The Herald’s weekly Duck football commentary: Shocker at ‘The Shoe’ — Oregon 35, Ohio State 28

By LLOYD PASEMAN/For The Herald — Sometimes, maybe often, when University of Oregon football games are televised nationally, the Ducks have embarrassed themselves, their fans and the university as a whole.

For example, losing to No. 16-ranked Auburn 27-21 in the first game of the 2019 season in Arlington, Texas, while ranked No. 11 in the nation. Or losing to the Iowa State Cyclones in the Fiesta Bowl in January, 34-17, after winning their second straight Pac-12 championship against USC (as a replacement for COVID-19 depleted Washington). And then there are the 19 losses in 34 bowl games, most of them televised, since the first Rose Bowl game 103 years ago, including a 30-point loss to BYU in the 2006 Las Vegas Bowl.

But that was then. On Saturday, the No.11-ranked Ducks shocked the college football world by defeating No. 3-ranked Ohio State 35-28 on Fox TV. It was the two schools’ 10^th meeting, including Rose Bowl games in 1958 and 2010 and the 2014 inaugural College Football Playoffs National Championship, all of which the Ducks lost.

When the Associated Press and USA Today Coaches polls came out Sunday morning, Oregon had vaulted to No. 4 in both polls while the Buckeyes dropped to No. 9 in the AP poll and to No. 11 in the coaches’ poll.

The Ducks were among the biggest gainers in the AP poll, jumping up eight positions from No. 12 and up seven positions in the coaches’ poll, from No. 11. It was their highest AP regular-season ranking since reaching No. 3 in December 2014.

And, adding to the delight for Duck fans, Saturday’s win was Ohio State’s first loss at home in 23 games. A crowd of 100,482 filled massive Ohio Stadium, known as “The Shoe,” which hadn’t staged a football game in 657 days, and left the game as disappointed as Duck fans were ecstatic.

The Good

The Duck offense

Unlike in some previous games where the Duck coaches have insisted on pounding the middle of the defensive line, on Saturday only 23 of Oregon’s 38 rushing plays were straight ahead, and five of those were run in the final three minutes while the Ducks had a one-TD lead and were trying to burn up some clock time. Most of the rest of the running plays were around the left end, which seemed to surprise the Buckeye defense and resulted in some large gains (Oregon averaged 7 yards per carry rushing).

The Ducks’ offensive line rose to the occasion to become a key factor in Oregon going 4 for 4 in red zone scores and having no sacks of super-senior QB Anthony Brown.

Offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead balanced the team’s running attack nicely with 35 pass attempts, 17 of which Brown completed for an average of 6.5 yards per attempt.

Overall, the Oregon offense gained 505 yards of total offense, well above its average of 413 yards last season and 433 yards in 2019, when the Ducks were 12-2 and beat Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl

The Ducks’ most impressive series was a 99-yard TD drive that split over the first and second quarters. It took six running plays and four pass plays over four minutes and ended with RB CJ Verdell rushing 14 yards for the score (the last time Oregon went 99 yards for a TD was Sept. 8, 2018, against Portland State).

The most exciting individual play was a 77-yard TD run by Verdell at the start of the third quarter that capped a three-play, 84-yard drive that consumed just a minute and 16 seconds on the clock.

The Duck defense

Despite losing the services of top defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux, a sophomore, and freshman inside linebacker Justin Flowe, who had a game-high 14 tackles against Fresno State, the Oregon defense stopped three Ohio State fourth-down conversion attempts and one third-down attempt, sacked QB CJ Stroud twice, and intercepted a Stroud pass at the Oregon 35 with two minutes and 50 seconds to play that sealed the win.

Sophomore safety Verone McKinley III made the interception, the only turnover of the game, and had six tackles, forced a fumble and broke up two passes. McKinley had career-high nine tackles last season against Oregon State and against USC and, as a redshirt freshman in 2019 became the first Duck player to have two interceptions in a single game.

Flowe had been expected to play in Saturday’s game but injured his right foot sometime during the Fresno State game. “No one knew until Tuesday, that something had happened,” Coach Mario Cristobal said. Thibodeaux roamed the sidelines Saturday with a sprained left ankle, actively encouraging his teammates on the field.

