After a very lack luster Week-1 win against Big Sky Conference team Idaho, Oregon wins 37-34 in Week-2 just squeaking by Mountain West’s Boise State on a field goal with time expiring. Oregon, No. 3 on the AP Top-25 preseason poll and picked by a number of folks to possibly win both the Big Ten and the National Championship are not looking like what anyone expected—what’s up? As Ryan Clark wrote in his article for OregonLive; “The No. 7 Oregon Ducks escaped Boise State 37-34 on Saturday at Autzen Stadium thanks to a late field goal by Atticus Sappington, emerging victorious from a game littered with highs and lows, confounding mistakes and moments of euphoria. Oregon’s offensive line issues bled over from the Idaho game, as [Oregon QB] Dillon Gabriel was smothered in the backfield on a regular basis. That included back-to-back sacks in the second quarter, putting Oregon at six sacks allowed through a game and one quarter — more than all of the 2023 season.” And there it is.
The Ducks lost last year’s star QB Bo Nix, running back Bucky Irving, their star wide receiver and their starting center—all to the NFL. They were expected to have a stout, maybe even better offensive line, but they don’t—and that’s a big problem. In their first two games against far weaker opponents than they’ll be facing when they start Big Ten play they are averaging 70+ less yards on the ground and picking up half the yardage per rush than they did last year—three yards as opposed to six yards which gave them a lot of options on 2nd and 3rd down. Last year they averaged 40+ points per game while so far this year they are averaging 10 points less in their non-conference give-me games. They don’t have a super hard schedule this year and over the next two weeks will be playing familiar opponents in Oregon State and UCLA. But after that it’s Michigan State and Jonathan Smith who knows how to beat the Ducks and then No. 3 Ohio State who right now they won’t stand a chance against.
For Oregon QB Dillon Gabriel was surgically accurate connecting on 85% of his passes for 243 yards and 2 TD’s, one each to Junior WR Evan Stewart and Senior Traeshon Holden who also combined for 9 receptions and 190 of those yards. Junior RB Jordan James did the bulk of the work on the ground carrying the ball 17 times for 102 of the team’s 110 total yards with Gabriel picking up their lone rushing TD. Credit Tez Johnson on special teams for keeping them in the game with an 85 yard punt return for TD to give them a 27-20 lead at the end of the 3rd Qtr and Atticus Sappington for winning the game by kicking a 25 yard field goal with time expiring. Remember his nickname? On the other side of the ball Oregon gave up 221 yards on the ground, 192 and three TD’s to just one guy, Junior RB Ashton Jeanty who averaged 7.7 yards per his 25 carries. There were eight lead changes in the game as well as three ties. As head coach Dan Lanning said afterwards: “I have a sense of relief because of the result. But, try to focus on the process, and there’s a lot of things I think we can go and attack and fix. And there’s certainly some things to fix, right? There’s certainly some things to improve.” That’s for sure.