Oregon Football: Marcus Arroyo’s Potential Departure Would Be Bad

If Marcus Arroyo leaves Oregon Football for UNLV, there will be a good amount of happy Ducks fans, but I don’t think it would be good news.

This afternoon, Kevin Wade of 247Sports reported that Oregon football OC Marcus Arroyo is ‘close to a deal’ to becoming Head Coach at UNLV.

Marcus Arroyo and his pistol offense has received a lot of flack over the last two years, but I think the criticism has been pretty unfair. There are so many reasons that offensive drives have stalled every now and then, and it has unfortunately become a pervasive trend on Twitter—and around water coolers everywhere—to assign those failures to Arroyo alone.

In reality, Arroyo’s offense has objectively improved throughout his tenure in Eugene.

More from Autzen Zoo

• Oregon football: Ducks and Coach Prime playing it cordial leading up to Saturday
• Oregon Basketball: Non-conference slate features Michigan coming to Eugene
• Oregon football: Ducks find complete game effort in win vs Hawaii
• Oregon Ducks must get run game going against Hawaii
• 8 Pac-12 teams represented in Associated Press Top 25 after Week 2

Points per game have increased. Yards per game have increased. The Ducks have also already surpassed last year’s total touchdown number. Some of that improvement is just marginal, but they’ve improved nonetheless, and they’ve still got one more game to play.

I completely understand the critique that offensive production is still way too mediocre to compete nationally. That is fair. But it is also clear that Arroyo is capable of growing and improving as he has started to inject his own recruits into the system, and the rest of the team has seriously bought into it.

Speaking of players, the offensive personnel has also greatly improved across the board.

Receivers like Johnny Johnson III and Jaylon Redd must’ve spent all offseason at the jugs machines because they have dropped significantly less passes than they did last year.

CJ Verdell has grown so much as a runner and has seen his vision and patience grow as he has gotten comfortable following behind the best offensive line in the country. He also found breakaway speed that I don’t think anyone believed he had.

Not to mention that Justin Herbert is in the middle of a magical final season where he has played as good as ever.

Marcus Arroyo has believed in all of those guys and has undoubtedly helped them grow into themselves and succeed as individuals and as a unit.

Arroyo is also a hell of a recruiter, and I think that Duck fans shouldn’t scoff at the fact that presumptive 2020 QB Tyler Shough is an Arroyo recruit.

Shough has spent the past two seasons studying the ins and outs of the offensive system. If Arroyo does leave, I sure hope that the new OC maintains some continuity. I would hate for Shough to have to learn a whole new offense over the summer with Ohio State coming into Autzen in 2020.

Poor playcalling has also been a common “criticism” of Arroyo, but that’s also misguided. I think that fans should consider the fact that Arroyo may not be the sole decision-maker in the offensive gameplan, and that Mario Cristobal’s desire to establish a power run game has sometimes caused the Oregon offense to seem one-dimensional or predictable.

I think it is totally okay to be frustrated when watching the Oregon offense go for 2-yards and a cloud of dust over and over again in the beginning and middle of games. I get frustrated too. But there is no denying that Arroyo and Cristobal’s continued commitment to power running is THE reason that the Ducks were able to rush for over 250 yards just last Friday night against Utah and the, “Best Rush Defense In College Football.”

Football is a war of attrition. Cristobal & Co. know that, and that’s how they’ve molded this Oregon football program. I am perfectly fine with losing a couple of offensive drives in order to win the Pac-12 title, and you should be too.

Look, I am not saying that Arroyo has to be the answer, or that the Ducks would be screwed if he were to leave to UNLV, but I am saying that it would be wrong to celebrate his departure. Like it or not, he has been a significant reason that the Ducks find themselves back in the Rose Bowl for the first time in five years.

It certainly hasn’t come easy, but the Ducks have seen the offensive gameplan click in wonderful ways over the season that has proved that Arroyo is, at the very least, a competent coordinator. The second half of the Washington game was some of the best playcalling at Oregon since the halcyon days of Chip Kelly.

Marcus Arroyo has shown tangible progress, has shown a commitment to developing and trusting his talent, and he has found ways to introduce an entirely new offensive culture to Oregon football.

If all of that success was to just cash out and head to Vegas, I don’t think that would be a reason to rejoice. I’d love if Oregon football would be able to keep Arroyo around, and I think Ducks fans should be too.

Go Ducks.