On Wednesday, Oregon football’s coordinators and assistant coaches spoke to the media for the first time since Tuesday’s scrimmage.
Defensive coordinator and inside linebackers coach Jim Leavitt said he and his staff examined film from the scrimmage for “about four or five hours.”
“Had a good scrimmage yesterday, got a lot of snaps, we graded our defense staff about four or five hours, looking at it hard,” Leavitt said. “You know, there’s always some good things and there’s always some things you wish you did better but the arrow keeps going up. We have a chance and guys are working hard.”
Oregon’s defense is beginning to shape up. With a lot of young players expected to play this year, Oregon’s second scrimmage of the fall gave the coaching staff another chance to see how they’ve progressed.
“I thought they went out there ready to go,” Leavitt said. “We had a pretty good meeting before the scrimmage. I thought they came out and went after it pretty good. Overall, I thought we lined up pretty good. I was happy with that.
The depth chart is yet to be released but depth on defense could be lacking. Leavitt hinted at a significant drop from the first team to the second.
“[The first team] I thought did very, very well,” Leavitt said. “Our [second team] did good, they’re young, they’ll get better as they go. It’s a tall order to put a lot of those freshmen against our number one offense but they battled them pretty good.”
On the offense, co-offensive coordinator Mario Cristobal did not see everything he wanted from the scrimmage. He still says that the group is working hard, has pride and is coming along since he took over the offense in spring.
“The entire time—I’m talking back to practice one of the spring time all the way to practice 16—there has been steady progress and improvement,” Cristobal said. “The best part about this game, the game of football, this is a developmental game and you really don’t stop developing until you retire. I’m talking about 10, 11-year NFL vets. So, we’ve taken that approach. And when you take that, it keeps you hungry, it keeps you engaged and it’s been really good for our guys.”
Co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Marcus Arroyo is still working on the quarterback depth chart. The one thing that is apparent is that Justin Herbert will return as the starter. The only question that remains is whether Taylor Alie or Braxton Burmeister will be the backup.
Arroyo says that the position will be sorted out this week.
With a young and thin wide receiver core, Arroyo is being careful not to set expectations for the offense too high ahead of the season.
“I think we’re all old enough and experienced enough to know not to assume something you’re not,” Arroyo said. “We just look at it day by day, especially when we have so much youth. We’re really trying to asses what those guys are doing day to day based on a 24-hour basis. If you get too far ahead and you’re looking back on a group that’s really young like that you can end up losing sight of what you can be good at, what you need to focus on and you start projecting and doing things maybe outside the box outside of what you should be capable of doing.”
Follow Shawn Medow on Twitter @ShawnMedow
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