By LLOYD PASEMAN/For The Herald — The result of Friday night’s game between the No. 9-ranked Ducks and the unranked Golden Bears should have been a foregone conclusion. California beat Oregon 21-17 last season in Berkeley but the Ducks had bested the Bears in 10 of their previous 12 meetings. Also, California came into Autzen Stadium on Friday with only a single win so far this season, 42-30 over Sacramento State a month ago.
Both teams were coming off a bye week after losses the week before: Oregon a disappointing 31-24 overtime loss at Stanford, California a 21-6 loss to the Cougars at Washington State. The Bears’ last win in Eugene was a 20-6 victory 34 years ago, when Oregon went 6-5 on the season as Rich Brooks was halfway through his 18 seasons as head coach.
Instead, in a scary finish uncomfortably similar to the end of regulation play against Stanford two weeks earlier, Friday’s one-TD Duck victory came down literally to the final five seconds of the fourth quarter, when California QB Chase Garbers threw an incomplete pass on fourth-and-goal from the 2-yard line under pressure from freshman linebacker Noah Sewell. Before that, the Bears had held the Ducks scoreless and limited them to an embarrassing 28 yards of offense in the third quarter.
In Sunday’s Associated Press college football poll, the Ducks dropped to No. 10 from No. 9 and, despite the squeaker win, remained ranked No. 10 in the USA Today coaches’ poll. Ohio State, who lost to Oregon 35-28 in Columbus on Sept. 11 for their only loss so far, is ranked No. 5 in both polls.
Oregonian sports reporter James Crepea observed, “At times in spite of itself and its quarterback, No. 9 Oregon rallied in a back-and-forth game and its defense, which stood tall for a huge chunk of the game, was pushed to the brink again amid a two-minute drive.”
Oregonian sports columnist John Canzano caustically opined, “While the Ducks beat Cal, they also spent a couple of quarters auditioning for the Sun Bowl….Winning ugly is no longer good enough at Oregon. Decide for yourself if you should celebrate that or be agonized by it.”
An optimistic head coach Mario Cristobal commented in his post-game interview with reporters, “All in all we just found a way to close out a game, which was an improvement from the week before when we were trying to close out a game and came up short [against Stanford].”
The win extended the Ducks’ home winning streak to 16 games—12 of them Pac-12 wins—the third-longest current home winning streak in the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision. They also improved to 19-1 at home under Cristobal (the one loss was to Stanford in 2018, 38-31 in another overtime game).
The Good
Junior RB Travis Dye
Dye knew he would have to pick up more of the rushing load after RB CJ Verdell was lost for the season with a leg injury against Stanford. He became the Ducks’ leading rusher last year after Verdell suffered an earlier injury.
On Friday he netted 145 rushing yards on 19 carries and scored a second-quarter TD. He also caught seven passes for 73 yards. His rushing total moved him into 10th place on the UO career rushing list with 2,367 yards.
Cristobal finally gave him a breather late in the game when backup RB Byron Cardwell carried the ball twice for 19 yards, but Dye ended the game making the majority of the Ducks’ rushing attempts.
Freshman linebacker Noah Sewell
Sewell led the Duck defense with 12 tackles, a QB sack and one and a half tackles for a loss, in addition to breaking up a pass and hurrying Garbers on California’s final play of the game. He leads the team in tackles this season with 54, including 42 in the last four games.
Sophomore defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux
Thibodeaux, widely expected to be a No. 1 pick in the upcoming NFL draft, was held out of the first half Friday because he was flagged for targeting and ejected from the Stanford game. He made his presence known in the second half Friday: He had five tackles and sacked Garbers as the Bears were threatening to tie the score on their next-to-last possession of the game.
He now has 14 career sacks and 26-and-a-half tackles for a loss. He also led an Oregon pass rush that forced Garbers to throw incomplete passes on five of his last six attempts.
Sophomore kicker Camden Lewis
Lewis kicked a career-best 49-yard FG in the first quarter and is now a perfect 7-for-7 in FGs for the year. Oregon is 9-1 when he makes a FG.
Sophomore punter Tom Snee
Snee has become a potent defensive weapon for the Ducks. He had two punts of 51 and 52 yards Friday and is averaging 44 yards per kick after 24 punts this season; his longest so far was 57 yards.
