[BostonCard]

Mario Cristobal's immediate success at Oregon doesn't help.

It's amazing to me how much recruiting success helped shape that narrative.  In three years, Cristobal has won the Pac-12 North just once.  His record at Oregon is 25-10 (.714), which is pretty good but not great (by way of comparison, Mark Helfrich had a 37-16, a .698 winning percentage at Oregon before getting canned, and Helfrich at least made the national title game).  The difference, of course, is that Cristobal's recruiting has been the class of the Pac-12 (top rated recruiting class in the conference each year he's been head coach) and the feeling is that the Ducks will be a force to contend with going forward, while Helfrich's recruiting was very mediocre.  I suppose you could make the case that Helfrich inherited much more in the terms of talent than Cristobal, but I still remember Cristobal's Ducks couging it against us, and then doing so again the next year against Auburn (a loss that cost the Ducks a chance at the CFB playoffs).  And then there was last year's season, where Cristobal's Ducks actually wound up behind Lake's Huskies in the Pac-12 North but went on to go the Pac-12 championship as a 3-2 team because of COVID at UW, beat USC to make the Fiesta Bowl where they were handled easily by Iowa State.

I am still not sold on Cristobal as a coach, but off-the-charts recruiting covers a lot of sins, which is why I have him as a buy at 16.  I expect Oregon to be a top-10 team the next few years, but I expect they will underachieve relative to their top-5 recruiting talent.

BC

[BostonCard]

Mario Cristobal's immediate success at Oregon doesn't help.

It's amazing to me how much recruiting success helped shape that narrative.  In three years, Cristobal has won the Pac-12 North just once.  His record at Oregon is 25-10 (.714), which is pretty good but not great (by way of comparison, Mark Helfrich had a 37-16, a .698 winning percentage at Oregon before getting canned, and Helfrich at least made the national title game).  The difference, of course, is that Cristobal's recruiting has been the class of the Pac-12 (top rated recruiting class in the conference each year he's been head coach) and the feeling is that the Ducks will be a force to contend with going forward, while Helfrich's recruiting was very mediocre.  I suppose you could make the case that Helfrich inherited much more in the terms of talent than Cristobal, but I still remember Cristobal's Ducks couging it against us, and then doing so again the next year against Auburn (a loss that cost the Ducks a chance at the CFB playoffs).  And then there was last year's season, where Cristobal's Ducks actually wound up behind Lake's Huskies in the Pac-12 North but went on to go the Pac-12 championship as a 3-2 team because of COVID at UW, beat USC to make the Fiesta Bowl where they were handled easily by Iowa State.

I am still not sold on Cristobal as a coach, but off-the-charts recruiting covers a lot of sins, which is why I have him as a buy at 16.  I expect Oregon to be a top-10 team the next few years, but I expect they will underachieve relative to their top-5 recruiting talent.

BC