Life without Marcus Mariota presented a rollercoaster of a season for the Ducks. There was the Vernon Adams Jr. transfer; the 3-3 start to the season; the defense’s up-and-down performances from game to game (and play to play). There was the six-game winning streak to close out the season that coincided with a healthy Adams returning; the outside shot at the Pac-12 title game; the growth of several offensive and defensive playmakers. Scott Frost then took an early exit to UCF and the Ducks entered postseason play without an offensive coordinator.
Oregon's 2015 season was nothing if not full of twists and turns. Now the Ducks look to take a step forward against another team that had several ups and downs this season, TCU.
MVP: RB Royce Freeman. He held the offense together when it struggled with consistent quarterback play and finished the regular season as the country’s fourth-leading rusher. With one game to go he’s 100 yards short of Oregon’s single-season rushing record.
Season highlights: The Ducks’ back-to-back wins over No. 7 Stanford and No. 24 USC showed everyone how dynamic of an offense Oregon could’ve employed had Adams remained healthy all season. It was the high-powered group that Oregon had the past few seasons and one that could make up for some defensive shortcomings.
Season lowlights: The 62-20 loss to No. 18 Utah. Maybe if Adams were 100 percent healthy the Ducks could’ve taken care of Michigan State and Washington State, but that 42-point loss stands as an outlier in the Ducks’ season. They struggled in every facet of the game and looked like a Pac-12 bottom dweller while making the Utes look like a national-title contender.
Biggest reason for optimism heading into 2016: The offensive and defensive playmakers are there. Offensively, Freeman, Taj Griffin, Charles Nelson, Darren Carrington and Dwayne Stanford are all poised to have huge seasons for the Ducks in 2016. There will be a lot of turnover defensively but the entire secondary returns, giving the Ducks something to build on.
The problem is that there are some key players in key roles that will be missing ...
Biggest area of need heading into 2016: A quarterback. Oregon saw what its season could’ve been if Adams had never gotten healthy. Neither Taylor Alie nor Jeff Lockie could get the job done. Mark Helfrich said that Morgan Mahalak wasn’t ready. Will one year make that much of a difference? Oregon needs to find a quarterback that can run its offense the way it needs to be run. Otherwise, the Ducks are looking at a very disappointing 2016. The quick answer? Montana State graduate transfer Dakota Prukop. He’d be another stopgap for the Ducks. But at some point Oregon will need to develop its own signal-caller to keep itself at the forefront of college football.
Oregon needs to find consistency on defense, too. The Ducks are going to go through a similar transition that hit Washington a season ago. Their front seven will be ravaged, losing DeForest Buckner, Tui Talia, Alex Balducci, Joe Walker, Rodney Hardrick and Tyson Coleman while their young secondary (that had major growing pains this season) will look to be a foundation in 2016. It ended up being more than OK for the Huskies, as they fielded one of the top defenses in the conference this season. But Oregon’s defense this season was a far cry from Washington’s 2014 unit. It’ll need to make major strides this offseason.