The Herald’s weekly Duck football commentary: Same Oregon, same Utah, same bad outcome – Oregon 10, Utah 38

by LLOYD PASEMAN/ For The Herald — After a second trouncing by the No. 17 Utah Utes, who snatched the 2021 Pac-12 championship and a trip to the Rose Bowl away from the No. 10 Ducks on Friday night, it’s hard to believe that Oregon was ranked No. 3 in the nation by the College Football Playoff selection committee less than three weeks ago.

But then came the first Oregon-Utah matchup on Nov. 20, from which the Ducks were sent packing with their tails between their legs by a 38-7 thumping. Three days later, Oregon dropped to No. 11 in the Top 25 CFP rankings, rising to No. 10 the following week after defeating Oregon State 38-29.

Oregon’s situation was muddled after Friday’s loss by the announcement that Joe Moorhead, the Ducks’ offensive coordinator for the past two years, has taken the head coaching job at the University of Akron, and by reports that the University of Miami is seeking to hire Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal.

Moorhead was Akron’s receivers coach, passing game coordinator, quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator for his final three seasons there. He was head coach at Mississippi State for two seasons before coming to Oregon.

Miami coach Manny Diaz hasn’t been fired but Register-Guard sports reporter Antwan Staley said the school “is closing in on Clemson’s Dan Radakovich to be its new athletic director” and “is interested” in making Cristobal “its next head coach.”

Speaking with reporters in Las Vegas after Friday’s game, Cristobal said, “I don’t know what you mean when you say someone’s offered [a job]. I haven’t talked to anybody. Let’s not create narratives. As we sit here in this press conference, Oregon is working on some stuff for me and that’s what I have right now. That’s the extent of the conversation….I would say if there’s something to report, I will report it. I always have.”

He continued, “Do I expect people to come at me? Yeah, I do. It happens every single year. Is there anything else to report besides that? There’s nothing else to report besides that. When there ever is, if there ever is, I’ll make sure to get it to you as fast as I can.”

Cristobal, 51, was born and raised in Miami and was an offensive lineman for the Miami Hurricanes from 1988-92. He played on two Miami national championship teams in 1989 and 1991. He was head coach at Florida International University for five years and assistant head coach, offensive line coach and recruiting coordinator at Alabama after that. He was hired as Oregon’s co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach in 2017 and became head coach when Willie Taggart abruptly left to take the job of head coach at Florida State.

Staley said Miami is rumored to be willing to spend upward of $8 million to hire Cristobal, and that Oregon has offered him a $7 million contract extension that he has yet to sign. He’s in the second year of a contract that expires at the end of 2027 and is currently being paid $4.3 million per year, plus $700,000 in incentives that would have increased to $1.2 million if the Ducks had won a third straight Pac-12 championship.

Cristobal has a 35-12 record at Oregon, including Pac-12 championships in 2019 and 2020, a 28-27 Rose Bowl win over Wisconsin in 2019, and a 34-17 Fiesta Bowl loss to Iowa State last year. The Ducks won the 2018 Redbox Bowl, defeating Michigan State 7-6, in Cristobal’s first year as head coach.

But back to Friday’s Oregon-Utah rematch.

On Nov. 27 the Ducks and Beavers met in Eugene for their annual rivalry game and Oregon came away with a respectable 38-29 victory and the Pac-12 North Division crown, although the Beavers struck fear in the hearts of the Oregon faithful by outscoring the Ducks 20-7 in the final 10 minutes of the fourth quarter in Eugene.

The CFP committee will announce its final 2021 rankings at 9 a.m. Sunday on ESPN, including which four teams will compete in the national semifinals in the Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day for a chance to play for the national championship on Jan. 10 in Indianapolis.

It’s all but certain that Oregon won’t be in the CFP’s Top 10 list on Sunday.

The Ducks now appear headed to the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio on Dec. 29, most likely to play No. 14 Oklahoma (10-2) or No. 9 Baylor, which defeated No. 5 Oklahoma State on Saturday, 21-16. Bowl officials have their choice of Oregon, Washington State, Arizona State or UCLA from the Pac-12.

The last time Oregon played in the Alamo Bowl, in 2015, they lost to TCU 47-41 in triple overtime after blowing a 31-0 halftime lead. In 2012 they beat Texas 30-7.

A number of other college football conference championship games were being played Saturday, including the Southeastern Conference (12-0 Georgia vs. 11-1 Alabama), Big Ten (11-1 Michigan vs. 10-2 Iowa), Atlantic Coast Conference (10-2 Wake Forest vs. 10-2 Pittsburgh) and American Athletic Conference (12-0 Cincinnati vs. 11-1 Houston).

Oregon’s second loss to Utah this season leaves it with a 10-3 record going into the post-season bowl games. As of Saturday noon seven other teams in the CFP’s Top 25—including Utah—had three or more losses, with the possibility that Iowa and Pittsburgh might join the list after Saturday’s games.

Ohio State, Mississippi, Michigan State, BYU and Oklahoma finished the regular season 10-2 after losing their chances to compete for their respective conference championships in a 13^th game. Notre Dame, 11-1, plays an independent schedule but remains in contention for one of the top four CFP spots with a No. 6 ranking as of last Tuesday.

Utah had won the South Division in 2015, 2018 and 2019 but had never won a Pac-12 title since joining the conference in 2011 when it expanded from 10 teams to 12.

Friday’s defeat was the second-worst loss in Cristobal’s four years at Oregon. The worst was the Utes’ 38-7 beatdown of the Ducks in Salt Lake City.

After the game, Cristobal told reporters, “I’m disappointed in ourselves as a staff, as a team….They did a better job than we did and there’s no excuse to make….They played well, but we hurt ourselves, as well. But the recipe to change the result of this game was to do better on first and second down and we didn’t.”

