Is Oregon's Duck Dynasty Nearing Its End?

Nobody recognizes college football's death rattle for what it is on the first shake. You hear it, but you don't listen.

Only in hindsight, for instance, is it obvious that USC's decline under a string of overmatched coaches was precipitated by Pete Carroll's final season in charge and the passel of underdeveloped talent he left behind. Michigan's roster was buckling under the weight of Lloyd Carr's mediocre recruiting well before it collapsed under Rich Rodriguez. Frank Solich won 42 games in his first four seasons at Nebraska, more than enough to conceal how little of Tom Osborne's gravitas or savvy he truly had. Nobody in Miami missed Butch Davis when Larry Coker won a national championship.

Oregon has yet to cross that threshold. Things are precarious in Eugene, and have been ever since Marcus Mariota moseyed off to Nashville following his 2014 Heisman win. But they are not quite dire. For all the rising enmity toward Mark Helfrich, the Ducks' worst record on his watch is 9-4 and last week's upending at Nebraska is as much a byproduct of gruesome injury luck—Oregon lost its best player and workhorse tailback (Royce Freeman), its star left tackle (Tyrell Crosby) and most explosive pass catcher (Devon Allen) within a couple of quarters of each other—as Helfrich's odd predilection for two-point conversions. Its famously frenetic offense is humming along like always, fourth in the nation in yards per play and boasting perhaps its deepest crop of running backs since Chip Kelly first installed the system as offensive coordinator to Mike Bellotti.

Oregon is still Oregon where it counts most, in other words, and that alone gives the Ducks a shot to triumph over arguably the murkiest Pac-12 field in years. But that the triumph is no longer inevitable, or even likely, indicates that time is preparing to pass Oregon by. There's that death rattle. Barring serious changes, the age of the Duck is quickly waning.

There's a simple explanation for all of this: Mark Helfrich is not Chip Kelly. That's reductive if you want it to be; no head coach is ever a note-perfect replica of his predecessor, not even ones like Helfrich who serve as the previous coach's coordinator. But Helfrich is forever damned by association because he plays Chip's diminished progeny, Salieri to his Mozart. He is cursed with nearly identical strengths and weaknesses, with offensive schemes that are not quite as clever as Kelly's and shortcomings that fall just a little shorter than Kelly.

Never especially watertight on defense, the dams have burst in Eugene. During Kelly's four seasons, the Ducks' average rank in total defense was 59.6. Under Helfrich, Oregon has plummeted from 37th to 83rd all the way down to 116th last year. At Kelly's nadir in 2011, the Ducks conceded 390 yards per game. Last year, under Helfrich, they hemorrhaged 480. That precipitated the ballyhooed arrival of Brady Hoke as defensive coordinator, under whom the Ducks have only waddled back up to 82nd and 403 YPG, with the Cornhuskers cleaving Oregon for 428.

Which brings us to Helfrich's other damning weakness, recruiting. According to Rivals.com, while Kelly's first recruiting class checked in at a blase 34th, the next three ranked 13th, 9th and 16th respectively. Helfrich, on the other hand, has never matched Kelly's best even once, finishing 17th in 2015 and out of the top 20 in his other three classes, including a career-worst 28th last year. Ten spots of difference doesn't seem like much but in a sport where recruiting titles are very often tantamount to national championships, it leaves a massive indent. Teams consistently recruiting outside the top 15 face stark odds at a national championship; those that can't even crack the top 20 have their hopes all but extinguished from the jump.

The depth chart is rife with potholes. While this year's stars could penetrate any Oregon starting lineup—Freeman is a better running back than LaMichael James ever was, Crosby boats NFL measurables and athleticism, and Arrion Springs is a three-and-out player at cornerback—the drop-off is precipitous after that. The preseason transfer of Chris Seisay was all it took to reduce cornerback depth to a minefield. The troika of backs behind Freeman can all burst around the corner but were too small to plunge up the middle for tough yards when the Ducks needed them against Nebraska.

Development is part of the problem, too. It's not a good sign that Helfrich is so hard-up for a quarterback that, for the second year in a row, he summoned an FCS graduate transfer to helm his offense. That Vernon Adams and, so far, Dakota Prukop have worked out isn't the point. Not when an Adams injury last year shined a floodlight on how stunted the in-house recruits are; not with Oregon currently set to whiff on bringing in a desperately needed blue-chipper in the 2017 recruiting class.

One injury to Prukop could capsize the Ducks' season, and the issue isn't exclusive to the quarterback position. Helfrich will start four redshirt freshmen on the offensive line this weekend despite signing nine in the three classes before and only graduating two seniors last year. Even with Crosby now ruled out for the season, that simply should not happen.

Ironically, the best defense for Helfrich is perhaps even more disconcerting for the program's future. The grim reality of Oregon's reign is that it probably never should have lasted this long to begin with. College football is a geographically rigged board: Programs based in states flush with high school talent regularly compete at the highest level while, Notre Dame excepted, schools rooted elsewhere do not. It is hard for any team to depend on importing national talent for success, because players rarely go more than a few states over to play for anything short of a national championship contender.

Oregon, to its immense credit, has played at a high enough level for the last eight seasons to foster such a reputation, but it's a precarious way to live. One stumble like 2015, and talent pipelines can slow to a trickle. It is no accident that Oregon currently sits 41st in this year's recruiting rankings. The prospects are, like everyone else, forced to speculate and assess the program's future before buying back in.

All this coincides with the rest of the conference closing in on the pace they set. Stanford, the bruising body shot to Oregon's jab and feint, is still around, and unlike the Ducks do not appear to be at risk of falling back into the pack. Its rival to the north, Washington, is the upstart darling that Oregon was half-a-dozen years ago and boasts recruiting advantages that Oregon lacks—academics, location and a head coach who can seemingly do no wrong. The Southern California schools will always be around because even the grossest incompetence cannot drive out the entirety of the local talent base. Arizona State has positioned itself as something of an off-brand Oregon, which these days may be enough to beat the genuine article. Any of Cal, Arizona or Washington State could, on the right afternoon, say the same. Utah has tried the same tack with Stanford, and it worked well enough last year to humiliate the Ducks in Autzen, 62-20.

Oregon will always be able to sell their postmodern uniforms and facilities, but the real allure came when those worked in concert with the larger idea that Oregon was the future of college football—not only in aesthetics, but on the field, too. Today, they are the status quo, and in danger of being lapped. That's hardly academic: If Hoke jury rigs the defense enough to feign competence, if Helfrich stays out of his own way, if Prukop stays upright and Freeman rights himself and they suffer no more crippling injuries—well, that might be enough for the double-digit winning season that could springboard the program back to where it was two years ago. But those are very complicated conditions for a program that rose to prominence via an offense that is deceptively simple.

When the end finally comes, Oregon will be remembered as nothing less than the program that brought the sport its current stylings. The next several months may determine if the rattle is finally beginning to resonate.