Tag: Bucky Irving

Bucky Irving ranked among top-returning RBs in 2023 season

Pro Football Focus ranked the top returning RBs for the 2023 season. Bucky Iriving is high on the list. There’s a former Duck high on the list as well.

So far this offseason, a lot of time spent by the Oregon Ducks’ fanbase has been focused on the return of their quarterback, Bo Nix, and the addition of a handful of potentially key contributors via the transfer portal. While both of those things hold some massive importance for the Ducks’ outlook in 2023, there’s one thing that has been relatively under the radar as a storyline this offseason.

It’s the fact that both Bucky Irving and Noah Whittington are returning for another season in Eugene, and they have a chance to be among the best RB duos in the nation. If you want to look at a single player, then what Irving did last year was more impressive than many fans could have expected, and now the bar is set high for him in his second act with the Ducks.

Pro Football Focus went through offensive grades and recently ranked who they believe are the top 10 running backs that will be returning to their respective teams for the 2023 season.

It comes as no surprise that Irving is among the top players on that list. It also comes as no surprise that there is a former Oregon Duck on this list as well, who is thriving in his new home.

Highlighting Oregon’s biggest remaining position needs heading into 2023 spring football

Oregon’s roster is set until after the spring game, but where can they look to get better and add more players before the 2023 season begins?

The transfer portal is closed. The next recruiting signing day is over 11 months away. Players won’t start cracking pads on the field for another month, at least.

These next few weeks may be as close as we’ll get to a true offseason in college football for quite a while. It makes sense that we should take a second to sit back and assess where things are at, doesn’t it?

While the Oregon Ducks are busy with offseason workouts, getting into shape as they prepare to take the field in mid-March for spring football, we wanted to use this time to take stock of the current roster, and try to figure out where some holes may exist, and what Dan Lanning and his staff might try to do to fill them.

The transfer portal is quiet for the time being — players already in the portal can commit to new teams, but no new players can enter — while players around the nation prepare to try and cement a spot on the depth chart in March and April. After that, though, you can expect more players to enter the portal, and there will likely be some new additions in Eugene.

Where might we see those additions come on the field, though? Let’s take a look at the scholarship players on the roster, position by position, to try and highlight the biggest areas of need still remaining for the Ducks.

PFF says Oregon’s Bucky Irving was a Top 10 running back in 2022

According to PFF, Oregon’s Bucky Irving was one of the best tailbacks in the nation for the 2022 season.

It wasn’t a major story when it happened, but the transfer of tailback Bucky Irving to Oregon from Minnesota was quietly one of the biggest portal pickups for 2022.

Irving, along with Noah Whittington, turned out to be a great 1-2 punch at the running back position for the Ducks. Who knows where Oregon would have been without that duo?

But it was Irving’s Batman to Whittington’s Robin and the Batman portion of the pair was graded by PFF as one of the Top 10 tailbacks in the country. Irving finished the season with 977 yards on the ground, averaged 6.7 yards per carry, and scored five touchdowns. He also caught 26 passes and two more scores.

Here are the Top 10 tailbacks for 2022 according to the analytics.

The 50 best photographs from Oregon Ducks’ 2022 football season

The Ducks had a great 2022 season. Let’s take a look back at some of the best photos from the year as a whole.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but it would certainly take more than that to describe the Oregon Ducks’ 2022 football season.

In Dan Lanning’s first year with the Ducks, the team saw a lot of highs and a couple of lows. We saw Oregon get into the mix for a spot in the College Football Playoff with a Heisman contending quarterback, but also watched as they suffered brutal defeats to the Washington Huskies and Oregon State Beavers.

In all, it was a successful season that set up what is likely to be a very exciting future. As we continue to look back on the 2022 season, we wanted to celebrate all of the best photos that were snapped of the team in action. Here are the best photos of the Ducks during the season.

10 major takeaways from Oregon’s 28-27 comeback victory over North Carolina

Bucky Irving was incredible, while Mase Funa and Keith Brown had career days on defense. Our takeaways from the Holiday Bowl.

There’s been a growing sentiment over the past several years that mid-level bowl games don’t hold the same meaning that they used to; that games outside of the College Football Playoff or a New Year’s Six Bowl lack some of the luster. A lot of this has to do with players increasingly opting out of the games in lieu of the NFL Draft, or entering the transfer portal once the regular season is over, leaving a handful of depleted rosters to play on a big stage.

After watching the Oregon Ducks in the Holiday Bowl on Wednesday night, though, it feels like the anti-bowl sentiment needs to take a rest for the time being. The Ducks entered the game with a depleted roster, a major offensive coach missing, and found a way to come back from 10 points down in the 4th quarter and beat the North Carolina Tar Heels, 28-27 in the end.

They showed heart, grit, and toughness. The Ducks showed that this wasn’t a meaningless game.

It won’t go down as one of the best bowl wins in Oregon history, but it acts as a major mile-marker in Dan Lanning’s career in Eugene. He completed his first season with the Ducks on top, notching a 10-win year and going 1-0 in the postseason.