The Good

Cristobal did his best to tie a pretty bow on Friday’s loss after the game. “We found a way to win 10 games despite a lot of injuries,” he said. “We had some really bright moments. We got one of the best road victories in the country this year [35-28 against Ohio State on Sept. 11]. Then we had a couple of disappointing losses, but to have 10 wins on the season and then win the North Division and give ourselves an opportunity to win our third straight Pac-12 championship. We didn’t get it done, but the other team earned it, so congratulations.”

Junior RB Travis Dye

Dye Led Oregon with 82 rushing yards and a TD on 15 carries while also leading the team with four receptions for 27 yards. He moved from 21st to 18th on Oregon’s single-season rushing list, raising his 2021 total to 1,118 yards.

He’s now fifth on the school’s career rushing list with 2,958 yards, passing Jonathan Stewart (2,891) and teammate CJ Verdell (2,929). He also moved into the Top 10 all-purpose yards list with 4,156 yards, passing Keenan Howry (4,114).

With another year of eligibility remaining, he’s 42 rushing yards away from becoming the fifth player in Oregon history to reach 3,000 yards in a career. Royce Freeman (2014-17) had 5,621 yards, LaMichael James (2009-11) 5,082, Kenjon Barner (2009-12) 3,623 and Derek Loville (1986-89) 3,296.

Freshman inside linebacker Noah Sewell

Sewell led Oregon with 12 tackles, including eight solo grabs, while adding an interception and forced fumble. With 106 he became the first Oregon player to reach the 100-tackle mark in a season since Troy Dye in 2019.

He is 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighs 251 pounds and is surprisingly fleet of foot. His diving pass interception on the first play of the second quarter was the first of his career but likely won’t be his last.

Sophomore safety Verone McKinley III

McKinley picked off his sixth pass of the season in the second quarter Friday, taking over sole possession of the lead in Football Bowl Subdivision pass interceptions. He now has 11 career interceptions, one away from moving into Oregon’s career Top 10 list.

The Bad

Sophomore defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux

For the second time in the past three games—the Ducks’ Nov. 27 win over the Beavers being the exception—the third-year sophomore failed to live up to expectations that have made him widely projected to be at least a Top 5 pick in the 2022 NFL Draft, if not the No. 1 pick overall.

He finished Friday’s game with three tackles and a QB sack as Utah resumed its strategy of running plays to the opposite side of the field from where Thibodeaux was set up.

The sack was his 19th career sack and moved him into a tie for seventh all time at Oregon. He also has 35.5 career tackles for a loss, a half-tackle away from making it into the Ducks’ all-time Top 10 list in that category.

The Ugly

A virtual carbon copy of the Ducks’ Nov. 20 loss in Salt Lake City, Friday’s game was painful for Duck fans to watch. Various reports on the game have described the team as “flat,” “lethargic” and “uninspired” and all are true.

Utah’s defense held Oregon to 221 yards of total offense, including only 74 net yards rushing (they gained 109 but lost 35). The Ducks entered the game averaging 214 rushing yards.

Also, Oregon was ranked third nationally in third-down conversion percentage but didn’t convert a third down until less than five minutes were left in the third quarter.

Utah junior linebacker Devin Lloyd was named the game’s Most Valuable Player. He led a defense that kept Oregon from making a first down until a minute into the second quarter.

Oregon finally scored early in the third quarter when Camden Lewis kicked a 42-yard field goal but the Ducks’ first—and only—TD didn’t come until Dye scored on a 2-yard run with just over five minutes to play in the game.

Adding to Oregon’s woes were a number of false start penalties, a delay of game penalty after a kickoff, one snap that bounced off the turf on its way to Brown and a second that Brown wasn’t ready for and fell on at the 1-yard line to recover.

It was, indeed, an ugly game, one accurately described by one reporter as the Ducks’ worst game this season.

Senior QB Anthony Brown

Friday’s rematch with Utah was easily the former Boston College QB’s worst game played for Oregon.

He passed for a net 147 yards, fewer than in 10 other games this season (he averaged 206 yards per game for all 13 games) and completed only 54 percent of his 24 attempts (he has nearly 64 percent completions on the season).

He had a minus five yards rushing, the only time in 2021 that he’s had minus yardage for a game (he’s averaged 49 yards per game on 142 carries this year).

He was sacked four times for a loss of 21 yards after having been sacked only 20 times in the previous 12 games.

Worst of all, he often seemed confused and unsure of himself on the field, overthrowing several of his passes badly, hesitating with the ball at crucial moments in mid-play, and making several obviously bad decisions. Those decisions included throwing a pass to the sidelines while being pressured with less than 30 seconds to go in the second quarter that Utah intercepted and turned into a FG as time expired in the half.

Most curious, though, was that Brown played the entire game while obviously having the worst performance of his Duck career. For reasons that maybe only he can understand, Cristobal kept Brown’s three freshmen backup QBs sitting on the bench during both crushing Utah defeats.

Only two of the three—Ty Thompson and Jay Butterfield—have taken any snaps in games this season. Between them, they’ve completed half of their 18 pass attempts for 109 yards and two TDs and thrown one interception (Brown has six for the season).

The Oregonian’s sports columnist John Canzano correctly suggested that Oregon needs to “find a quarterback who can hurt defenses with his arm. College football is a quarterback-centric game and Oregon’s inability to find and develop a dazzling one in the wake of Justin Herbert’s departure is puzzling.”

Cristobal has spent his four years at Oregon trying to make the Ducks into a tough, physical team that wins by primarily running the ball, possibly reflecting his offensive lineman background and his time coaching at Miami and Alabama. But Canzano said if winning a national championship “means putting the ball in the air more and trusting a young quarterback, embrace it.’

And he’s right.

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.