Oregon Ducks 2011 Season Preview Oregon Ducks 2011 Season Preview The Oregon Ducks Despite losing the National Championship to Auburn, the 2010 Oregon Ducks had college football’s greatest offense in the last twenty year. The 2010 Oregon team never trailed in the fourth quarter of the regular season and made their run without one five-star recruit. They certainly were not everyone's college football expert pick for the season. Click Here for the Summer Specials with a Free 7 Day Trial! These rates will increase as the NFL and NCAAF seasons get closer, So Get Them Now! The days of winning with less talent are over for Oregon who expanded their recruiting base into eight states, where they signed 23 players, eleven of which have four or five-star ratings. Oregon is going to need immediate production from these players and last year’s reserves to make up for the loss Jeff Mael, three offensive lineman and key parts on defense. Those holes are what keeps Oregon from being a definitive pick for the Pac 12 this year. Replacing lineman at Oregon is nothing new to Chip Kelly, he had the same task during the 2009 season that resulted in a Pac 10 Championship and Rose Bowl appearance. Oregon is going to have to repeat that kind of success if they expect to have sustainability from quarterback, Darron Thomas and All American running back, LaMichael James. Pac 12 Title Hopes If Oregon does not win the Pac 12, the season will have been a major disappointment and chances are they will have had some major injuries. They are that much better than the rest of their conference. Looking at Oregon’s conference schedule, the only real hostile environment they will play in is at Tucson on September 24th. Despite being coached by Mike Stoops, Arizona had no ability to stop Oregon last year and I don’t suspected this year to be much different. Oregon also travels to Washington and Stanford, but will be over 70-percent favorites in those games. Washington is rebuilding post Jake Locker and Stanford will have to show that they can with without Jim Harbaugh. The rest of the schedule sets up well for Oregon with home games against Cal, USC and Oregon State. Each of those teams will have to fight to be equal to who they were last year, and all got blown out the last time they traveled to Eugene. Oregon is +125 to win the Pac 12 North and +175 to win the conference all together. My advice is take Oregon to win the North at +125 because it’s simpler, one less variable and the payout is return is so similar what comes with a conference championship. That's a sold expert pick. Worth a BCS Title Future? At +1500, Oregon is a great bet and are one of the four teams that I feel has the best chances to make it to New Orleans (Oklahoma, Florida State, Wisconsin). Oregon does have a tough test early when they travel to Dallas to play LSU, but will still be favorites in that game. The part that bothers me about Oregon is that they will need to win all of their games if they want to make it to the BCS Championship, or be one of two teams with only one-loss. In doing extensive BCS analysis over the past four years, the Pac 10 schools never get the benefit of the doubt when they are among three or more schools that share the nation’s best record. No team proves this point better than USC, who has paid dearly for their conference losses, despite making a habit out of winning big non-conference games early in the season. 2011 College Football Previews.