RB CJ Verdell

After a subpar 76 yards gained rushing against Fresno State, Verdell ran for 161 yards and two TDs on 20 carries while catching three passes for 34 yards and a TD against Ohio State. It was the fifth time he’s exceeded 150 yards on the ground and his fifth game with multiple rushing TDs.

Saturday’s gains moved him into a tie for seventh on the UO career rushing list with 2,758 yards, matching Sean Burwell (1990-93). It was the 11^th time he’s run for 100 yards or more in a game and Oregon is 11-1 when that happens.

RB Travis Dye

Dye, who has excelled as Verdell’s backup, ran for 43 yards and a TD on eight carries Saturday while catching a pass for 10 yards. Oregon is 10-1 in the 11 games in which he has scored a TD.

QB Anthony Brown

Brown, a graduate transfer from Boston College who played in the Ducks’ final two games last season and made his first start for Oregon against Fresno State, rebounded from a disappointing performance in that game, completing 17 of 35 passes for 236 yards and two TDs with no interceptions, and gaining 65 yards on the ground on 10 carries. Twelve of his pass completions were for first downs.

Against Fresno State he carried the ball 16 times, for a net 56 yards—30 of which came on a TD run with three minutes left in the game—fumbled twice, and was sacked three times. Seeing him pass more and run less was a bit of a relief Saturday because all three of his backup QBs are inexperienced freshmen who would have to fill in if Brown — who had season-ending knee injuries as a redshirt freshman and as a junior — were to be injured again.

Tight ends

Those who read my Fresno State column may recall that I talked about Oregon’s apparent reluctance to use its tight ends as receivers since Cristobal took over the reins at Oregon for the 2018 season. The former Miami Hurricanes offensive lineman and assistant coach at Alabama has made it clear that he believes the Ducks are, and should be, primarily a running team (a position I dispute because of Oregon’s long history of having quality QBs who can throw — Justin Herbert being the most recent example).

“Tight ends used to be a crucial part of the Duck passing offense,” I wrote. “They tend to be slower than wide receivers and running backs but are usually big enough to be effective blockers on the line and are hard to bring down as receivers by defensive backs who are usually smaller.”

I called the reluctance to pass to tight ends “unfortunate and shortsighted.”

Well, I don’t pretend to believe that anyone at the UO reads what I write, but against Ohio State the Ducks’ tight ends accounted for six of Brown’s 17 completions for 88 of his 236 yards passing:

Junior DJ Johnson was one for one for 11 yards and, on defense, sacked Stroud for a loss of 12 yards with less than 20 seconds to play in the game.

Sophomore Spencer Webb was two for three for 32 yards.

Junior Cam McCormick, making his first start in three years, was one for one for 16 yards.

Freshman Terrence Ferguson was one for one for 15 yards.

And freshman Moliki Matavao was one for one for 14 yards in the fourth quarter, his first career reception.

Kicker Camden Lewis

The season is early but the sophomore place kicker looked good in making all five PATs and sending four of his six kickoffs into the Buckeyes’ end zone for touchbacks. He was not called on to attempt any field goals, however. The Ducks missed three of eight field goal attempts last season and five of 14 attempts in 2019.

Penalties

Oregon was penalized only four times Saturday, for a loss of 35 yards, while Ohio State was flagged eight times for 71 yards. Excessive penalties can be an indication of a lack of player discipline on the field, so that was an improvement for the Ducks, who were penalized eight times for a loss of 87 yards against Fresno State.

The economy

Travel Lane County is a private nonprofit association dedicated to economic development through visitor spending. It markets and promotes the Eugene, Cascades and Coast region as a destination for travel, conventions, sports, meetings and events.

It put out a statement last week, saying “sports events have provided a needed boost in spending at area restaurants and lodging properties. Track and field events at Hayward Field led to record room tax receipts in June and now University of Oregon home football games are bringing fans who are eager to enjoy a college football experience and support local businesses.”

It estimated that such spending on a home football game weekend ranges from $6 million to $8 million and that it pumped more than $408 million into the Lane County economy in 2020.

The Bad

The Duck defense

Kudos aside, there were times Saturday, especially in the first half, when Ohio State snapped the ball before the Duck defense could get set. One shot on TV showed three Duck players in the backfield checking their wristbands for defensive formation information after the ball was put in play.

