Oregon Football: 5 reasons Ducks will win 2017 national title

3. New coordinator Jim Leavitt turns around the defense

Last year, Colorado came seemingly out of nowhere to win the Pac-12 South. It shouldn’t have been so surprising, given their defensive coordinator. Jim Leavitt was the original architect of the South Florida football program. His hire launched the program in 1997, and he was the man who guided the Bulls into the top tier of the college ranks.

His acrimonious exit from the program led Leavitt to turn back to focusing on defense. The former Kansas State defensive coordinator became Jim Harbaugh’s linebackers coach with the San Francisco 49ers, helping the team go to a Super Bowl and several NFC championship games. Once Harbaugh left for Ann Arbor, Leavitt returned to the college ranks as well.

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Instead of following Harbaugh to Michigan, though, Leavitt instead became part of Mike McIntyre’s coaching staff at Colorado. In two years, Leavitt transformed the Buffaloes defense. In the 2014 season preceding his arrival in Boulder, Colorado ranked 109th in Defensive S&P+. In Leavitt’s first year, the Buffaloes climbed 20 spots in the rating. Last year, the Pac-12 South champs vaulted to the 12th-best defense in the nation.

Now that Leavitt has joined another former USF head coach at Oregon, he should be able to generate instant improvement in the Ducks defense. Even a 20-point rise in the advanced metrics could have spelled the difference in several games Oregon lost by a field goal last year.