By LLOYD PASEMAN/For The Herald — Oregon and Washington have done battle on the gridiron 113 times since their first meeting on Dec. 1, 1900, in Eugene. The Ducks—who were known as the “Webfoots” until 1947—handily won that inaugural game 43–0.
Since then, the near-annual contest between the two Pacific Northwest rivals has been marked—and sometimes marred—by some strange and bizarre incidents, both on and off the field.
Chalk up Saturday’s loss by the Huskies, on a cold and rainy night in Washington’s Husky Stadium in Seattle, as one of the more bizarre.
Although Washington still holds a 12-game lead over Oregon, 60 to 48 with five ties, over the past 122 years, the Ducks have now won seven of the two teams’ last eight meetings. It also was Oregon’s 15th win in the rivalry’s last 17 games.
The Ducks are currently 8-1 on the season with games still to play against Washington State, Utah and Oregon State. Their lone loss was to Stanford on Oct. 2, 31-24, in overtime. Their signature win so far was over the Big Ten’s Ohio State Buckeyes, 35-28 in Columbus.
Last Tuesday, the College Football Playoff selection committee surprised most of the college football world by ranking Oregon No. 4 in their now-weekly football ratings, behind Georgia, Alabama and Michigan State.
The committee’s second round of rankings will be released Tuesday on ESPN between the “Champions Classic” men’s basketball games, around 6 p.m. No. 3 Kansas will take on Michigan State and No. 9 Duke will play No. 10 Kentucky.
Tuesday’s CFP ranking was the first time Oregon had been included in the top four teams in the initial ranking. It’s the only Pac-12 team in the CFP top 25 so far this season.
No. 1 Georgia beat Missouri on Saturday 43-6, No. 2 Alabama squeezed past LSU 20-14 and No. 3 Michigan State lost to Purdue 40-29. Georgia, Cincinnati and Oklahoma are 9-0 on the season. Oregon’s 8-1 record is matched by 10 other teams in the Top 25 but the Ducks moved up two notches to No. 5 in the Associated Press Sunday poll and ranked sixth in the USA Today weekly coaches’ poll.
On Saturday, USA Today reporter Dan Wolken compared Alabama (which had only six yards rushing against LSU) to Oregon as two teams “that consistently mess around and play closer games than they should against inferior opponents.”
Four of the Ducks’ eight wins have been by seven points, including its Ohio State victory on Sept. 11, and they beat UCLA by only three points in the final three minutes of the game. Their other three wins, by substantial margins, have been against Pac-12 bottom-dwellers Arizona and Colorado, and NCAA second-tier Stony Brook.
But back to Saturday’s Ducks-Huskies game.
Things got off to a bad start earlier in the week when Washington coach Jimmy Lake said during a news conference that he didn’t believe Oregon was the Huskies’ No. 1 football recruiting rival. “The schools that we go against . . . have academic prowess,” he said. “Notre Dame. Stanford. USC. We go with a lot of battles toe-to-toe all the way to the end with those schools.”
Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal’s response was very measured: “Every single ounce of our focus is on the [Saturday] game.”
UO President Michael Schill’s reaction in The Oregonian newspaper was more pointed: “UW is a wonderful school with a great football history,” he said. “I have great respect and affection for its president, its academic and football program and its former exceptional football coach, coach [Chris] Petersen.”
Two days later, during his weekly radio show in Seattle, Lake said he was surprised by the reaction to his comments. “This is a rivalry week, so every word is hung onto and anything that maybe looks like it could be a headline will get snipped and sent out and I’m sure that’s what happened this last week,” he said. “But I have the utmost respect for the University of Oregon as an academic and an athletic institution.”
Seeming to put an end to the controversy after Saturday’s win, Cristobal told reporters, “I’m proud of the way our guys came out and showed our prowess in handling inclement weather and continuing to play hard throughout the entire game.” The quip made me laugh.
But then Oregonian sports columnist John Canzano reported that Cristobal “ripped UW in the Ducks’ locker room and referenced the Huskies’ cancelation of the rivalry game last season [due to Husky COVID protocols]. He called Washington ‘everything wrong with football’ and congratulated his team for knocking the Huskies out on the field.”
Seattle Times reporter Mike Vorel quoted Lake after the game as candidly admitting, “We didn’t play good enough on offense tonight. We didn’t get enough first downs. We didn’t score enough points. We didn’t run the ball well enough. We didn’t throw the ball well enough, and we didn’t catch the football well enough.” All of which was true.
