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Looking At Some Of The Obscure Big Ten Varsity Sports

2025-08-04T10:00:00-07:00

Photo by Alysa Rubin/NCAA Photos via Getty Images

Let’s face it, the Midwest has unusual tastes

When I did a preview of Big Ten women’s sports last summer, I was intrigued by some of the varsity sports that some athletic departments supported. I can see all of the following as being club sports at nearly any university, but a varsity sport? That merits a look, so let’s take a shallow dive into what I’m talking about.

Women’s Bowling - Nebraska

Cornhusker’s women’s bowling was founded in 1983 as a club sport, and became a varsity in 1997. Nebraska has been in NCAA tournament 21 seasons in a row and won 11 national championships. Operates as an independent. Season runs Oct-Feb, NCAA tourney in April.

Game 1: Nebraska 256, Wichita State 217#GBR pic.twitter.com/kfFjfbH8XK
— Nebraska Bowling (@HuskerBowling) April 11, 2025

Pistol

Ohio State is the only Big Ten university that has Pistol as a varsity sport, and both men and women are represented. The season for Pistol runs from October to early March, with the NCAA tournament being in the middle of March.

Rather than try and explain how the competitions work, here is a handy chart of the basics of Pistol competition:

Pistol Quick Facts

The Buckeyes dominate the pistol competitions, and have won the national championship for the past five years in a row. In the 2025t championship, Ohio State scored 4476, followed by Navy (4350), Army (4325), Utah (4285), and The Citadel (4213).

Rifle

Ohio State is the only B1G school represented in Men’s Rifle, while both OSU and Nebraska field varsity Women’s Rifle teams. 28 rifle teams compete in the NCAA. Their schedule runs from October to February, and the NCAA qualifiers begin in the middle of February. Last season, OSU placed 13th in the national rankings, while Nebraska placed 11th.

Here is a rundown of some of the basic rules of NCAA rifle:

Smallbore Rifle Specs:

Shooters use .22 caliber rifles, firing 20 shots in each of the three positions (prone, kneeling, and standing) at 50 feet.

Air Rifle Specs:

Shooters use .177 caliber rifles, firing 60 shots in the standing position at 10 meters.

Equipment Used:

Only single-shot, manually loaded rifles are permitted, and they cannot be changed between rounds. Shooters can use accessories like buttstocks, but the rifle cannot exceed 8 kg.

Scoring:

Scores are based on the accuracy of each shot, with a perfect score of 10.9 in each discipline.

Safety:

Strict safety rules are in place, including the use of safety flags and ensuring rifles are pointed downrange in a safe direction.

Conduct:

Rules also cover conduct during competition, with penalties for rule violations.

Modifications For Disabilities:

Teams can request modifications to rules for athletes with disabilities, provided safety is not compromised.

The following is a 46 minute NCAA replay of this last season’s championship. You can get an idea from here on how a competition operates.

Fencing

#GoBucks pic.twitter.com/4oV1cLKepH
— Ohio State Fencing (@OhioStateFEN) February 2, 2025

Ohio State and Penn State participate in NCAA fencing. Men and women play the same schedule and the season runs from September to March. In the most recent final standings, Ohio State ranked 5th and Penn State ranked 8th.

Here is a rundown of the NCAA rules regarding fencing:

Individual competition

Format: Preliminary rounds are in pools, with bouts lasting up to three minutes or until five points are scored. Elimination rounds consist of three three-minute periods with one-minute breaks, and the first to 15 points wins.

Tie-breaking: A one-minute sudden-death priority round determines the winner if the score is tied at the end of regulation time. Priority is decided by a coin toss before the tiebreak.

Target areas and scoring:

Foil: Valid target area is the torso, requiring a touch from the blade’s tip with enough force to depress the point.
Saber: Touches can be scored with the blade’s edge or tip on the body from the hips to the head, including arms and mask.
Epee: The entire body is a valid target area, with touches scored only by the blade’s tip.

Right-of-way (Foil and Saber): Only one fencer can score in Foil and Saber. If both land a touch simultaneously, the referee determines who had priority based on factors like initiating the attack or parrying.

No Right-of-Way (Epee): If both fencers land a touch simultaneously in Epee, both score a point.

Team competition

Format: Squads of three fencers compete in a “relay match,” with each fencer facing every fencer from the opposing team in a series of nine bouts. Each bout lasts three minutes or until a team reaches a multiple of five touches.

Scoring: The first team to reach 45 points, or the team with the higher score when time expires, wins.

Tie-breaking: A one-minute sudden-death tiebreak is fenced by the fencers from the last bout if scores are tied after nine bouts. The rules mirror individual tiebreak rules, with priority decided by a coin toss.

Equipment and penalties

All equipment must meet United States Fencing Association standards and NCAA logo rules and be checked by an armorer before competition.
Penalties for rule infractions are assessed using a system of yellow, red, and black cards, depending on the severity.

Poll: Favorite MBB Guard?

2025-08-03T12:30:00-07:00

Chris Pietsch/The Register-Guard via Imagn Content Services, LLC

So, lately my colleague Duck_Caught_Upstream has been asking y’all who your favorite Oregon Football players were, based on position. So, I figured, why not adapt that concept to the hardwood? So that’s what we’re doing today, starting with the guards.

Let me know who y’all are still giving some love to! And tell me if I missed your favorite guard, I’ll (probably) have an explanation as to why I left them off.

‘Sco Ducks!

MBB Big Ten Preview: Rutgers

2025-08-03T12:00:00-07:00

Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images

The Scarlett Knights were tough at home in 2025, but otherwise very mediocre.

After ending 2022 and 2023 with winning records, Rutgers Basketball took a slight step back in 2024, finishing just under .500 at 15-17. Heading into their first season in the expanded Big Ten, there was hope they could get back on the winning side.

They started with a loss to a tough St. Johns team but followed that up with four consecutive wins. Heading into the Players Era Tournament in Las Vegas, they were 5-2.

They gutted out a one point overtime victory over Notre Dame and were nearly matched up with Oregon for the tournament title game, but fell to Top 10 Alabama in a close contest. A follow-up loss to Top 20 Texas A&M completed their run in Sin City.

Their first two Big ten games were a split, with a loss to Ohio State and a win over Penn State. They then followed up a solid win over Seton Hall with a heartbreaking loss to Pinceton. A victory over Columbia completed their nonconference slate.

Resuming conference play, things weren’t looking pretty with an 0-3 start. They followed up an impressive win over UCLA with a victory at Nebraska, but dropped three of their next four.

