having members stop by and chit-chat before the game. Last season, a season which many people grew tired of quickly, we started to get a huge assist from one of our members; a pass in the parking lot.

So here is the concept for this year. We are going to use my DYS space (223) across the street from the stadium for most of the games, BUT, we are also going to try and get the 'big' games in the Autzen parking lot, so I will post the details each week.

For those that do not know, our space in the DYS Parking lot is on the other side of the 'old' practice field (now called Essig Field). It is not easy to see, but definitely worth the time. We have a TV running with football on all day; we have hand crafted burgers, dogs and brats, beer, soda, chips, salsa and will create 'special' courses for the big games. In the past these special courses have been things like bacon wrapped BBQ shrimp, jambalaya, yakitori, etc.

DSA TAILGATE-SOUTHERN UTAH

Where: DYS Parking lot, space 223
When: 9/2/2017
Time: 1:15-5:15
Donations: We will have a donation jar at the tailgate. If you wish to donate funds through paypal, you can do so using my old email address (sreed39@canby.com)

What to bring? A smiling face and a plan to enjoy yourself.

Looks good for this one. Great quotes.

https://www.seccountry.com/florida/florida-recruiting-malcolm-lamar

Massive Hawaiian OL lands Oregon offer. Don't know much about the kid yet:

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Now the word is that he has been placed on "Administrative Leave". Sounds like they want to keep their options open for him to return and lead UL to more final fours.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...no-placed-on-leave-amid-scandal-idUSKCN1C22JU

The team may have lost but junior defensive end Jalen Jelks sure played like a winner. He ended up with eight tackles, five of them for loss including three sacks. It was a dominant sideline-to-sideline performance that stood out even in defeat.

What his coach saw was passion.

“The energy and love for the game,” said Salave’a of Jelks performance. “We have a lot of guys who are finally getting their opportunities. It was really good to see Jalen have the game that he had but he would have traded that for a win.”

Of course the 37-35 loss at ASU on a last-second field goal was a hard pill to swallow.

“Guys were really down about the way the game played out,” Salave’a admitted. “But you train all off-season for only a handful of Saturdays. They know that time is of the essence. When we practice there is no cutting corners. We have got to make sure that we are deliberate and detailed in what we do.

“The past is in the books and the future is a mystery. All we have is today.”

Click below for the full 3-minute interview

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"I didn't even honestly know I was playing like that until after the game, picking my phone up I realized I was doing all that. I was like 'wow'. But during the game I was just taking one series at a time."

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Some good, very specific, points from former player coach...


http://registerguard.com/rg/sports/...ootball-dozed-off-against-sun-devils.html.csp

Wilcox had a presser yesterday and fielded a couple questions about Saturday's game:

Early impressions of Oregon with what coach Taggart is doing

Yeah they’re doing a good job, really talented on both sides of the ball, they’ve got similar spread scheme with the tight end, and flex him out. They’ve got really talented running backs and the quarterback, just another week of an elite quarterback. Defensively, they’re playing really good football, they’re playing some 3-4 and some 4-2-5 nickel, so similar in a lot of ways to us. So, really good football team and it’ll be a great challenge for us going up there. It’s really for us about how we prepare this week and the strides we can make from last week. That’s what it’s always gonna be about.

On the relationship between his family and the Herbert family

They’re great people, I’ve known them a long time, ton of respect for his family, they’re great folks and he’s a really really talented guy. It’ll be a great challenge for our team.

What do you tell your guys to prepare for the sound level of Autzen

Well when the offense has the ball, it’s gonna be really loud (laughs). So yeah, you’ve got to work silent counts and prepare them as best we can. We have DJ Norm over there with the music, so we have all of our team periods, we’ll get to crank the music up to work the silent counts, but quite a few guys have been there so they know.

Offense

Stud WR was in Tempe on an official for the Oregon game. So he will have a head-to-head comparison of trips although his official to Eugene will be after the season.

Here are his comments to the ASU site after the trip, fwiw:

Ezeike takes in Oregon-ASU game