The Excellent
Junior RB Travis Dye
Dye ran for a career-high 211 yards and a TD on 28 carries, including 154 yards and a TD on 18 carries in the second half. His total was the most in a game by a Pac-12 player this year and it moved him into ninth place on Oregon’s career rushing list with 2,660 yards.
After nine games, Dye has gained a net 820 yards on the ground on 134 carries and 11 TDs. In addition, he’s the Ducks’ leading receiver with 26 catches for 277 yards and one TD.
Cristobal’s post-game comment: “Travis is just scratching the surface of what he can be.”
The Good
The Oregon offense
Collectively, the Ducks gained a season-high 329 yards on the ground Saturday, their most rushing yards since netting 392 against Oregon State three years ago.
Cristobal, a former offensive lineman who had made it clear he prefers to have Oregon run the ball more than it passes it, got his wish as a steady rain and temperatures in the low 40s favored keeping the ball on the ground. “The rain was coming down at such a high clip that it wasn’t going to be easy throwing the ball,” he said after the game. “It wasn’t a passing type of game.”
For the season, Oregon had run the ball 42 percent of the time. Against the Huskies, nearly three-quarters of the Ducks’ plays were running plays. They attempted only five passes in the second half.
The Ducks got off to another maddingly slow start on Saturday with an interception, FG, safety and two punts in the first quarter.
They got their first TD on a seven-play, 76-yard drive early in the second quarter but the most exciting drive of the game came at the start of the third quarter, when they went 70 yards in six plays, including a 45-yard run by Dye up the middle of the field. QB Anthony Brown capped the drive with a 2-yard run that gave the Ducks a 17-9 lead.
Once the second quarter started, the Ducks’ only offensive miscue came in the fourth quarter, when Cristobal and offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead elected to punt the ball rather than try for a second FG by sophomore kicker Camden Lewis, who kicked a 46-yarder in the first quarter for Oregon’s first score of the game, his ninth FG without a miss this season.
Oregon had started its drive on its own 25-yard line and was quickly flagged for two false starts. They worked their way down to the Washington 14-yard line when junior center Alex Forsyth was called for a 15-yard tripping penalty. That was followed by another 15-yard penalty against sophomore WR Mycah Pittman for grabbing a defender’s face mask and pulling him to the ground.
Two more plays took the Ducks down to the Huskies’ 32-yard line, where sophomore punter Tom Snee was brought in to punt on fourth and 28.
Snee, who is averaging more than 40 yards per punt this season, pooched the ball to the Washington 10-yard line and the Huskies took over possession with two minutes and 14 second left to play with a chance to tie the game.
Asked after the game why Oregon decided to punt the ball instead of trying for a second field goal, which would have been a 42-yard effort, Cristobal’s cryptic response was, “We felt that with the odds it played better in our favor and gave us a better chance to win to put our defense back on the field.”
With a little more than two minutes to play in the game, trailing 24-16 and with their backs to the wall on their own 10-yard line, the Huskies blew their chance to score a TD and a two-point PAT that would have tied the game by inexplicably dropping two short passes and throwing an incomplete pass. Then, on fourth and 10, Lake decided to punt from his own end zone but the snap sailed off to the right and over punter Race Porter’s head for the game-sealing safety.
The Oregon defense
The Duck defenders allowed just 166 yards of total offense by Washington (111 passing, 55 rushing) while holding the Huskies to seven first downs and no scores at all in the second and third quarters. They also didn’t allow a first down in the third quarter, forcing a trio of three-and-outs while allowing just 19 yards of offense.
Entering Saturday’s game, the Ducks were giving up an average of 393 yards per game.
The Huskies had five drives that started near or across midfield throughout the night, but failed to score on any of them.
Cristobal’s post-game assessment: “Great defensive performance.”
Freshman LB Noah Sewell
Sewell led the team in tackles for the fourth time this year with 10 takedowns. He also broke up two passes. He leads the team with 79 tackles this season, including 67 in the last seven games.
The Just OK
Senior QB Anthony Brown
Brown came off his most accurate and productive game to date against Colorado, when he completed more than 80 percent of his passes for over 300 yards and three TDs. On Saturday he was 10 for 20 with one interception early in the first quarter. He also carried the ball 12 times for 63 yards and a TD and didn’t get sacked.