They earned perhaps their biggest win of the season at home against Maryland, but proceeded to lose three straight after that, including a blowout loss in Eugene.

They finished the regular season relatively well, winning three of five, but succumbed to USC in their first Big Ten Tournament game in double overtime, effectively ending their season.

Roster-wise it will be a tall task heading into 2025-26 to replace Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey, who were by far the most productive players last season. Harper averaged 19 points per game with five rebounds and Bailey notched 18 points and seven rebounds per contest.

Not only that, they lost starters Lathan Sommerville and Jeremiah Williams as well and head into this season with only one Senior on the roster.

Expect the Scarlett Knights to have some major growing pains and likely finish near the bottom of the conference.

MBB: 2025-26 Basketball Preview: Purdue

2025-08-02T07:00:00-07:00

Photo by Andy Hancock/NCAA Photos/NCAA Photos via Getty Images

Hellooooo everybody! We are back with another Big Ten basketball preview, and this one’s a doozy. We’re talking, of course, about the Purdue Boilermakers. So, let’s get into it, shall we? Purdue finished last season with a 24-12 record, finishing tied with UCLA and Wisconsin for 4th place in the conference (13-7). They would (of course) make the NCAA Tournament, making it to the Sweet Sixteen before falling to national runner-up Houston.

In a shocking (for this day in age, anyway) turn of events, the Boilermakers didn’t lose a whole lot this off-season. They really only lost three rotation players from last season. Two players hit the portal: G Myles Colvin (5.4 points, 2.3 rebounds and 0.5 assists in ~18 minutes per game) to Wake Forest, and F Cameron Heide (4.7 points, 3.6 rebounds, 0.4 assists in ~20 minutes per game) to Texas. The other rotational departure was Caleb Furst, a 6’10” forward who played around 18 minutes a game and averaged 4 points and 3.5 rebounds.

They would help shore up some of the size they lost in the portal, by grabbing Oscar Cluff, a 6’11” Australian center who averaged 17.6 points and 12.3 rebounds last year at South Dakota State, and Liam Murphy, a 6’7” forward who averaged 13 points on 42% from three last year at North Florida.

Honestly, this might be the most boring “names to watch for” I’ve done yet, because Purdue’s best players from last year all came back. The main one to watch is senior F Trey Kaufman-Renn, the team’s leading scorer (20.1 ppg) and rebounder (6.5 rpg) last season. TKR took a giant leap between his sophomore and junior seasons, partially due to his minutes per game doubling. But he also shot better from the floor across the board and was able to stay (mostly) out of foul trouble. Every year in the NBA draft there’s a sneaky college senior that gets picked in the 2nd round and goes on to be a legitimate NBA guy, and I honestly think TKR could be that guy in the 2026 draft. Dude’s got the tools.

Next up is another senior, G Braden Smith. Smith was the 2nd leading scorer for the Boilermakers (15.8 ppg), but was by far the best distributor, dishing out close to 9 assists per game (8.7). He also led the team in steals with an impressive 2.2 per game and was the 2nd leading rebounder (4.5). I absolutely LOVE this dude. Definitely undersized, at just 6’0” and 175, but he isn’t afraid to fly in for a rebound or hunt contact. The dude just goes out and hoops, and he’s as scrappy as they come. Perfect combination for a “fan-favorite” kind of guy. If he can knock the three ball down just smidge more often than last year (shot 38% in 6.1 attempts), I think he could be a standout guy this season.

The last name I’ll throw out to watch is going to be that big Aussie transfer, Oscar Cluff. Purdue thrives when they have a legitimate big man in the middle (such as Zach Edey, Isaac Haas, or AJ Hammons for you sickos who were watching Purdue in 2015). I think this coaching staff will be able to get the most they possibly can out of Cluff, and I really think he could end up as one of their best players by the time they inevitably make the NCAA Tourney again.

So, yeah, Purdue is good at basketball. They just are. I will be SHOCKED if they finish any lower than, like 6th in the Big Ten. They’re just always a tough, tough team. Yada yada yada, only certainties in life are death, taxes, and Purdue making it to at least the Sweet Sixteen in the tournament.

The Ducks will travel to Purdue this season, date and time TBD still.

As always, ‘Sco Ducks.

Football: Oregon Play Calling by Down and Distance

2025-08-01T07:01:00-07:00

Ben Lonergan/The Register-Guard / USA TODAY NETWORK

When does the Oregon offense fly high?

It is almost August and football season is right around the corner. With fall camp about to begin I wanted to take a look back at the 2025 question to investigate a frequent criticism of OC Will Stein: that he does not stretch the field with the downfield passing game enough.

It is useless hyperbole to say the Ducks “never throw deep” under Stein. There did seem to be games during the film review I did last year, at Wisconsin and the Rose Bowl specifically, when the offense seemed to be reluctant to try to go over the top. In this article, I will go over the number to see if that impression has any validity.

I first broke down play choice and efficiency for the 2024-2025 offense by down and distance, along with the efficiency of various play types in each scenario. There is a significant amount of historical data that hythloday has compiled showing that on 2nd and 3rd downs play calling significantly changes when the offense has more than 3 yards to go, and again with more than seven yards to go. As such, I split 2nd and 3rd down plays into short (3 or fewer yards to go), medium (7 or fewer yards to go), and long (15 or fewer yards to go). Plays with more than fifteen yards to go are exceptional and hythloday has found they skew the analysis, so such plays were removed.

I did run numbers for fourth downs as well, but even over a full season I ended up with very small sample sizes. Combined with different dynamics on fourth down play calling, I did not include this as part of the analysis. First downs also have different dynamics, so after discussion with hythloday I decided to only include 1st down plays with between 8 and 12 yards to go. As usual, only non-trick plays during meaningful play are included. I’ve separated out rush plays, all passing plays, and drop back passing plays only (i.e. not screen passes).

With all the preamble out of the way, here are the results for efficiency.

Offensive efficiency for Oregon Ducks football 2024-2025 season by down and distance.

Already there are some interesting trends visible, but lets combine them with the bigger picture. To investigate this further, I isolated only drop back passing plays (no screens) and found the explosive rate (passing plays 15 yards or more), as well as both yards per play (excluding sacks, scrambles, and throwaways), and yards per completion. I have charted the results below.

Tristan Holmes and hythloday

Drop back passing performance by down and distance

That’s a lot of numbers on a lot of bars, but what can we discern? A lot of the play calling we saw from Oregon in 2025 was very close to a typical FBS offense, though the Ducks were far above average in efficiency and production in all categories. There were a couple of discrepancies though.