The ESPN broadcast crew
It was a pleasant surprise to discover that Friday’s crew included Beth Mowins as the play-by-play announcer. In 2005 she became only the second woman to call nationally televised college football games for ESPN. She began doing play-by-play for NFL games in 2017 and was the first female play-by-play announcer to call college basketball, the NBA and the NFL for CBS Sports. She has been the network’s lead voice on softball coverage, including the Women’s College World Series.
Her partner in the telecast was analyst Kirk Morrison, a former NFL linebacker who played for the Oakland Raiders, Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills. He played his college football at San Diego State.
The two did an outstanding job Friday without all the irrelevant guy-to-guy blather that spoils the enjoyment of too many sports TV broadcasts for viewers like me.
Former Oregon football coach Mike Bellotti
Bellotti was honored during Friday’s game with a College Football Hall of Fame plaque that was unveiled during the second quarter. He took over as Oregon’s head coach in 1995, replacing Rich Brooks after serving six seasons as Brooks’ offensive coordinator.
The Ducks had nine straight winning seasons under Bellotti and played in 12 bowl games, winning six, during his time as head coach from 1995 through 2008. His teams compiled a 116-55 record and won two conference championships. In his final season the Ducks were 10-3 and defeated Oklahoma State in the Holiday Bowl.
Antwan Staley
The Register-Guard has a new Oregon sports reporter, Antwan Staley, who replaced Ryan Thorburn after Thorburn left Eugene in late August to go to work for the Star-Tribune in Casper, Wyo. Staley worked previously for the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat. He has covered a number of sports for various organizations in print, digital and broadcast media. He is a native of Winston-Salem, N.C., and a 2010 graduate of East Carolina University with a bachelor’s degree in communications. He also has written for publications in Miami and Palm Beach and covered the NFL’s Miami Dolphins for five seasons.
The Good and Not So Good
QB Anthony Brown
In the fourth quarter, Brown had what could be argued was his best game (or at least his best quarter) since stepping in to replace a struggling Tyler Shough in the 2020 Pac-12 Championship Game and Fiesta Bowl. The Ducks beat USC in the former and lost to Iowa State in the latter.
After failing to throw a TD pass and completing only 14 of 26 passes for 186 yards in the loss to Stanford—and throwing his first interception as a Duck—Brown completed 20 of 28 passes Friday for 244 yards and one TD, with no interceptions. He also carried the ball 13 times for a net 44 yards and one TD. By comparison, his rushing numbers against Stanford were 12 carries for 35 yards and two TDs.
Trailing 17-10 early in the fourth quarter, Brown took the Ducks 62 yards in five plays in just over two minutes to tie the score with a razor-sharp 20-yard pass to senior WR Jaylon Redd and a PAT by Lewis.
Then, after forcing a California punt and with the quarter almost half over, Oregon drove 70 yards in seven plays in four minutes to take the lead with less than five minutes to go in the game. Brown provided the game-winning TD on an 11-yard rush in which he dramatically dove toward the corner of the end zone and thrust the ball across the goal line just inside the right pylon.
Those fourth-quarter heroics aside, and Cristobal’s public support to the contrary (“He certainly gives us the best chance to win,” the coach said after the Stanford game), Brown’s ability to successfully lead the Duck football team remains in question.
I’m still of the opinion that he runs the ball too often (74 attempts in seven and a half games, including 2020), in part because his backup QBs are all freshmen with very little college game experience and in part because two of his three seasons at Boston College were ended early by knee injuries. Also, there have been several instances this season when he’s kept the ball when he clearly should have tossed it to an open RB or WR.
With about 30 seconds left in the first half and Oregon leading by a FG, Brown was sacked by a couple of Bear defenders for a loss of four yards. He completed a pass on the next play for a first down at the California 35-yard line, then tried to run the ball over the left end and fumbled it when he was tackled. The Bears recovered the fumble but were unable to score in the final 16 seconds before halftime.
Brown was 14 of 19 for 162 yards passing when he, or the coaches, decided to run the ball on that final possession. Why he or they decided to have him keep it instead of passing is a mystery to me, but it typified some of the curious offensive decision-making that I think has contributed to stalling the Duck offense all too often this season.
As for Brown’s passing generally, offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead has said he likes his QBs to complete 65 percent of their passes, a mark Brown reached in his two 2020 games, when he attempted only 23 passes, but has failed to reach this season. He’s now 89 for 151, with one interception, for the season, which is just under 59 percent.
He’s also thrown seven TD passes this season, which is equal to the number of TDs he’s scored carrying the ball.
