Tag: Oregon Ducks History

Green and Yellow Fireworks: Some of the best Oregon Duck highlights in the 21st century

What better way to celebrate the 4th of July than with an Oregon Ducks firework show?

Who doesn’t love a good fireworks show?

On the 4th of July, it is an American tradition to get together with friends and family and celebrate independence by lighting things on fire and watching them explode in the sky.

While you prepare for those festivities to begin on Tuesday night, we wanted to offer some fireworks of our own — some Oregon Duck fireworks.

The past couple of decades in Eugene have been incredibly entertaining. With the rise to national prominence for Oregon football, and the Chip Kelly blur offense that took the college football world by storm, the Ducks saw themselves one of the biggest fan favorites across the nation this century. Go ahead and add in Marcus Mariota’s Heisman season, the enthralling career of Sabrina Ionescu, and the deep tournament runs made by both basketball teams in March.

It’s safe to say that the past 23 years have provided a ton of highlights. I want to bring them to the surface and give you all a fireworks show to start your holiday.

Of course, there are going to be many plays that I missed throughout this all. To every player and every play that did not get mentioned, I apologize. If you have any favorite firework-worthy plays that didn’t get mentioned, comment below and let me know.

Without further ado, let the firework show begin.

Reveiwing the Oregon Ducks’ Football Power Index ranking since 2005

The Ducks are rated prominently in terms of FPI this offseason. How does that compare to the past couple of decades?

Life for an Oregon Duck fan has been quite eventful over the past couple of decades.

After going for decades as a relatively irrelevant team on the national landscape, Mike Bellotti turned things around at the start of the Melinium and a rise to prominence quickly followed. The start of the 2010s brought multiple trips to the National Championship game and a pair of Rose Bowl victories, but Oregon has also seen brutal losses at the hands of Auburn and Ohio State, as well as a 4-win season that ended in no bowl game and a fired coach just years later.

In recent years, things have still been a bit rocky off of the field with a litany of coaching changes, but the on-field product has remained stellar. In 2022, Dan Lanning proved his worth early on, becoming just the fifth coach in Oregon history to notch 10 wins in a single season, and the third to do it during his first year with the team.

By all accounts, there is real confidence that the Ducks are on a trajectory that could land them in the College Football Playoff and competing for a national championship in the coming years.

This past week, ESPN published its updated Football Power Index (FPI) which measures team strength based on 20,000 simulations as explained on their website.

This year the Ducks have the following preseason FPI ratings:

FPI: 15.0

Overall Ranking: No. 13

Pac-12 Ranking: No. 2

According to those numbers, the Ducks should not only be in a great spot to compete for a spot in the Pac-12 Championship, but if things break the right way down the stretch, they could very well be in the mix for a spot in the College Football Playoff, as well.

We wanted to see how the numbers at the start of this year compared to those in the past, though. Here is Ducks Wire breaks down each final FPI dating back to 2005:

Where will WR Troy Franklin go down in Oregon history after UO career?

Troy Franklin is among the best Oregon WRs we’ve seen in quite some time. How great will his career look when all is said and done in Eugene?

As we get back into the world of football this week with the Oregon Ducks resuming spring practice, we continue our series of career projections, looking ahead at what might be possible for some of the top players on the roster.

Earlier in the week we projected what the career numbers might look like for running back Bucky Irving, assuming that he plays for another two seasons at Oregon, and mapped out where that could place him among the all-time career rushers for the Ducks.

Now we want to do the same for wide receiver Troy Franklin. After a solid start to his career as a freshman in 2021, Franklin really experienced a breakout season in 2022 with QB Bo Nix and offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham spurring him along. Under the new offensive scheme that Dillingham brought to Eugene, Franklin was able to elevate himself to become one of the best wide receivers in the Pac-12, and we expect that trend to continue in 2023, with a possibility that he could announce himself as one of the best WRs in the nation, and a potential candidate for the Biletnikoff Award, given to the best receiver nationwide.

Going into this year, Franklin is the clear No. 1 option on the depth chart, and he will enjoy another year of chemistry with Nix, who is among the favorites to win the Heisman Trophy ahead of the season.

Should Franklin continue on the trajectory that we saw from last season, where might he end up in the Oregon history books? That’s a question we set out to predict.

Is Oregon among greatest college football programs of all time?

247Sports recently ranked the 25 greatest college football programs of all time. Did the Ducks make the cut?

The Oregon Ducks are in a complicated spot when looking at the world of college football through a historical lens. On one hand, the Ducks have been as dominant as any team in the nation over the past couple of decades, with multiple Rose Bowl victories and a couple of trips to the national championship game; they’ve been a mainstay near the top of the rankings since the turn of the century.

Before that, though? It’s not quite the same story.

Oregon didn’t used to be known for football. They weren’t always the vehicle for Nike’s latest and greatest, and they didn’t register on the national scale. It wasn’t until Rich Brooks came along that it started to change, and was carried forward by the likes of Mike Bellotti and Chip Kelly. Now the Ducks are a national brand, beloved — and despised — by many across the college landscape.

It’s interesting to see how much that recent success can improve the historic outlook of the Oregon football program. This past week, 247Sports ranked their top 25 programs of all time in college football. Unfortunately, the decades of early turmoil in Eugene were too much for the Ducks to overcome to get into the top 25.

It’s unclear what metrics 247Sports used to decide their top 25, but you can assume that stats like national championships, conference championships, overall record, and bowl records were weighted heavily. For an added measure, we also wanted to throw in College Football Playoff appearances, since that shows how well teams have performed over the past decade.

For reference, here are the Ducks’ all-time statistics when it comes to program history:

National Championships: 0

Conference Championships: 14

Overall Record: 692-508-46 (.574)

Bowl Game Record: 16-20 (.444)

College Football Playoff Appearances: 1

Here are the 25 programs that made it in ahead of them.