Greg McElroy argues Oregon was ranked too low in the preseason
As the season turns to October, there are a few predictions that some prognosticators would like to have back. For Greg McElroy, if there’s one that he’d want to have a redo on, his preseason ranking of the Oregon Ducks would be one he’d consider.
On ‘Always College Football’ this week, McElroy reexamined his Top-25 from before the season, a ranking where he had Oregon at No. 17. Considering all things, he is well aware that the eighth-ranked Ducks have proved him quite wrong over their first five games.
“At No. 17, we had Oregon. This was dumb,” said McElroy. “We should have had them as a Top-10 team.”
To be fair, Oregon hasn’t played great competition on their schedule so far. Still, when you consider how they’ve played and won, especially against Colorado in a prime slot, McElroy has seen a team that has embarrassed their competition for the most part.
“This group has been awesome. They have been awesome so far up to this point,” said McElroy. “Now, I know they beat Colorado but they made Colorado look really bad. I don’t think Colorado is as bad as they looked against Oregon.”
Oregon has been fantastic on both sides of the ball with an average of 51.6 points per game, second most in the nation, and only 11.8 points allowed per game, good for Top-10 in the country. Besides a comeback, eight-point win at Texas Tech, the Ducks have won the rest of their games by an average margin of 47.8 points. That includes an 84-12 start to their Pac-12 slate in two wins over the Buffaloes as well as Stanford.
We’ll learn a lot more about Oregon’s legitimacy once they come out of their bye week and play five ranked matchups over their final seven games. Through five weeks, though, McElroy already wants a mulligan because of how he misjudged the Ducks coming into the year.
“I like what I’ve seen from Oregon so we were dumb,” admitted McElroy. “We missed this one. They should have been much higher than they were.”
Joel Klatt says Oregon feels like ‘middle child’ in Pac-12
It isn’t easy being overlooked. On Wednesday, FOX Sports’ Joel Klatt compared Oregon to a middle child, one that’s stuck between USC and Washington.
“Don’t you think Oregon feels a little bit like the middle child? I think that they do,” Klatt said on his show. “That’s why you saw what you saw from Dan Lanning (against Colorado). He acted a little bit like my middle child, right? ‘Hey, look at us. We’re not in it for clicks. But, seriously, look at us, please.’ I mean, that was Oregon, and I get it.”
“Everybody talks about USC because of Caleb Williams and rightfully so,” Klatt said. “Everybody points to, including me, Washington, as the darling. They’re the shiny, new object in everybody’s life. Look at Kalen DeBoer and those wide receivers. Look at the big plays, look at the 40-yard plus touchdowns. Isn’t that great? Scary team up there. What do we say about Oregon? Nothing.”
Klatt then attempted to explain why the Ducks are often overlooked in the Pac-12 conversation.
“Oregon constantly gets left out because they don’t have what I would consider to be like the elite trait,” Lanning said. “Maybe their elite trait is in their balance, maybe their elite trait is in their physicality. Maybe the other two teams actually can’t beat Oregon because Oregon is better in more facets. But I’ve sensed it.”