EUGENE, Ore. — Dan Lanning muscled his way through the crowd, snaking his way through the seemingly immovable mass of Oregon fans that had smothered the field after the biggest regular season win in school history.
As the Ducks’ head coach spotted his exit Saturday night in Autzen Stadium, quarterback Dillon Gabriel re-emerged from an adjacent tunnel to soak in a 32-31 victory against No. 2 Ohio State. Gabriel crossed his arms, posing in front of the fans as they celebrated.
He screamed.
“A lot of F-bombs,” Gabriel smiled, recalling the moment. “Rightfully so.”
There may be bigger games for No. 3 Oregon down the road, but on this Saturday night, the Ducks stood tall in the center of the ring as the new heavyweight of the Big Ten.
“You know what’s so hard about football?” Lanning asked when the celebration subsided. “This game is such an emotional game, it’s such an impactful game, and in moments like this you want to be filled with complete joy, but relief is one of the biggest feelings you feel because of how hard your guys work. It’s never about the team that wants it the most. It’s never about the team that just has great emotion. It’s about the team that executes.”
The game was a blur of eight lead changes and a flurry of momentum swings. “Anybody got a heart rate monitor?” Lanning quipped.
In the end, the Ducks quacked and the Buckeyes sulked, the visitors falling short of expectations after many had predestined them to be undefeated kings of the conference with a roster of superstars they built through dogged recruiting and development, complemented by a slew of transfer studs supported by a $20 million war chest of NIL money. But the Ducks have plenty of talent, too, and Lanning isn’t so bad in the portal, either.
“Honestly, [Ohio State] always told us this week that they haven’t really seen anybody like us and when you look at the films in the past games, like, yeah, that’s the truth,” said Oregon receiver Evan Stewart, who was the No. 2-ranked wideout in the transfer portal last cycle. “We went into this game knowing we are who we are and they ain’t seen us, so we’re going to give them a show.”
“Bombs away,” chimed in receiver Tez Johnson.
The Ducks were the greatest show on turf Saturday night. They bucked every historic trend paved by the Buckeyes, who had steamrolled opponents by an average of 24.8 points since 2023.
No 30-yard passes allowed all season? Nixed. Gabriel connected on four.
Forty-five straight wins against Big Ten teams not named Michigan? No more.
Outside the stadium in a makeshift tent, Ohio State coach Ryan Day fumed over officiating and missed opportunities, dejected after yet another big-game loss against a top-5 opponent, his seventh in eight tries as the program’s leader. The “Big Game” Day curse had popped up again, this time against the Big Ten’s newcomer, which had never beaten a top-2 team in the regular season.
“We talk about leaving no doubt and not coming down to one play, and that’s what happened in this game,” Day said. “We can sit here and look at one play here, one play there, or complain about a call, but we’re not going to do that. We’re going to own it. And we’re going to get it fixed.”
The beauty of the new age of college football is that this loss isn’t the end of the world for the Buckeyes. The 12-team playoff affords a misstep or two in the regular season, but clearly the margin for error is now smaller for the Bucks, who could very well face Oregon again in the Big Ten Championship come December.
The Ducks also did not boast, save for their on-field celebration as fans stormed the field. This wasn’t a coronation for the new rulers of the Big Ten.
“I don’t know that we think about it like that,” Oregon athletics director Rob Mullens told CBS Sports as he watched the players celebrate. “We’ve had a lot of success. This is a big one for this team.”
Lanning preached all week about the need to throw jabs rather than haymakers in what he foretold would be a back-and-forth fight. The punches were wild and frantic, but most landed in the final 15 minutes as the Big Ten’s heavyweights exchanged the lead three times. Ohio State imposed its will on three drives of 10-plus plays, but never landed the knockout, settling for only 10 points on its final six possessions.
After a clock-draining, 13-play drive ended with a 40-yard field goal midway through the fourth quarter, Oregon didn’t flinch. The Ducks fired back with their longest drive of the night, an 11-play march ending at the 1-yard line with a go-ahead field goal.
“I’ve been in many games where it came down to a drive or two, and you need points in the red area,” said Gabriel, now with his third team in a career spanning six seasons. “Things don’t change in that end, it just magnifies in big games.”
Gabriel was pitch perfect, throwing for 341 yards and two touchdowns to go along with a 27-yard touchdown run that put Oregon ahead 29-28 early in the fourth quarter.
Despite all of that, Ohio State still had a chance with 1:47 remaining. The Ducks’ defense, which Gabriel said had beaten his offense in 2-minute drills all week in practices, continued their own trend by stopping the Buckeyes short of glory.
Oregon had help, too. Ohio State phenom Jeremiah Smith was called for offensive pass interference on a play Day seemed to question after the game. “
“And then the next play on the wheel to Emeka (Egbuka), there was contact there,” Day said. “But again, we’re not going to go back and look at those things. It doesn’t matter at this point.”
Even so, Ohio State stumbled and wilted in the face of adversity with more opportunities ahead after the flag. Quarterback Will Howard fired an incomplete pass with 10 seconds remaining, and on third-and-20 at Oregon’s 38-yard line with 5 seconds remaining, Howard scrambled and slid at the 26 as time expired.
Then, reality hit. A 13-year streak of 3-0 starts in the Big Ten was over — and the questions surrounding Day, now 61-9 as head coach, and his effectiveness as a big-game coach lingered.
Perhaps it was the piercing roar of the record crowd of 60,129 that sparked the haywire antics. The late-game moments were memorable, sure, but the first half might have been crazier for the sheer amount of absurdness.
An onside kick recovery by Oregon on a knuckle-ball kick into the chest of an Ohio State up-man … a big catch that maybe was an Oregon interception .. Oregon receiver Traeshon Holden ejected after spitting in the face of an Ohio State defensive back … a near Pick-2 return on a badly mishandled extra-point snap that was picked off by the Buckeyes.
It was the ultimate bout of football machismo, complete with Oregon purposefully picking on Ohio State’s all-star cornerback, Denzel Burke, who was beaten badly in coverage three times — twice for touchdowns.
Validated but not satisfied, Oregon moved on before the clock struck 10:30 p.m. PT. After the crowd dispersed and the celebration moved downtown to what locals call the “Barmuda Triangle,” Lanning shifted into recruiting mode with a slew of big-time high school players visiting campus late into the night.
“If you see any good players,” Lanning said as he exited the press conference, “tell them to come here.”
A day that started at 3 a.m. with Oregon students flooding ESPN’s College GameDay set to watch Lanning appear on the show during the 7 a.m. hour, Eugene was still wide-awake.
“You can sleep when you die,” Lanning said. “You get an opportunity to do this, like the day that we had today, how awesome is Oregon? How awesome is getting to coach at this place? Our fans, our players, those guys work so dang hard to get moments like this.”
MORE takeaways from Oregon-Ohio State, including Ryan Day’s big-game struggles.
