After two weeks of seeing Oregon’s stock drop with each result, the Ducks finally looked the part of a championship contender in a 49-14 thrashing of Oregon State.
Oregon started as the preseason No. 3 team in the country in the AP top 25, but the voters dropped the Ducks to No. 7 after a 24-14 win against FCS Idaho, then down two more spots to No. 9 after a 37-34 win against Boise State. Each of the wins fell short of the pregame expectation in terms of margin, and each of the wins included some noticeable issues keeping this talented Oregon team from playing its best football.
Recent performances led to those high expectations of Dan Lanning’s program. The Ducks went 22-5 across the last two seasons and had one of the best teams in the country last year. While QB Bo Nix is off to the NFL, it was easy to see how another veteran like Dillon Gabriel could step right in and have similar success in the Ducks’ system. But the reality is more complicated, and there were more personnel moves than quarterback that had to be sorted out for Oregon to finally click on all cylinders.
That happened on Saturday in Corvallis, and Oregon finally started to look like a team ready to take on the challenges of a Big Ten schedule and emerge as one of the top teams in the country. The Ducks imposed their will at the line of scrimmage against a rival in their own house and were relentlessness in putting the Beavers away in the second half. Those kind of wins build confidence and establish a standard that Oregon can carry through the season, as they will no doubt again find themselves in a close game on the road moving forward.
Oregon State had offered answers in the first half in the form of two long touchdown drives and only trailed by eight points at halftime. But the Ducks put the clamps on in the second half, holding the Beavers to just 91 yards of offense and outscoring Oregon State 27-0 the rest of the way. Gabriel finished with 291 yards passing and three total touchdowns (two passing, one rushing). As a team, the Ducks rolled up 240 yards rushing at 7.5 yards per attempt.
Statement game for the offensive line
One place where it was evident that Oregon needed to improve to take advantage of its talent was up front along the offensive line. Availability issues forced some different combinations of the five spots up front to start the year, and it wasn’t really until the middle of the Boise State game that it seemed like that group had really settled into a rhythm. Oregon’s offense is at its best when It’s balanced between the run and pass and setting up explosive plays. The Ducks accounted for nine pass plays of 15-plus yards and seven run plays of 10-plus yards. Combined, those 16 explosive plays accounted for 383 of Oregon’s 546 yards of offense.
Maybe they needed the challenge of a road game against a rival, or maybe this was a carryover from the late success in the Boise State win. But Saturday at Oregon State was certainly a time when Oregon finally started to look like the Oregon known the last couple of years up front on offense.
A cleaner game from the Ducks
Heading into the game, Oregon ranked No. 109 nationally with 17 penalties on the season. Oftentimes in those first two games, self-inflicted wounds were one of the top reasons why the scoreboard didn’t reflect the Ducks’ on-field success. Penalties that negated big plays or pushed the offense into difficult third-down situations were particularly noticeable, but against Oregon State the Ducks were penalized just three times and none of those came on the offensive line. Lanning said his team needed to play “smarter” over the last couple of weeks, and between the crisp execution in the second half and lack of costly errors, the scoreboard finally started to reflect the potential that Oregon poses on the field.
A reset before a run at the Big Ten title
Conference realignment has happened a lot in the last couple of decades, but rare is the situation where a team joins a power conference and immediately makes a run at the league title. Oregon has that potential in the Big Ten, and reaffirming their position as a title contender is a great tone to set heading into an off week for the Ducks.
Oregon has two weeks before the team is back in action at UCLA on Sept. 28, followed by a Friday night affair with Michigan State in Eugene. Then, the Ducks host one of the most anticipated games of the entire college football schedule with Ohio State coming to town on Oct. 12. Some have two months to play their way into their best form of the season, but with Oregon’s midseason class with the Buckeyes, the clock is sped up for reaching peak efficiency. That’s what made Saturday’s performance so crucial, because now the message is not about a finding a form that the players haven’t experienced. Now, it’s about repeating the relentlessness that powered a confidence-boosting rivalry win when Oregon begins its first-ever season of Big Ten football.