Hopefully, those kinds of lapses will go away as Duck defenders acquire more playing time.

Also of concern was Ohio State’s passing game. Stroud, a redshirt freshman playing in only his fifth college game, completed 35 of his 54 pass attempts, for 484 yards and three TDs, accounting for the bulk of the Buckeyes’ 612 yards of total offense.

Three of his receivers each gained 100 or more yards and that, and some poor pass defense against Fresno State, should give Oregon’s coaches some concern.

Sports reporter Ryan Thorburn

Notably absent from the Oregon-Ohio State media coverage was any reporting by The Register-Guard veteran writer Ryan Thorburn, who covered Oregon football the past eight seasons.

It turns out that Thorburn quietly departed Eugene in late August to go to work for the Star-Tribune in Casper, Wyo., where he apparently has some roots.

Thorburn covered the Ducks during head coach Mark Helfrich’s four years, plus the infamous Willie Taggart partial year, plus Cristobal’s first three seasons.

I don’t know if his departure from The R-G was voluntary but I have no doubt that it was related to the continuation of owner GateHouse/Gannett’s purchase of the newspaper from the Baker family in 2018 and its consequent gutting of what was once one of the best mid-sized newspapers in the country (which is now printed in Vancouver, Wash., and trucked to Eugene-Springfield for distribution).

The Ugly

The only thing ugly about Oregon’s historic defeat of Ohio State was that the 100,000-plus fans in Ohio Stadium tried in vain to disrupt the Duck’s offense by screaming, shouting and cheering virtually nonstop.

“This is probably the closest thing to the Rose Bowl, the biggest crowd we’ve played in front of,” McKinley told Adam Jardy of The Columbus Dispatch, who wrote The R-G’s main story on the game instead of a reporter from Eugene. “Going into this week we were prepared for it. We were going to block out the noise and just be Oregon.”

Jardy said Oregon’s players said they practiced with speakers on the field in Eugene to simulate the crowd noise. Junior center Alex Forsythe said it wasn’t until late in the fourth quarter, when the Buckeyes were within a touchdown of tying the game, that the silent cadence Brown had practiced all week had to be deployed.

It’s hard to complain about that, though, given that home football crowds at Autzen Stadium do the same thing to the Ducks’ opponents, except there are only half as many fans.

The Irritating

I’m not sure why but the two Fox commentators calling the game Saturday didn’t seem to want to stop talking about head coach Mario Cristobal and what a great coach and superior human being he is. They even brought up a story reported in The Oregonian in 2017 about Cristobal, while a first-year graduate assistant at Miami in 1998, being hired as a U.S. Secret Service agent (temporarily, it turned out).

“It was time to go in the Secret Service,” Cristobal, then the Ducks’ co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach, told The Oregonian. “I was gone. I was out the door.”

But not for long. Love of football — and no doubt the difference in pay between college coaching and protecting the president — apparently changed his mind. According to USA Today, Cristobal’s 2020 salary was $2.7 million compared to an average $160,000 for a Secret Service agent.

Oh, and that $2.7 million ranked 57^th nationally and 11^th in the Pac-12, ahead of only Oregon State’s Jonathan Smith, according to USA Today.

Next Up

The Ducks return to Autzen Stadium to host Stony Brook on Saturday before opening Pac-12 play at home against Arizona on Sept. 25. This week’s game is at 4:30 p.m. and will be televised on the Pac-12 Network.

Stony Brook Seawolves/Wikipedia

Stony Brook’s Seawolves play in the Football Championship Subdivision of the NCAA and currently compete in the 11-member Colonial Athletic Association. They are 68-49 over the past 10 seasons in football. Stony Brook is a state university in New York.

Lloyd Paseman is a graduate of Crow High School and the University of Oregon. He was an all-state B League quarterback in his senior year in high school when his team, the Cougars, finished 6-1 on the season. He’s lived all but two years of his life in Lane County, with two years out for U.S. Army service, and retired from The Register-Guard as a local news editor after nearly 40 years. Paseman’s analysis is provided as a service for the many Duck fans in Highway 58 communities who can no longer find such expert commentary in their local print newspapers.