Can Oregon keep pace in the widening college football talent gap?
The Ducks have never had more talent on their roster. The problem is, neither has Ohio State.
In retrospect, the Oregon Ducks didn’t stand much of a chance against Ohio State seven years ago. But in the lead up to the Jan. 2015 national championship game, there was enough hope in Oregon’s outliers — its Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback leading a quick-strike offense — that the Ducks weren’t exactly overlooked coming into the team’s second title game appearance in five seasons.
From Grantland:
This is the moment Oregon has been building toward for more than a decade — the last, essential step in its ascent into the sport’s top tier. That kind of upward mobility has become virtually impossible: We haven’t seen a first-time champion since Florida in 1996. But the Ducks came close four years ago, when a less talented team than the one that will take the field tonight lost the title to Auburn on the final snap, and, frankly, the return trip seems overdue. With a win, Oregon will complete the circle and Mariota will ride into the NFL as one of a very small handful of eternally revered college quarterbacks since the turn of the century. With a loss, it will retreat into rebuilding mode in 2015 with lingering doubts over whether the window has closed. Ohio State, meanwhile, is in the title game ahead of schedule; the Buckeyes may be on the verge of a new dynasty under Meyer, but this roster is a young one, ultimately built to win next year when the lineup will consist almost solely of Meyer’s recruits. This is the Ducks’ time. … Oregon wins, 45-34.
Oregon, of course, didn't win. And it wasn’t particularly close, as Ohio State’s 42-20 win was buoyed by better talent across the board. The red flags were there. I remember talking to 220-pound Oregon middle linebacker Derrick Malone Jr. and 225-pound Ohio State running back Ezekiel Elliott at the same media day and coming away questioning the tackling physics there. I remember watching Cardale Jones, Ohio State’s third-string quarterback, casually whip 60-yard bombs flat-footed from his own end zone during warmups.
When the two teams got on the field, they just looked different. The score followed.
Sure, talent doesn’t mean everything. There were a couple of best-case scenarios in that game that could have led to an Oregon win. But consistent talent gets you more opportunities. It raises the floor.
Ohio State’s floor was just too high.
And while Mario Cristobal’s tenure at Oregon has closed some of the talent gap between the Ducks and college football’s elite, the Ducks will still be at a significant disadvantage, on paper, against the Buckeyes in Columbus on Saturday.
The last time they met, OSU had a blue-chip ratio (the percentage of a team’s signees from the previous four recruiting classes who were ranked as four or five-star recruits) of 68 percent. Oregon’s blue-chip ratio was 41 percent, with the general theory being that a true championship contender must have a blue-chip ratio of better than 50 percent.
Here’s how the two programs have changed since:
2014 BCR: Ohio State 68, Oregon 41
2015 BCR: Ohio State 68, Oregon 39
2016 BCR: Ohio State 70, Oregon 33
2017 BCR: Ohio State 71, Oregon 28
2018 BCR: Ohio State 76, Oregon 27
2019 BCR: Ohio State 81, Oregon 38
2020 BCR: Ohio State 80, Oregon 43
2021 BCR: Ohio State 79, Oregon 56
Thoughts:
1. After the championship loss, then-Oregon coach Mark Helfrich was asked how confident he was in the Ducks’ ability to get back to a national title game.
“Extremely confident,” Helfrich said. “It’s really hard, but Oregon is a place where that can happen. Everything is in place from a support standpoint, a facility standpoint and an infrastructure standpoint.”
And he was right in regards to those things, but then he mentioned the stability of Oregon’s coaching staff, which would be fired two years later. He also talked about the talent level, which, as seen in the numbers above, plummeted in the following years.
It’s impressive in its own right that Cristobal has elevated Oregon above the 50-percent threshold for the first time in program history. It’s incredible when considering the Ducks were at 27 percent just three years ago.
2. The goalposts are changing. Cristobal’s emphasis on recruiting has made Oregon the most talented team in the Pac-12, but the national elites have only gotten stronger, too.
From 2015 through 2019, only three teams in college football had a roster with an average player rating (per 247Sports) of 93 (out of 100) or better:
Alabama: 93.09 in 2015.
Alabama: 93.33 in 2017.
Alabama: 93.18 in 2019.
Five teams have eclipsed that mark in just the last two seasons:
2020
Alabama: 93.25
Georgia: 93.16
2021
Alabama: 94.34
Georgia: 93.52
Ohio State: 93.09
Oregon’s 2021 roster is the ninth-most talented (90.50) in the country, yet the distance between the third-ranked Buckeyes and Ducks (2.59 points) is larger the gap (2.56) that separates the Ducks from 18th-ranked Washington.
Or to put it this way: Three of the four five-star players on Oregon’s roster made sizable contributions during Saturday’s win over Fresno State. Noah Sewell had a pair of tackles for a loss, Kayvon Thibodeaux had a strip-sack and freshman Justin Flowe led all players with 14 tackles.
Ohio State has 15 five-stars on its roster.
Now, none of this is to say Oregon doesn’t have a chance against the Buckeyes Saturday. The talent numbers don’t take into account years and experience and coaching. They don’t take into account the brilliance of college football being that anything can happen.
But there’s also a reason it took 100 years for Montana to beat Washington.
Talent matters.
“We never feel like we’re where we need to be in recruiting,” Cristobal said in July. “You always want to elevate the level of athlete and caliber of player you bring into the program.”
And Cristobal has. Oregon’s 2021 signing class — No. 6 class in the nation — marked the second time in three years he’s landed a program-best class. The Ducks got better.
So did the Buckeyes with their third-ranked class, too.
— Tyson Alger