College Football Rankings: Oregon Ducks Drop to 13 in AP Poll, 14 in Coaches

With the first week of the college football season now behind us, the Oregon Ducks have dropped ten full spots from the No. 3 team in the nation to the No. 13 team in the nation.

This past Saturday, LSU took advantage of multiple miscues by the Ducks and won 40-27. Most of the nation saw the game and clearly by the votes, people were not impressed with the Ducks despite the level of their opponent.

This week, Oregon takes on Nevada at Autzen Stadium and clearly has some work to do.

The Ducks must work on cleaning up penalties, turnovers and dropped passes if they hope to have sustained success throughout the 2011 season.

While Oregon did take a significant hit in the polls, they still have plenty of time to work themselves back up through the rankings and still have the ability to defend their back-to-back conference titles.

Chip Kelly has found ways to continually keep this team focused and motivated and that skill will be tested like never before. The perception from this Saturday's past game is that Oregon got exposed and will be a relatively average team this season.

What Kelly needs to do is get the Ducks back to basics and focusing on the fundamentals. There were too many times that the turnovers and penalties killed drives before they could even get started.

The thing that turned out to be most costly on Saturday was the turnovers as LSU turned three Oregon turnovers into 20 points and put the game out of reach.

For Oregon players and fans, this Saturday's game and shot at redemption cannot come quick enough.