Did Cal create a blueprint for stopping the Oregon offense?

During ESPN's BCS show Rod Gilmore alluded to the growing consensus that California has created a blueprint for stopping Oregon.

Nonsense. You're just saying that because no one ever has.

The idea crops up every time the Ducks lose, because they haven't lost very often. Oregon has now achieved 10 wins for the third season in a row, and looked good doing it. Consider these numbers, from goducks.com:

Year PPG total yds

2010 50.7 5422 (through 10 games)

2009 36.1 5356

2008 41.9 6303

2007 38.2 6078

There's a lot of video for coaches to study, and a lot of success. Yet each time Oregon loses or merely doesn't score 40 opposing players and the guys in the booth start talking about how the Ducks are overrated, or they've been figured out, or they're not that good. After Saturday's loss (operative word: loss) Cal safety Chris Conte told the Register-Guard's Eric Gilmore that the Bears showed the conference how to shut down the Oregon spread.

Cal had a lot of success with a simple man-to-man scheme and a spy on the quarterback. They held Oregon's offense to a single offensive touchdown and 317 yards, their lowest totals since Boise State and Ohio State last season. But the idea isn't novel or new. Todd McShay did a segment for ESPN with film clips from the Rose Bowl, saying this is how you stop the Oregon spread. But here's the thing: he did that piece just before the Stanford game, and since then the Ducks hung 52 on the Cardinal, 60 on UCLA, and 53 on USC and Washington.

Any offense can have a bad day. Slingin' Sammy Baugh and the Washington Redskins once lost 73-0 to the Chicago Bears, in the 1940 NFL championship game. Baugh was an offensive genius and an innovator in the early days of the NFL, completing 57% of his passes for over 21,000 yards in an era when the forward pass was an afterthought for most teams.

People thought Baugh's passing game was a gimmick, but it's stood the test of time. He did a lot of his throwing out of the single wing, the grandfather to Oregon's spread. The more things change, the more time coaches spend in the film room.

Each time Oregon loses or doesn't score 40 the careless analysis begins again, but here's the truth: the Ducks aren't a gimmick or a scheme. They are a solid, sound, well-coached football team that executes and wins. It isn't frills or fancy plays. Most of what Oregon does is pretty simple, and timeless. Zone blocking has been around for a while, and zone read plays date back to the Veer and Wishbone in the '70s.

What makes the Ducks successful is blocking, good players, and speed. There's no blueprint for stopping LaMichael James, Darron Thomas, Kenjon Barner, Jeff Maehl, Josh Huff. You have to outplay them, and so far no one has. The Ducks will use the bye week to heal and improve their execution and pass protection, and in two weeks, they'll test Arizona's blueprint, then Oregon State's.

Cal had a blueprint, but they lost. There are three dimensions to a football game, offense, defense and special teams. There are also four elements to football success: talent, heart, desire and the will to win. In the fourth quarter, with the game and a national championship season on the line, Oregon's gimmicky offense shook off their worst day to march down the field with simple blocking and straight-ahead running, keeping the ball for 9 minutes and 25 seconds. That's as old-fashioned and ungimmicky as football can get.

In the end, it was another win, the 30th in three years. The Ducks are number one in the nation, three games from a perfect season. Critics and pundits can ask all the questions they want, but Chip Kelly's answer never varies: we won. Winning is the ultimate answer to most football questions.