Washington hasn’t allowed a pass play of more than 40 yards since 2019 and Brown, who has yet to show that he can throw the long ball, was no threat to end that streak. His longest pass Saturday was for 31 yards and his longest pass play as a Duck was for 66 yards, most of which was gained by the receiver.
Senior WR Johnny Johnson III
Johnson saw his streak of consecutive starts at Oregon stopped at 21 games because he was ruled ineligible to play the first half against Washington after being penalized for targeting against Colorado.
He leads Duck receivers with 1,872 career yards and needs 177 more yards to place 10th in all-time UO receiving yards. He made one catch for 13 yards in the second half of Saturday’s game.
The Bad
Penalties
The Ducks had eight penalties for 70 yards Saturday, giving them 68 penalties for 647 yards on the season. Penalties, almost all of them preventable, have cost them an average 72 yards per game this season.
Washington senior tailback Sean McGrew
Sean McGrew, who is only 5 foot 7 and weighs 180 pounds, had a subpar game Saturday but was impressive against a stout Duck defense. He made the game-winner score in overtime against California in Seattle, ran for 104 yards and two TDs in a loss to Oregon State and rushed for 114 yards in a win against Stanford.
On Saturday he carried the ball 15 times for 48 yards and two TDs and added another 30 yards on receptions and kickoff returns. He was just one of four Huskies who played when Washington last beat Oregon in 2017.
The Ugly
Husky punter Race Porter
He dropped five of his seven punts inside the Ducks’ 20-yard line, including back-to-back kicks that were downed at the one-yard line and two-yard line.
Play reviews
Officials halted the game seven times to review plays on Saturday. Four of the reviews confirmed the rulings on the field and three overturned them.
There should have been an eighth review when freshman tight end Terrance Ferguson caught an errant Brown pass that clearly bounced off the turf as Ferguson dropped to the ground to catch it for a nine-yard gain on the third play of the game, but none of the seven officials on the field saw the incompletion.
Players’ misbehaving between plays and after the game
Emotions ran high Saturday, as they always do during Ducks-Huskies games. Players from both teams were restrained several times by their coaching staffs during the game and then again immediately after it ended.
Seattle Times reporter Mike Vorel said one of Oregon’s backup QBs, Robby Ashford was yelling, “This is our (expletive)! This is our (expletive)! This is our (expletive)!” while motioning at the field. A video on Twitter showed freshman cornerback Jaylin Davies and senior WR Jaylon Redd yelling from the sidelines.
Some Husky players were clearly responding in kind.
“We don’t want that to happen,” Lake said after the game. “We want to end the game with a handshake.”
The bizarre end of the game
Nothing was more bizarre about Saturday’s game than its ending.
After Oregon got its safety with just under two minutes left in the game, Washington had to kick off and tried an onside kick that went out of bounds at the Huskies’ 36-yard line.
Oregon got two consecutive first downs to the Washington 11-yard line and freshman backup RB Byron Cardwell ran for what looked like a final Duck TD, which would have made the score 32-16.
However, the officials called for a review of the play and ruled that Cardwell was a foot or so short of the goal line. So the Ducks lined up for what they assumed would be the final play of the game and a probable TD.
Apparently, neither Brown nor anyone else on the Oregon team noticed that while the 40-second play clock was ticking down, there were only 10 seconds remaining in the game.
A Washington defensive lineman noticed, however, and stood up and pointed at the scoreboard, at which point the referee blew his whistle, announced the game was over and headed off the field.
Seattle Times reporter Percy Allen observed, “On the final drive, Cristobal seemingly wanted to embarrass Washington one last time.”
The final seconds of the game reminded me of the Oregon coach’s decision to re-insert Brown late in the Colorado game, with the Ducks leading by two TDs, so they could get one more score, seemingly to impress CFP selection committee members.
The weather
Seattle Times columnist Larry Stone accurately described Saturday’s weather at Husky Stadium as “trademark Seattle trifecta — wind, rain and cold.” Still, 63,193 fans turned out to watch the three-hour, 36-minute spectacle.
Next Up
Oregon’s next two games are against Washington State in Eugene and at Utah, the conference’s two hottest teams besides the Ducks. The Ducks-Cougars game will be in Autzen Stadium at 7:30 p.m. and be shown on ESPN.
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.
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