The first thing that jumped out to me was that despite both hythloday and I bemoaning how the offense was calling an above FBS average number of screen passes when their production on these plays was below average, there was one situation where including screen passes increased efficiency over drop back passing: second and medium. With hindsight, Stein should have saved his screen passes for this situation and called screens in other situations rarely if ever.

Second down is also where the one irrational trend I was able to identify shows up, and it does match Stein’s reputation of being “gun shy.” Based on hythloday’s historical data, the FBS median for passing on second and short is around 30% with a 55% success rate, while Big Ten offenses generally only pass about 25% of the time with similar success rates in this situation. Last season Oregon was more than 10% more efficient than a typical FBS offense passing on second down, but only threw the ball in this situation at a comparable rate to plodding Big Ten teams.

This is even less defensible since Oregon was so good at picking up conversions on third and short. Moreover, when the Ducks did throw on 2nd and short they were at their most explosive. It’s very perplexing since Lanning and Stein have frequently been willing to go for it on 4th and short once near midfield, meaning once in decent field position the offense could count on two plays to convert short yardage even if the “shot” play was incomplete.

I want to finish on a high note, so I will point out that while I have criticisms about second and short, third and medium play calling was excellent. Oregon dropped back to throw in this situation about 85% of the time as opposed to 80% for the Big Ten or wider FBS, but were far more successful at over 60% compared to 40% for typical FBS and Big Ten teams. When Oregon did run on third and medium, they made it count with a superb 85% efficiency, leaving the 40% FBS and 35% Big Ten benchmarks in the dust. This shows a strong ability by Stein to choose opportune moments to break tendency.

With a new QB, new starting receivers, and 4 out of five new starters on the offensive line, there will doubtless be differences in efficiency in various situations this upcoming season. With young athletes out wide and strong armed quarterbacks on the roster, I’d still like to see some more deep balls on second and short. Just make sure to keep that toss play into the boundary ready to go on third and medium!

MBB: New Look

2025-07-31T12:00:00-07:00

Photo by Andres Gutierrez/Anadolu via Getty Images

After making the round of 32 the past couple seasons, Oregon looks to push further with new and returning players.

Once it was confirmed that Oregon Men’s Basketball was brining back Nate Bittle, Jackson Shelstad, and Kwame Evans, fans knew they had a solid base to build upon for the 2025-26 season.

The question then became, who to fill the remaining holes with.

Over the last 15 years, head coach Dana Altman has been stellar at doing just that, utilizing the Transfer Portal to his advantage long before it was so main stream to do so.

This month, he filled a big gap at the Center position by reeling in 7-foot Nigerian Ege Demir. Initially recruited to play at UCLA, Demir didn’t qualify due to lower than desired English test scores.

After playing in Turkey for three years, Demir has developed into a reliable big, one that will give Bittle some much needed rest throughout the season. Last year, Oregon utilized Supreme Cook at backup Center, who at 6’8” wasn’t your prototypical big.

At 7-foot with a 7’3” wingspan and 9’3” reach, Demir fits the bill of another true five.

There was also the task of replacing the production of TJ Bamba and Jadrian Tracey.

For that, Altman turned to transfers Sean Stewart and Devon Pryor. Stewart, who transferred in from Ohio State, provides even more size and depth in the frontcourt at a sturdy 6’9” and 220 pounds.

Averaging six points and six boards a game while shooting 54 percent, Stewart is an ideal backup to Evans.

With averages of three points and two rebounds, the 6’7” Pryor doesn’t quite match Bamba’s production on paper, but provides the needed middle ground at the three and should be a solid backup to expected starter Dezdrick Lindsay, who missed last season due to injury.

Finally, there was the difficult task of bolstering the guard position after mainstay Keeshawn Barthelemy graduated.

Shelstad will undoubtedly be more effective than ever, but playing alongside Barthelemy and Jermaine Couisnard the year prior gave him some cushioning should he fall on the wrong side of a hot/cold streak, which he’s been prone to.

Enter Elon transfer TK Simpkins, who averaged 16 points, three rebounds, three assists, and shot a reasonable 37 percent from beyond the arc. At 6’4”, Simpkins can be somewhat of a hybrid guard while the smaller Shelstad mans the point.

To solidify the guard rotation, Altman picked up 3-Star recruit JJ Frakes, who should be able to stretch the floor fairly well with a 45 percent shooting percentage from the floor and 36 percent from deep.

Jamari Phillips, who appeared in 14 games for Oregon last season, is returning for his sophomore campaign. Somewhat of a hybrid himself, Phillips should be a viable option at the two in any given situation.

Duck Dive: Maryland Football 2025 Preview

2025-07-31T07:01:00-07:00

Photo by Mark Goldman/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Going deep with the Terrapins’ scheme, returning personnel, and unknowns

Special thanks to Matt Germack of Testudo Times for joining me to discuss Maryland’s roster on this week’s podcast:

This has been an eventful offseason for Maryland as they’re making major program transitions in just about every way. On the podcast, Matt and I discussed how head coach Locksley had broken “the Curse of the Fridge” — after Maryland unwisely fired alumnus Ralph Friedgen in 2010 and went through a decade of incompetent leadership afterwards with a 37% winning percentage to show for it — and had put together a functioning coaching staff, leveraged local talent advantages, and was stringing together bowl wins and NFL draft picks. Through that, Locksley had held together a core group of staffers and minimized player departures, fending off what Matt called an impending resource problem.

That’s all broken open this offseason - the athletic department is being reshaped to “pure generate revenue mode” as Matt put it, the vast majority of the two-deep who’d gotten the Terrapins through this recent run have now graduated, transferred out, or been drafted, and Locksley has shaken up the staff by firing nearly all of the top-level coaches and restructuring the positional assistants. There are quite a few promising storylines to track for the future — Locksley has landed some big names in recruiting and for his coordinators, some of the portal additions are potentially win-right-away guys, and the kind of local skill talent on both sides of the ball that Midwestern Big Ten teams often don’t have access to — but massive rebuild projects in the trenches and what’s likely a developmental year for their phenom quarterback recruit mean this will likely be a transitional year that sets up what we might see for this iteration of the Terps in 2026 and 2027.

Offense

Locksley relieved the offensive coordinator Josh Gattis of playcalling duties in the middle of last season and took over playcalling himself. Gattis had been in place since 2023, and I doubt his preferred passing scheme which uses the run game as setup that I’d seen at more rushing-oriented prior stops (Penn State, Alabama, Michigan) was going to be a great fit at Maryland until they get some big improvements in their offensive line, though the RPO and sideline shot mix they were using the last two years was a good fit for their talent. Locksley hired OC Hamilton, a longtime NFL passing game coach whose college time has been with Jim Harbaugh and David Shaw. That’s a very intriguing hire, he’s an old-school QB guru and has been out of work (I don’t know if the XFL counts as work) for the last couple years and I’m really interested to see how much of the RPO game we see or if this looks like an attempt to recreate Stanford in 2011.

The quarterback who got the Terps to those three consecutive bowl games in 2021 through 2023 (and still holds the Big Ten career passing record, a fact we agreed on the podcast demonstrates how against-type Locksley’s team has played in this league) was Taulia Tagovailoa. His backup in that time was Billy Edwards Jr, who got his shot at leading a similarly composed offense in the 2023 bowl game and the 2024 season after Tagovailoa went pro and he beat out North Carolina State transfer MJ Morris for the job.

I’d figured that Morris was brought in to start because he already had gotten half a dozen career starts due to a peculiar substitution history in Raleigh but retained several years of remaining eligibility, and that the offense would need his athleticism to replicate Tagovailoa’s ability to salvage plays by scrambling and improvising out of the pocket. Matt told me that probably was the staff’s thinking but also it was always going to be a competition with Edwards, and Morris just wasn’t developing while Edwards was ready to go with a big arm. The arm strength was always clear with Edwards, but his accuracy and touch wasn’t particularly well refined in 2024 and without the ability to extend plays as much as his predecessor Maryland’s NCAA passer rating collapsed, from Tagovailoa’s career 146.1 to Edwards’ 130.1, a full standard deviation.

Matt stuck up for Edwards on the podcast, blaming most of the dropoff on the offensive line, and predicted a big season for him as the new starter at Wisconsin (the two teams see each other as their conference opener in September, should be fun). It’s true that the line got marginally worse in personnel from 2023 to 2024, but the effective pocket breakdown rate was basically identical (the run game was more affected by the line changes, particularly 2^nd & 3^rd downs when they really needed it) and it’s very clear from the fundamental stats and down & distance situational analysis that QB accuracy was the culprit in passing efficiency and explosiveness falling off, with 2^nd & medium and 3^rd & short opportunities falling off a cliff by nearly 30 percentage points going from Tagovailoa to Edwards while everything else stayed fairly similar. It seems clear that Maryland won’t get above water offensively until they make some major strides on the line, and since that’s going to be a multiple-year project, to me the premium in the short term is on QB athleticism.

In addition to Edwards transferring out, Morris and a couple of developmental guys, Cameron Edge and Jayden Sauray, hit the portal as well. That means the only returning scholarship quarterback is redshirt freshman mid 3-star #12 QB K. Martin, and Matt said we haven’t really seen much from him and he doesn’t really figure into the competition right now other than a depth piece.

The three additions into the room are #15 QB J. Hamilton, a low 3-star recruit and son of the coordinator, #6 QB J. Martin who transferred in from UCLA, and the “talk of the offseason” recruit mid 4-star #7 QB Washington. Evidently Locksley and the whole program has everything pinned on Washington (Matt was replete with stories about his recruitment and media availabilities, going so far as to say that if Washington transfers out Locksley would be fired), but he’s unlikely to be a day-one starter.

That will probably go to the UCLA transfer Martin (unrelated to the returning redshirt freshman), who was a low 4-star in the 2022 cycle and has showed a lot of athleticism in practices according to friend of the series Michael Hanna of the B Team but wasn’t refined enough to break in until he was forced to start last year against Penn State due to an injury to the Bruins’ starter. Matt and I have both watched that game and agreed that Martin showed a lot of poise considering he had an NFL 1^st rounder breathing down his neck the entire game - I think he’s got the athletic profile to fit what Maryland needs right now, though how he’s developed as a passer and how he fits into the new scheme (or what that scheme is) remains undetermined because that was a single-game sample with such a skew of bad protection and lethal pass rush.

It’s an interesting question as to how the backup situation would work. Everybody except the UCLA transfer is a freshman who hasn’t played. Hamilton is the coach’s kid, which could mean he’s a savvy operator ahead of his years or it could mean he just landed a spot as a favor. Washington is clearly the future of the position and Matt suggested he could even be the starter by the end of the year, but the whole point of starting someone else when he’s a true freshman is to not hinder his development by playing him prematurely, so throwing him in if Martin goes down would defeat the purpose. Matt bet on Washington because his demeanor struck him as so mature.

I spent quite some time in last Summer’s preview breaking down the history of Maryland’s running back room, from their huge rotation peaking in 2021 down to the three-back system they’ve used the last three years, and the upside-down efficiency to frequency figures with which backs have been getting the carries vs which backs should have been. Matt summed it up nicely by saying that they’ve been unsuccessfully trying to recreate Roman Hemby’s 2022 season for the last three years (with a funny and accurate story about needing a ref to throw a key block for him last year). Hemby has transferred out, while Colby McDonald, who analytically has been the best back all four years since 2021 but had his carries cut back every year, has graduated.

The three returners are #25 RB Ray, who was the second back behind Hemby last year, plus #17 RB McLaurin and #20 RB D. Williams from the 2024 cycle who got some garbage time work as true freshmen last year but nothing during meaningful play. They’ve taken no transfers here — the only such position on the offense and one of only two on the entire team — just a couple of prep recruits in the same mid-to-high 3-star (~.87) talent range as the returners.

Ray figures to be the lead back, he was getting substantial carries as a true freshman in 2023 and his carry count continued to increase through the end of the 2024 season. His per-carry success rate was awful last year, 39.2%, worse than Hemby’s 47.2% (and way lower than McDonald’s 61%, but that’s been true of every back for four years), but Ray put up a respectable 4.92 adjusted YPC despite that low efficiency. I’ve always liked Ray’s tape and as Matt and I discussed on the podcast, he could do a lot of damage behind a better offensive line, he’s just not a very big back and hasn’t shown he can be his own blocker - if he can locate a hole and squeeze through it he can get a longer run, there’s a ton of potential, but I think he’s more sensitive than backs of other builds to the quality of the line and I have a hard time seeing much better production in 2025. Matt said that Williams is likely to be the second back, which makes sense as he got the majority of the garbage time run last year and is built as the bigger of the two 2024 guys.

All three of the tight ends Maryland used in 2024 have transferred out - Preston Howard, Leron Husbands, and Dylan Wade. Howard and Wade were categorized as TEs but at about 6’2” and 240 lbs they were each used more like Y-receivers than true all-purpose guys, while Husbands didn’t get a single target but was on the field extensively as a blocker at closer to 250 lbs.

The returners are #16 TE Haughton from the 2022 cycle and #89 TE A. Szymanski from 2023. I haven’t seen either in meaningful play at Maryland, though Haughton is built like Howard and Wade (though even skinnier, he’s currently listed under 230 lbs) and got a couple garbage time catches last year. Szymanski has by far the biggest dimensions of any TE I’ve seen since I’ve been charting Maryland, 6’5” and 266 lbs, but I’ve never seen him on the field.

They’ve taken a true freshman who arrives in the Fall and will no doubt redshirt, as well as Georgia State transfer #9 TE Fleming who was very productive with the Panthers last year. Fleming is listed with a similar build to Howard and Wade, about 235 lbs, and Matt and I agreed he’ll probably be used in the same way. There’s no reason to doubt Fleming will be a big target in Maryland’s offense in 2025, but unless he can block much bigger than his frame suggests (or Szymanski surprises by being playable; Matt said it wasn’t promising) the offense is going to be effectively in four-wide configuration all year. It’s surprising that this room isn’t bigger and I’m very curious how an old hand like Hamilton plans to make this work - as Matt said, the line just isn’t going to be able to operate without blocking help and Hamilton running the Air Raid doesn’t seem like his wheelhouse.

Maryland has put its chips on a great wide receiver group since Locksley arrived, and perhaps more importantly, giving themselves multiple options each time they needed to reload since the starters haven’t always turned out to be the obvious favorites. That looks to continue in 2025 with another reload - they lose their top producers to the NFL and a trio of 2023 developmental guys bounced, but they brought in a couple of great looking transfers and have some promising talent returning as well as some very intriguing fresh faces.

The main targets the last couple of seasons have been Tai Felton and Kaden Prather, big outside receivers (although roped into taking some inside catch-and-run passes in last year’s offense that weren’t really their game just to try and exploit their athletic advantage over a lot of Big Ten secondaries) who got close to 200 combined meaningful targets between them in 2024. Felton was drafted in the 3^rd round by the Vikings and Prather in the 7^th by the Bills.

There was a big falloff to the next tier of pass catchers, which put together still added up to fewer than Felton’s alone. About two-thirds of those went to whichever TE was on the field, Howard or Wade, and the remaining third mostly went to #5 WR O. Smith. He was a shorter slot guy but on a per-target basis played a fairly unique and valuable role in the 2024 offense because he had great hands for catching very quick passes that Edwards would rifle out (sometimes lacking pinpoint accuracy; the QB did better throwing rainbows along the sideline and letting Felton or Prather defeat coverage and adjust on them). Smith’s per-target efficiency was the highest on the team at 57.1%, though his adjusted YPT on these shorter throws was just mediocre at 7.34. Smith figures to have an expanded role in the 2025 offense as the most experienced returner with valuable hands and the only viable shorter guy … besides perhaps the intriguing true freshman low 4-star #10 WR Z. Smith Matt suggested as a potential gadget player.

The other returner who got some play was 2022 low 4-star #4 WR Knotts. He had a terrible per-target success rate, but I think that was product of misuse - he’s a tall flanker who should have been getting those rainbow passes, but there was no room in the 2024 offense for that with Felton and Prather available so all of his reps came inside and he just wasn’t able to handle Edwards’ heat the way Smith could. Matt told me that Locksley has been in Knotts’ corner from the get-go (and has given him a nickname, apparently) so there’s certainly some potential that he steps out from the shadow of the NFL departures and plays a more natural role for him in 2025. But as Matt put it, “I’m not doubting it, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Maryland took a huge 2023 recruiting class at receiver and it’s looking like they’ll get maybe one playable guy out of that group, #11 WR Manning, and even with him Matt said he’ll probably be behind Smith in the slot as a backup at most until later seasons. The rest of that class either switched positions (Haughton), transferred out this offseason without really seeing the field (Ezekiel Avit, Josh Richards, Braeden Wisloski), or have generated no attention (#21 WR S. Williams). Matt also thought the two freshmen who redshirted last year, #8 WR White and #81 WR Powell-Wonson need some more development before they play.

Beyond Knotts, Maryland has taken three more additions as replacement options on the outside for Felton and Prather: #1 WR Farooq who transferred from Oklahoma, Juco Jordan Scott who initially signed with Florida State but recently flipped to Maryland, and #84 WR Webb who transferred from Tennessee. Farooq was one of Dillon Gabriel’s favorite targets at Oklahoma and put up excellent numbers through 2023, but missed almost all of 2024 with an injury. Webb was also primarily productive in 2023 as a redshirt freshman and looked to be rising in 2024 which I charted for playoff purposes, but got sidelined in favor of a much less effective G5 transfer in one of the Vols’ many irrational decisions. Scott is absolutely enormous at 6’7” and Matt said he can really run, which would make him a game-changing body if he’s for real, though he never played at Florida State so we haven’t been able to see his film.

This is a pretty good looking group of receivers. It’s most likely going to be Farooq and Webb on the outside and the older Smith on the inside, but they have options in Knotts and Scott for the former, and Manning and the younger Smith for the latter, and even more depth pieces who are height balanced with the 6’2” White and 5’11” Powell-Wonson. For a group that had so little production in 2024, much less in a Terps uniform, I’d be pretty confident that they’ll post some top flight numbers in 2025 simply because the talent looks legit and the balance is on-point - that’s been Maryland’s strong suit under Locksley and there’s no reason to think it’ll change. The bottleneck has been elsewhere.

Maryland played eleven offensive linemen at one point or another during meaningful play in 2024, tied for the most I charted last year. Some was injury related but much of it was experimentation to find better options for was a staggeringly poor performance, and multiple true freshmen rotating in prior to garbage time for experience which struck me as inadvisable. There’s a chance this line stabilizes in 2025 — the starting group Matt and I penciled in would be halfway decent, if they went with the right version and stuck with it — but I’m not optimistic that they’ll get it right in the first place or that they’ll resist tinkering as Matt intimated that the directive to do so comes from Locksley himself, and told me that new OL coach Wroblewski was just the old coach’s assistant who got a promotion for reasons that defy comprehension.

Departures from last year’s playing group include left tackle Andre Roye, left guard (and converted nose tackle) Isaac Bunyun, another left guard Kyle Long, a third left guard Tamarus Walker, center Josh Kaltenberger, and two of the three rotational right tackles Terez Davis and Marcus Dumervil. Kaltenberger signed a UDFA with the Chargers and Bunyun graduated, but the other five transferred out, as did two guys who didn’t play, Deandre Duffus and Kevin Kalonji.

The two starters who return are #66 RG Bah and #71 RT Herron, and the two true freshmen who got some backup time who return as true sophomores are #61 C Hershey and #50 OT T. Szymanski (Hershey and Davis were intentionally rotated in for experience, though it backfired as Davis transferred out, while Szymanski, the brother of the TE, came in due to a brief injury). Herron was a Division-II transfer but proved to be capable at the FBS level, despite all the odd rotation at his position. It was bizarre that RG was the one position at which there was no substitution because Bah has had some of the lowest blocking grades I’ve ever seen and I don’t think he’s playable at this level (Matt instantly and quite vocally agreed on the podcast, at one point I started to feel guilty about how much we were piling on the guy). The one other returner of significance is senior Buffalo transfer #74 LG Wright, who unfortunately took a season-ending injury after transferring in last cycle during Fall camp, as he was set to be a starter. Matt said he doesn’t have confirmation that Wright is back to 100% but due to the amount of time since the injury he’s betting on it and has him as starting LG.

Maryland has taken a dozen prep recruits over the last two cycles. Eleven of them have very similar mid 3-star talent ratings, but the last, #70 OL Gilchrist, stands apart as a mid 4-star and Matt said he was very enthusiastic about the local prospect. Given Locksley’s inclination to rotate true freshmen, we both think there’s a high likelihood that Gilchrist plays early, but the really intriguing possibility is that he goes in at right guard from the beginning and benches Bah. I think that would be a better option — I’m not sure it’s possible for it to be worse — but the staff seemed to show a completely irrational favoritism for Bah last year so who knows.

The two portal additions are both FCS starters at tackle, #76 OT Perry from Central Connecticut and more recently Carlos Moore from Elon. I haven’t been able to watch their tape (a running theme on the podcast is that all of Maryland’s extensive FCS acquisitions this cycle have been from the East coast, and West coast FCS tape is much better represented in my film library), but Matt has Perry penciled in for left tackle starter while he thinks Moore is a backup option for the tackles and Herron will keep his starting job on the right side.

With Hershey apparently training to be the center last year (although it’s uncertain who his backup is now), the lineup that looked best to Matt and I would be Perry-Wright-Hershey-Gilchrist-Herron, with Moore as the tackle depth and Bah as the guard depth. That would be a pretty good mix of experience and talent, appropriate body types at each spot, and only one starter right out of the portal … there are some risks but there’d be a pretty good shot at viability, if they could only stick to it. Matt said he thinks the staff will go with Bah at RG and he’s probably right, but perhaps Gilchrist will prove impossible to keep off the field.

Defense

Maryland had been running a somewhat unique odd front in the Big Ten under Brian Williams, the defensive line coach who came in with Locksley and had also taken over as coordinator for the last four seasons I’d been charting the team. They had very specific roles for each of the three down linemen and very rarely deviated from them schematically, getting all the playcalling flexibility out of the two OLBs in a double-eagle configuration and two ILBs who were ahead of the curve for being longer, leaner pass-playing types, and switching out backers rather than linemen when they went to a nickel on the back end.

I generally considered Maryland to be punching above their weight class defensively under Williams - they didn’t have the recruiting pull to get the truly elite edge rush they really needed for a top shelf defense, but statistical analysis showed that their savvy veterans in the front consistently overperformed in run stuffing, they were producing highly productive linebackers that better resourced programs kept poaching, and they kept churning out NFL defensive backs. They ran aground in 2024 when that year’s crop of new DBs turned out to below the usual high standard, but in my opinion that’s the worst that can be fairly said of the defensive management given the program constraints.

Williams has left for the DC job at Jacksonville State this offseason; Matt said he did so ahead of the other staff changes so it’s possible he was hired away, but he also said there was a feeling that Williams was going to be fired if he hadn’t gotten out of Dodge so perhaps he had some calls out well in advance. At any rate, Locksley has hired DC Monachino who was most recently North Carolina’s DL coach but will be taking the OLB remit at Maryland, and has a 20-year background as an NFL defensive coach. Matt said he expects the defense to look similar to Monachino’s three-down system he ran as DC with the Colts and so there won’t be much in the way of structural changes.

The rest of the defensive coaching staff changes look like a big game of musical chairs (one of the reasons Matt and I started talking about Maryland’s resource situation, an interesting conversation especially about the basketball team) with assistant DL coach Liuget getting a promotion to on-field, DB coach Thomas moving over from OLBs, and ILB coach Spavital moving from DBs. The only person who actually left, other than Williams, is former ILB coach Lance Thompson … who went to North Carolina to take over for Monachino!

The defensive two-deep is looking at an almost total rebuild in 2025, with nine out of eleven starters departing (and one of the two returning starters will probably move positions or lose his job entirely), with major losses among the frequently used rotational players as well. The departures are most significant at the line of scrimmage and get less so moving up levels of the defense - all five starters on the line of scrimmage plus both of the most frequently used rotational down-linemen are gone, at the second level they lose both starting off-ball backers but return the rest of a large rotation with a lot of experience, and in the secondary they lose the two best starters and a couple promising younger guys but it was such a poorly performing backfield that a shakeup is probably for the best.

The three fist-down starters for multiple seasons were Jordan Phillips at nose, Tommy Akingbesote as what I’ve been calling the DT (usually at a 2i or 3-tech), and Quashon Fuller on the other side at what I think of as the DE (usually a 5-tech though sometimes bunched in closer). Phillips was drafted in the 5^th by the Dolphins and Akingbesote in the 7^th by the Cowboys. When either of them rotated off the field, though that wasn’t very often, they’d be replaced by Lavon Johnson, but he’s now transferred out. Fuller rotated much more frequently, most often with Taizse Johnson (who Matt pointed out was practically a starter and should be considered part of this very technically sound group of seniors) who’s graduated as well, but also a bit with underclassmen #46 DL Fontus and #39 DL Owens last year. There was only one other scholarship defensive lineman in the room in 2024, freshman #99 DL Nicolas who was redshirting.

There are five transfers and four prep recruits into the defensive line room. I have to admit that sorting through this was quite a challenge because Maryland’s roster doesn’t separate them into their specific positions, lists weights of which I’m highly skeptical (two freshmen and three transfers have weight changes of +/- 45 lbs compared to their last school, which is an awful lot of scrapple and lake trout for a couple months), and wasn’t updated until after Matt and I spoke so we missed talking about one of the new additions and I caught up with him about it on email. Three of the transfers are from FCS schools on which I have no tape, the fourth is from an ostensibly Power program but hasn’t played yet, and the last played at a G5 school last year and I have a couple of his games charted but was in an even-surface defense and I’m not sure where he fits in the Maryland’s odd front.

Here’s my best guess after catching up with Matt: I think they can avoid playing the true freshmen and go with the returners and transfers, but the most likely freshman to play is #57 DL B. Jenkins as he’s the low 4-star out of a group of mid 3-stars and his prep tape shows he could go in at nose as a space-eater (amazingly he’s grown two inches and put on 50 lbs since high school, according to the roster). The transfers who are most likely at nose are #44 DL Starlings from UNC, a low 4-star from 2023 who hasn’t played yet, and #98 DL E. Thomas also from 2023 who played 4 games as a freshman and was a starter last year in the FCS. A transfer who could swing from NT to DT is #10 DL Rice, who was a rotational DT in Ohio’s four-down front (actually they use a stand-up end but it’s an even surface and Rice was not over center) after transferring in from starting for two years at a Div-II, which is where he landed after redshirting at West Virginia in 2021.

The two guys I think are going to be DTs only — that is, not move to 0-tech or 5-tech — are the returner Nicolas and FCS transfer #50 DL E. Moore. Both were 2024 mid 3-stars but Nicolas redshirted while Moore played his way into a starting role by the end of last year as a true freshman. Rice could play in this position, and Fontus is another swing guy in the other direction - so far we’d seen him at DE because of his length and because they already had a very big guy in Lavon Johnson for the interior backup, but Matt and I discussed Fontus moving inside if need be because of his weight.

In addition to the possibility of Fontus just staying put at DE, I think there are two linemen who fit into that position: the returner Owens (he hasn’t been a very high impact rotational player; he’d gotten close to a eighty meaningful reps last year and about sixty the year before as a redshirt freshman but Matt had completely forgotten Owens was on the team when I asked after him) and the FCS transfer #91 DL S. Smith about whom neither Matt nor I could find out anything other than that his dimensions and stats from his last school looked appropriate for DE. However, Maryland has re-listed Smith with some truly massive weight gain that would size him out of this role, and if that’s accurate it’s hard to make the numbers work for the rest of the line without activating a lot of the flexibility that they’ll need to hedge their bets or dipping into their true freshmen, hence my skepticism.

The hinkiness with Maryland’s weights and measures notwithstanding, that works out to each spot having one experienced FCS transfer (NT: Thomas, DT: Moore, DE: Smith) and one less experienced P4 guy (NT: Starlings, DT: Nicolas, DE: Owens). They also have two very experienced linemen who could swing from DT, one inside to nose in Rice, the other outside to end in Fontus. That’s eight guys from whom to find three starters and a couple of backups, and four freshmen for emergency options. Assuming the balance is right and the sizes aren’t wildly off (which I can’t verify with tape and I’m giving the roster the side-eye, so that’s not a certainty), the body count works such that they should be able to field a playable line without problems.

Whether they’ll be any good is another matter; this is a rebuild from the ground up with a unit that’s never played together comprised entirely of linemen who’ve never been Power conference starters and without the DC and DL coach who assembled their predecessors. We’ll just have to wait and see if the linemen Monachino puts together can hold serve with the vets who held these positions down for the last several years … this is a lot of unknowns.

The outside linebackers also lose both starters who’d been mainstays for several years and technically very sound, though not very flashy in terms of havoc stats - Donnell Brown has graduated and Kellen Wyatt transferred out (to Indiana … the backup d-lineman Johnson went to Texas and a starting linebacker got poached by Auburn; the defensive front had the highest concentration of what looks like poaching of their developed players on the team, whereas the secondary is almost entirely young guys dropping a level. The offense had a couple of arguable poachings but a much greater absolute number of departures almost all of which are cycle outs, which dilutes the effect).

However, the OLBs did more rotation of the backups, both of whom return, plus they’re bringing online some higher rated talent, and there’s a pretty good chance that this unit at least holds steady in production and may well improve havoc generation. The backups in 2024 were both mid 3-stars, #3 OLB Reddick and #42 OLB Samuels who got a surprising amount of run for how young they were, Reddick was a true freshman whom the staff is very high on and Samuels was technically a true sophomore because he burned his redshirt in 2023 playing on special teams but hadn’t really seen the field from scrimmage then so 2024 was his first real season.

They’d been taking their time with a couple of 2023 low 4-stars, Neeo Avery who was dealing with a torn ACL but got on the field for eight games last year, and Dylan Gooden who only played two games and hit the portal. Matt told me the staff is pretty excited about Avery being good to go because of his ideal length for the job, as well as the redshirt freshman low 4-star transfer they got from Florida State #56 OLB Holmes. We haven’t seen them play much yet, but they constitute an on-paper talent upgrade and a clear (I can just look at photos for this) leverage upgrade on what they’ve had before with both at 6’6” or over and great arm length vs all other current or previous OLBs not quite making 6’4”. It’s also evidently been a point of emphasis in recruiting lately, as both of the prep recruits mid 4-star #9 OLB Mathis and mid 3-star #87 OLB Recker also come in at 6’6”-plus, though I think they’ll need to pack on some muscle before they get to playing weight.

In last Summer’s preview I used Maryland’s new-school rubric on off-ball linebacker body types to predict which guys out of their big 2023 rotation would make it out of the chaos caused by the loss of their most talented starter to Michigan - lining up the rangy Caleb Wheatland for a promotion in 2024 next to returning starter Ruben Hyppolite, with the young but even longer #1 ILB Wingate (then wearing jersey #16) for a primary rotational role, and even calling an experienced but shorter old-school neckroll backer’s transfer out a week before it happened.

Hyppolite was drafted at the end of the season, in the 4^th round by the Bears, while Wheatland is now off to Auburn as mentioned earlier. This is the only position on the defense in which the staff has taken no transfers; it seems they continue to be happy with their developmental pipeline here (I believe that Maryland has only taken one ILB in the history of the portal, and he was a one-year backup in 2022). The returners from last year’s main rotation are Wingate and another 2023 backer, #31 ILB Harris, as well as both of the then-true freshmen who played in nearly every game, #35 ILB K. James and #23 ILB Key. Flowers (Matt mentioned that a walk-on in this unit, #55 ILB Kei. Flowers, is his twin brother, which was interesting to hear because there’s a four-inch height difference).

Those four should be the rotation in 2025, with high 3-star prep recruits #30 ILB Daniels and #32 ILB C. Smith or depth. I should think that Wingate has a starting job locked down as he’s been the most productive, and is by far the longest in the room and that’s proven to be a good guide so far. How the rest of it goes is pretty interesting for the second starter next to Wingate and therefore which two stay as rotational guys.

Harris was part of the main rotation last year since he was older than the other two, but not as productive as Wingate, and while he was a low 4-star he’s the smallest of the room at 6’1” and 218 lbs. On the podcast, Matt really went to bat for Harris, praising his speed and play diagnosis and saying he thinks that Harris could end up being the best linebacker of the group (though in a recent email Matt said the staff has been touting Wingate more). James is the next biggest at 6’3”, but he’s a mid 3-star, played the least, and hasn’t generated as much buzz. I’ll bet on Flowers (the bigger one) as the goldilocks - 6’2”, high 3-star, played in 11 games last year and some of it in meaningful time that I watched and he looked pretty promising as a true freshman.

At any rate, they have four relatively experienced homegrown backers plus a couple of young depth pieces who each look like good-to-great body type fits for the system, in a proven developmental pipeline. They should probably be just fine here, and the only question is if the Terps put together the funds to keep them from getting poached by a better-heeled program again next offseason.

Maryland had gone through significant changes to their secondary lineup for each of the last three seasons since they’d kept putting players into the NFL, and up until last year they’d successfully reloaded every time. But while they did have a couple of pros in last year’s secondary — strong safety Dante Trader was drafted in the 5^th by the Dolphins and nickel / box safety Glendon Miller signed a UDFA with the Chiefs — they lost both those guys for several games with injuries as well as three of the more promising DBs, while a couple of the older guys they’d developed plus a transfer they’d brought in to start just didn’t pan out and became the first disappointments for the Terps backfield in quite a while.

Between the injuries and extensive experimental position swapping throughout the year, I charted fifteen DBs getting significant meaningful playing time in 2024, a third of whom were true freshmen. I don’t think it’s fair to write the freshmen off yet, but the quality of play that this all added up to was very poor, at or near the very bottom of the conference in every metric from charting I use to measure secondary performance from coverage to tackling to QB deterrence. This was despite having a couple of NFL players and some promising guys who got hurt and then transferred out … and of course, now those guys have left so the Terps have to do it all over again.

The transfers out are extensive, most dropping to the G5 level although a couple getting picked up by Power programs after missing much of the year with injury: Jonathan Akins, Perry Fisher, Chantz Harley, Brandon Jacob, Tayvon Nelson, Kevis Thomas, and Lionell Whitaker. For completeness’ sake, Rex Fleming, a super senior who Matt mentioned was mostly a special teamer but got pressed into some backup play, has graduated, and Mykel Morman, a redshirt freshman who didn’t play has left the football team to focus on track & field.

There are six returners who played last year, the most important of which for understanding what happened being #22 CB Huskey who was brought in from Bowling Green to start at outside corner but was ineffective there, then was moved to starting free safety. But he was but eventually demoted behind the backup he was rotating with, #13 DB Scruggs, to the point where I would call Scruggs the starting free safety in the totality of the data, and the only returner for 2025 who I think has a secure job. To try and solve the vacancy at corner and relieve the pressure on the existing starter and backup (Fisher and Harley, who weren’t great to begin with), the staff opened up the rotation at both the outside corner spots to include two then true-freshmen, #4 CB Humes (wearing #11 last year) and #27 CB Roland, who as Matt correctly noted were liabilities on the field, but it’s too soon to dismiss them. Deeper in the rotation and as a response to injuries were another couple of freshmen, #21 DB J. Jenkins, who I saw filling in as backup nickel after Whitaker went down, and #26 DB McIntosh who I think was going to redshirt but was pushed into backup play due to injuries to Jacob and Thomas at safety.

They’ve brought in three portal additions: #14 CB Glasker who was Wake Forest’s starting corner the last two years though he missed a few games midseason both times, #6 DB Joyner who was an extensively used backup safety as a true freshman in 2023 then a starting safety in 2024 at Arkansas State, and #7 DB G. Edwards who played eight games as a redshirt freshman as a rotational safety at a Division-II school last year and briefly transferred to an FCS school this Winter before flipping to Maryland in the Spring window.

Matt and I arrived at the same conclusion for what the starting lineup in the secondary would look like, at least initially before some more positional experimentation probably sets in again (actually, re-listening to the podcast in the editing bay, we were always on the same page about this, but I misheard him on something at the outset and so spent the entire segment asking somewhat superfluous though I think still clarifying questions with which he was patient). We both agreed that Huskey isn’t playable as an outside corner for coverage purposes but is a big body with very similar dimensions as Miller had, and would make a suitable nickel or hybrid backer when the defense goes to that configuration. Jenkins is the more coverage oriented nickel at 5’11”.

Scruggs should keep his starting free safety job (or get it officially, depending on how you look at it) while Joyner was probably brought in to start at strong safety. Edwards and McIntosh are the likely safety backups, with 2023 low 3-star #18 DB A. Moore and low 4-star prep recruit #33 DB Delhomme as depth. Likewise, Glasker was brought in to start at one of the outside corner spots. They’ve then got the four 2024 corners who stayed (plus 2025 mid 3-star #12 CB Shipps, I suppose, though they’d probably like to avoid repeating last year’s freshman debacle) from which to find one starter and a couple of playable backups, which is viable math but I’m hard pressed to identify who they’d be from tape. Those are Humes and Roland who got run last year but would need to take a big step forward to be assets, or borderline 4-star #2 CB B. Lee and mid 3-star #15 CB Irvin who didn’t get meaningful play … and I don’t know what that says about them, good bad or ugly.

Poll: Game Grub @ Home

2025-07-30T13:00:00-07:00

Damian Giletto/Delaware News Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The team is playing on the other side of the country. What are you munching on as your personal superstitions single-handedly determine the outcome of a game happening 3000 miles away?

When Oregon sports are on, it’s a great excuse to stress eat. Having a beverage that might numb anxiety is also a common practice.

In my younger days, I always insisted on having an Oregon micro-brew in an official school insulator during games. For health reasons, I’ve had to change to Caldera Soda Co.’s root beer (best I’ve ever had), but it is a still an Oregon brew. What do you toast scores with?

Of course, like any great American past time, we need some empty calories on the table while the game is on. Whether in a group or going it solo, what is your go-to on the game day table?