Perhaps the larger problem with Brown’s passing, though, is that he has yet to demonstrate an ability to throw the long ball. His longest completion to date was a 66-yard pass play to sophomore WR Mycah Pittman in the fourth quarter against Stanford, but Pittman gained most of that yardage himself after catching the ball.
Going into Friday’s game, the Ducks’ passing game ranked 11th in the Pac-12 in yards per game (210.8) and completion percentage (55.8 percent).
It’s interesting to note that to date, all of Brown’s statistics are below Tyler Shough’s numbers while he was Oregon’s starting QB; Shough, then a sophomore, completed nearly 64 percent of his passes and threw for 12 TDs in 2020.
He transferred to Texas Tech when it became apparent he had lost his starting job at Oregon. He has completed just under 70 percent of his passes there and thrown for six TDs in his first four games but broke his collar bone Sept. 25 in a loss to Texas and is currently on the injured list.
Some of the 50,008 fans who attended Friday’s game demonstrated their displeasure with the Ducks’ performance through the first three quarters, and especially with Brown’s performance, by booing loudly during the ESPN broadcast. Some could be heard calling for backup QB Ty Thompson to be put in the game.
Brown wasn’t made available to the media after the game and the reason wasn’t explained. But his teammates spoke up in support of him.
Junior offensive lineman Ryan Walk, who had to fill in for injured junior center Alex Forsyth for the second game in a row, said the booing “really motivated us….You want to say that you didn’t notice it, but I’m not going to lie to you, we all noticed it.”
Sophomore safety Verone McKinley III said, “We can’t let the crowd affect us and I think Anthony did a good job getting guys rallied back up and going down and leading that drive at the end to get us a score.”
Cristobal said after the game that Brown “made a lot of good plays tonight, a lot of big plays. He showed a lot of poise. He made some plays with his feet, with his arm. I thought we stretched the field better in the first half and then a couple in the second half. I thought our passing game improved a bunch.”
The Duck defense
Speaking of passing, Oregon’s defensive secondary continues to have problems defending against the pass. Going into Friday’s game, it was giving up 275 yards per game, which ranked 111th in the country. There were a number of instances during the game in which an open Bears receiver could be seen in the vicinity of three, four or even five Duck defenders who failed to challenge the catch and didn’t lay a hand on him until after he caught the ball.
Garbers, a redshirt senior who had 390 yards of total offense against Washington on Sept. 25, had 278 yards against the Ducks, targeting 11 different receivers. His 43 attempts were one more than his previous record for attempts, and his 25 completions (61 percent) were five short of his single-game record for catches.
The Ducks’ defensive line played better, holding California to 155 net rushing yards by Garbers and a pair of tough, talented RBs, senior Christopher Brooks and sophomore Damien Moore, who combined for 114 yards on 26 carries, or more than four yards per carry. The defensive highlight, however, was the Ducks holding the Bears scoreless on their final eight plays inside the Oregon 10-yard line.
The Bad
Penalties
After the Stanford game, Oregon ranked 123rd nationally in penalties with 79 yards per game, the most single-game penalties and yards in Cristobal’s four years as head coach.
On Friday they didn’t quite match their season-high 10 penalties for 99 yards against Stanford, but they were flagged nine times for 82 yards. The final penalty, an offside by freshman cornerback Trikweze Bridges, came with less than a minute to go in the game and moved the ball from the Oregon 12-yard line to the 7-yard line.
Cristobal was clearly upset about the penalties. After the game, he said, “Some of these penalties are unavoidable but some are just selfish. I have to find a way to get through in some way, shape or form, and I am going to do that.”
A final note
The UO’s Autzen Stadium COVID-19 mask mandate, supposedly in effect at all university athletic facilities, has been universally ignored at the Ducks’ home football games. There’s no apparent attempt to enforce it and logic would seem to dictate that it be dropped. However, the mandate was issued by Gov. Kate Brown and the UO can’t eliminate it on its own, which is unfortunate because seeing stadium crowds ignore it gives the impression that it isn’t needed—so far, Lane County Public Health hasn’t reported any spikes in COVID-19 infections stemming from the games—and encourages non-compliance with the mandate in other public areas.
Up next
Oregon (5-1) will meet former UO coach Chip Kelly’s UCLA Bruins (5-2) in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena at 12:30 p.m. Saturday. After being stung 40-37 by Fresno State on Sept. 18, the Bruins lost to No, 18 Arizona State 42-23 on Oct. 2. The game will be televised on ABC-TV.
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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