And he instantly becomes Oregon's most experienced RB?!? 😱 Yikes!

What a massive downgrade at that position from the last few years. Meanwhile our best RB goes to USC. This reflects my greatest concern...you bring in an RB coach from Western Kentucky and you get... Western Kentucky players / recruits.

DuckInTheMountains wrote:

DucksReign wrote:

And he instantly becomes Oregon's most experienced RB?!? 😱 Yikes!

What a massive downgrade at that position from the last few years. Meanwhile our best RB goes to USC. This reflects my greatest concern...you bring in an RB coach from Western Kentucky and you get... Western Kentucky players / recruits.

I'm not quite so pessimistic.  I wouldn't call Jordan James a WKU player / recruit, 247 had him as the #13 RB in the nation, #16 in their composite.  I don't know if Locklyn can actually coach or not, but seems pretty clear he can recruit.  And this kid did pretty well under his coaching at WKU given his recruiting ranking, which may be a sign he's a good coach, too.  Call me still skeptical, but hopeful.  

Yes, we have a huge experience downgrade at RB, but I'm quite high on Cardwell, he's a legit power conference starting RB.  Dollars certainly seems to have the talent but we've not seen it yet.  I'm not actually persuaded that Dye and Verdell were more talented than Cardwell, so I'm not sure we've actually had a talent downgrade.  Experience and talent are not the same thing and at a position like RB I think I prefer having the latter.

I'm glad to have this kid for depth but I hope he's not our starting RB.  We have others who certainly appear to have more talent.

Cardwell will be the #1 back, and I felt he was under utilized last year. I consider him to be every bit the RB Dye was, and hopefully he'll stay healthier than CJ. We're fine at RB barring injury of course. I like this kids tape: he averaged over 5 yards a carry. We won't know until we see this team in action this fall, but so far I'm very optimistic given what I've seen and heard so far.
 

1) Dye and Verdell rank 5th and 6th all-time respectively on Oregon's leading rushers list. The fact they reached those rankings playing under one-dimensional "Mario Ball" is a testimony to their talent.

2) Sorry but when one RB transfers to USC(Dye); another to Florida State(Benson) and another opts to the NFL(Verdell) and Oregon's lone TRANSFER to date is from Western Kentucky which he chose over Army and South Alabama coming out of high school... that is a downgrade in my book. I know the Pac-12 is not great but the defenses Oregon RB's face are better than what a RB in Conference USA faces.

3) Jordan James was a Georgia commit for a long time and knew Lanning before the latter came to Oregon...so yes it is a great "flip"  but the losses at the RB position to date outweigh the gains... retaining existing players; recruiting and transfers.

At THIS MOMENT, Oregon is not better at the RB position than last season in talent or experience.

DuckInTheMountains wrote:

Well, not for the first time or last time, my glass is somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 full, and yours is 3/4 empty. 

Time will tell.  I really, really like Cardwell.  I readily concede that we don't have evidence that his talent is the same level as Verdell or Dye.  But the lack of evidence is not the same as proof to the contrary.  Here's hoping you're wrong and he gives us in excess of 5 yards per carry and 1400 yards on the season.  I personally won't be all that surprised if it happens, but I certainly don't have evidence to say it will, either.

At this point nobody knows how anyone will do because we don't know what type of offense we will have i.e. 4th different starting QB in as many years. We don't even know if Lanning can coach well in games. I remember when I assumed Mario could and when Mark Helfraud would sustain what Kelly did before him.

As per how full the glass may be, send your thank you notes to Mario Cristobal... because I bought into his "process" verbal dribble for 4-years and saw a program go from winning the Conference Championship and Rose Bowl with mostly players he inherited to getting crushed in the Conference Championship and losing in the Alamo Bowl with mostly players he recruited.

So now I no longer buy into that hype.

Therefore just because Lanning is allegedly a great recruiter doesn't mean every recruit he brings in is great.

When you recruit a transfer from Conference USA who did nothing in high school to attract even ONE offer from a major program...I am not going to celebrate that as an improvement.

I have seen Duck message boards were people are trying to connect the PWO QB Sanders(ranked as the #173 QB in the country with one offer from Western Oregon) to Stetson Bennett at Georgia who just won a National Championship but began as a walk-on?!? Yeah and Lanning is already a better head coach than Nick Saban.😂

Sure, it stings to lose your go to back at the end of the year to USC. However, I was really impressed by Cardwell last year. He looked as fast as Dye to me with more power. It was hard to understand why they didn't use him more, but you could say that a lot with MC at the helm.

The RB position isn't a spot that typically takes players as long to thrive unlike QB or establishing an O-line.

I haven't looked at Noah much yet. He looks potentially promising though.

I'm still holding out a little hope for Sean Dollars too. 

The RB position is really on the lower list of concerns for me heading into this season.