There are a lot of takeaways that we have from this game, from personnel, to scheme, to future outlook. Let’s get into it. Here are our biggest takeaways from Oregon’s 28-27 Holiday Bowl win:

Oregon Ducks Player of the Game: Running back Bucky Irving

Oregon Ducks running back Bucky Irving earns our player of the game honor in his team’s big victory over North Carolina in the Holiday Bowl.

The Oregon Ducks finished the first year of the Dan Lanning era by grinding out a surprisingly defensive battle at the Holiday Bowl – the Pac-12’s first since 2014.

And although Bo Nix tossed two touchdown passes in the fourth quarter to lead Oregon to the victory – his team wouldn’t have been in a position to win at all without the performance of our player of the game, running back Bucky Irving.

Irving broke open the scoring in San Diego with a two-yard touchdown run early in the first quarter, and he racked up a 66-yard score to give Oregon a 14-7 lead in the second.

Irving finished with 149 yards and two touchdowns – but it wasn’t just his performance on offense that earned him player of the game honors.

He also returned four kicks for a total of 106 yards, including a 37-yard return and a 30-yard return – helping Nix and the offense with decent field position.

Oregon heads into the offseason with a nice feather in the cap, and a very strong recruiting window last week has a lot of optimism around this program heading into the new year.

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Who were the 10 best offensive players for the Ducks in 2022 according to PFF?

According to PFF, a transfer was Oregon’s best offensive player in 2022. That transfer was not Bo Nix.

If a survey was taken of 100 Oregon Duck football fans and they were asked who was the Ducks’ best offensive player, the vast majority would say quarterback Bo Nix with some saying receiver Troy Franklin.

They wouldn’t be wrong. Nix was absolutely incredible and was on the verge of being a Heisman candidate. Franklin had a breakout sophomore season and was one of the best receivers in the Pac-12 this season.

But according to Pro Football Focus, the analytical site that tracks every snap and grades everyone accordingly, a transfer was definitely the Ducks’ best offensive player. Except that transfer isn’t Bo Nix.

Here are the Top 10 Oregon offensive players and to no one surprise, the line makes up half of the list, showing they were the best in the conference.

For the list, we made sure only to qualify those with 200 or more snaps for the regular season.

Position Outlook: How future of Oregon’s RB room looks after recent transfers, recruiting news

A look at how Oregon’s RB room stacks up in the coming years after recent transfers, recruiting news.

At this point in the college football season, nearly everyone in the nation is seeing their roster go through a makeover of sorts. For some teams, that means a complete overhaul, and droves of players decide to enter the transfer portal and find a new home. Other teams will see numerous players leave for the NFL draft, leaving a spot to fill behind them. A lot of schools will also have the prospect of highly-rated recruits coming to town to fill a need.

For the Oregon Ducks, we’ve got a little bit of all three of those scenarios. We’ve already seen a few players enter the transfer portal, and as the offseason grows longer, you can expect more to declare for the NFL draft. That allows us to take a look at some position groups as a whole and assess how the future looks.

Today, we want to look closely at the running backs room. We got word earlier in the week that Byron Cardwell will enter the transfer portal, which came as little surprise On top of that, there are a few players who could decide to leave, but it feels like this is a relatively solid group going into the offseason.

Let’s take a closer look.

Stock Report: Troy Franklin’s big day headlines booming business for Oregon offense

Stock up? Troy Franklin. That’s an easy one. Stock down? Dare we say Justin Flowe?

At this point in the season, we shouldn’t exactly be surprised when the Oregon Ducks’ offense puts up gaudy numbers like this.

For the sixth-straight game, Oregon has scored more than 40 points in the game, and they’ve picked up more than 500 yards of offense in 5 of their last six games. Quarterback Bo Nix is playing better than he ever has in his career, wide receiver Troy Franklin is breaking out as one of the best pass-catchers that the Ducks have seen in quite some time, and the offensive line has established itself as one of the most dominant units in college football, leading the Oregon rushing attack to endless success, where they’ve had more than 200 yards on the ground in 5 of their last 6 games.

It’s safe to say that when we take a look at the offense, the stock is going to be up across the board.

The defense still needs a little bit of help, but with a defensive-minded head coach like Dan Lanning, and a solid staff of coaches around him, I have faith that Oregon will get things clicking on that side of the ball in due time. As we do every week, let’s identify players who saw their stocks go up, and a few who might have seen a slight dip against UCLA:

Stock Report: Assessing the Oregon Ducks’ roster midway through the season

Bo Nix stock is at an all-time high. What about Jeffrey Bassa? How do we feel about Dont’e Thornton at the midway point?

Normally on Sunday mornings, we take a dive back into the game film from the previous day and get a deeper look at how some of the players on the Oregon Ducks’ roster played in the previous outing. In the last five games, it’s been a pleasant experience; the week before that, not so much.

This week we don’t have that ability, as the Ducks enjoyed a well-time bye week while the rest of the college football world introduced some chaos into the picture. That gave us an opportunity to recharge our batteries and continue to assess the first half of the season, trying to pinpoint how we got here after that opening week loss to the Georgia Bulldogs.

Part of that team assessment needs to come down to the roster, and figuring out who deserves credit for showing up for the Ducks, and who still has a little bit more to give.

With a slight wrinkle on what we do every week, let’s identify the Oregon players who have seen their stock go up this season, and a few who might have seen a slight dip through the first six games: