Oregon v Stanford - Special Teams

As promised, today I am going to devote the whole blog just to special teams.  Considering that Stanford is ranked number 1 in kickoff returns and Oregon is ranked number 3, this could be very important.

To start, I'll talk about the punting where Oregon is last in the P10 with an average net punt of 35.71 yards whereas Stanford is 8th with 36.82 yards per punt.  However, on punt returns, Oregon is second in the P10 and Stanford is 6th.  However, I think the Oregon stats are a little misleading as they account for a 15.0 average return utilizing Walter Thurmond III who is out for the season.  Since WT3's injury Kenjon Barner has taken the lion's share of the punt return duties and is averaging 7.1 yards per punt on 8 returns.  For Stanford, Drew Terrell has taken over the PR duties and is averaging 10 yards returned per kick on 5 returns.

	Player	No	Yds	Avg	TD's	Long
Stanford	Drew Terrell	5	50	10	0	22
Oregon	Kenjon Barner	8	57	7.1	0	31

Now on to the kickoff returns.

As mentioned above, this game premiers two of the best Kickoff returners in the country.

	Player	No	Yds	Avg	TD's	Long	Player Rank
Stanford	Chris Owusu	19	668	35.2	3	94	6
Oregon	Kenjon Barner	11	389	35.4	1	100	5

What does all this mean Verne?

The punt returners are pretty equal and don't average much.  However, depending on the scoring, kickoff returns could play a significant part.  Each team will kickoff at least once and with the high scoring that the Ducks produce, the chances of Owusu returning a big one is much higher.

Going on my earlier prediction of 52-21 Oregon is going to be a tad bit off.  I am really thinking that it will be along the lines of 48-21.  This means that Stanford will have nine shots at running one back for a TD.  If you look at Owusu's number of TD's per try, he is averaging 1 TD to just over 6 tries.  Statistically, that would mean that if Oregon scores 6 TD's and two FG's, that is a total of nine tries (6 on the TD's, two on FG's and an initial half kickoff).  Oregon on the other hand would get four tries.

I am expecting that Owusu will run one back and that the Cards will score two other TD's with their offense.  I was asked why I thought Stanford would score more points on Oregon than USC and my answer is this;  Oregon played USC at Autzen and I was not impressed with the offense that USC displayed.  On the other hand, I think the Stanford offense is more potent, if for no other reason than Oregon won't be at Autzen.

Other notes:

Three TD's for the Cards seems reasonable considering they have Gerhart and are putting up 230 yards passing.  I would love to be wrong and I was wrong on last week's USC score by one point, however I was way wrong on what Oregon was able to produce.

I am not making that mistake this week.  Thusly, I am sticking with a my educated guesstimate of 48-21.  In the P10, Oregon is beating it's opponents by an average of 30 points, largely due to the blowouts with Cal and WSU.  I am thinking that another 27 point difference is not stretching it too much considering the Cards porous defense.

Stanford is allowing an average of over 360 yards for their opponent's offense, 126 rushing alone.  I am afraid that with Masoli and James running the ball, they could put up 360 just in rushing.  I would not be surprised if the Oregon offense puts up over 500 yards total.

Considering the Stanford offense, I am not yet convinced that Luck is very good at the scramble when compared to the speed of Oregon's D.  I am not saying that Luck can't run, I'm not sure he can out run the Ducks speedy and stout D.  Still I think he'll manage to put up a couple of TD's, one rushing and the other a long ball that get's by someone.  The other TD, I've already give to Owusu.

This looks like it's going to be a fun game to watch and I think Stanford will be more pesky than what a lot of people expect.

So there you have it, Oregon 48, Stanford 21.