what did i say that was wrong though?
won a rose, played for natty, went 37-16. he doesn't get credit for VAJ balling out but gets blamed if VAJ is injured? i mean yes he was trending down but was 2016 a weird outlier or no? and fine, oregon wants chip-level success so they fire him and hire.....taggart? then fucking cristobal? not exactly win-at-all-costs levels of hiring, plus phil is still alive and they can outbid anyone for any coach.
Not trolling, Mark took a ready made winner and kept it above water for three years. He was completely hands off with the strength program and it got so bad by the time they fired him our young lineman were struggling to bench 225lbs, once. He also didn't want anything to do with the defense and special teams was used as his lab experiment (see the Nebraska game in Lincoln).
He could have easily done a good job in Eugene, but he just wasn't a head coach. I've said it before and I was 100% serious that 70-21 was the best thing to happen to Oregon since Chip left. The Ducks blew the biggest lead in history in that Alamo Bowl, get ass raped by UW, and lose to about the shittiest Beaver team ever. Also, the long tenured assistants didn't respect him or take him seriously and that's a cancer in itself.
Fast forward to now and the Ducks are on the same S&C program every middle school up to the SEC runs in the south (it's fucking weird, literally everyone does the exact same thing), recruiting is at a level it has never been before, and they have the highest paid coaching staff west of the Rockies.
Cristobal might end up being terrible, but I feel way more confident about the program's future today than I did at the end of 2015 when everyone could see the wheels were falling off.
Helfrich is back to holding Chip's clip board which is where he shines.