Oregon Duck Tracker : December 2020

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Wek 7: Dec 18, 2020 (Pac-12 Championship)

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Ducky color of the year

Pantone, the arbiter of color every year, has come out with its 2021 color(s) and they look a bit familiar to Duck fans. Like in 2016 when they predicted "greenery" to be the 2017 color, this year's color prediction looks a lot like many of Oregon's uniform combos the last few years.

2021 will be the year of "Ultimate Gray" and "Illuminating." I personally think yellow and gray look great together (but maybe stay away from just gray please)

Here are some outfits the Ducks might want to pull from their closet to be extra fashionable next season:

Saturday, December 12, 2020

The Best of Oregon-Washingon

Lacking an actual game today, I wanted to look back at my favorite UO-UW uniform moments of the last 30 years. Since the game looked pretty much the same for many years, I'll start with 1994 and the infamous "pick" game.

MY FAVORITES:

1994

Classic UO yellow/green/yellow that is probably the gold standard for UO home uniforms.

2000

The debut of the Bellotti-Bold font and new era of Nike uniforms with darker green/black.

2004

Nice use of yellow and green, paired with the classic UW road uniform.

2007

The "Stormtrooper" debuts.

2009

I'm a sucker for these shoulder wings, and even the black and white works with the colorful UW home set.

2014

The 20th anniversary of the "The Pick" and throwback uniforms, vs UW White-out.

2017

Ducks are nice and crisp but they lost.

The Curse of Grey pants?

If you have watched Oregon football for the past decade, you will have noticed that Oregon tends to experiment "a bit" with colors and styles. Sometimes those styles work great visually like the wings on shoulders and helmets; but sometimes they tend to be associated with bad losses/seasons. "Grellow" helmets is all you need to know!

On this blog I have already tallied what the Ducks wear during their losses since 2019:

2009-2015 losses

2015-2019 losses

Check out my spreadsheet of combos going back to 2008

But, the subject of this post (a few days after a bad loss to Cal while wearing "wolf grey") is "Are Grey Pants Cursed?" And the answer is not really. If the grey pants are worn by the likes of Marcus Mariota and LaMichael James in the Chip Kelley years pre 2015, then they are fine, but pretty much every time since 2015 they lost!

Ever since the 2009 season, when they started to wear grey they are actually 15-7! BUT, the vast majority of those wins come in the golden years of Chip Kelly when they wore a lot of grey. But in the five years since, the Ducks are 0-4 in grey pants. All four of those losses coincide with pairing grey with practically NO green/yellow.

So the takeaway is for the Ducks to be good in grey pants, they need to....have a Heisman-finalist....and/or also pair them with good amounts of yellow, green and black. Stay away from mono-grey and silver/white.

Results when Oregon has work grey/silver pants the last decade:

(Note: I did NOT include the really dark grey, that bordered on black, from 2016)

2020: Week 5 "Wolf Grey" Loss at Cal

AP photo

Week 5: Dec 5, 2020

The December 5 game at Cal brings the second new uniform of the short 2020 season. But what is notable is that it also brings "wolf grey" out for the first time! It's an attractive set that—if I may be kind— calls to mind the white/grey set that the Ducks wore in the 2010 Civil War that clinched a National Title game appearance:

2010 "Civil War" Win

But on the flipside...As soon as it was revealed on twitter, the comments went to the Duck's rather meager results when wearing grey/silver (especially pants). Like losing while wearing the "Lewis & Clark" uniform and during two National Championship game losses: