By Kyle Golik
One of the easiest takes you are seeing as Week 1 comes to a close you look at the Oregon game, and easily point to them being overrated. To an extent you would be right, there was alarming stuff that Oregon wasn’t able to do against Big Sky’s Idaho Vandals. In another prism, you could also see many self inflicted wounds Oregon caused by itself, something a disciplined Idaho team wouldn’t allow it to defeat itself.
Many from the Oregon side were hoping for a crooked number Saturday, instead, Idaho gave nothing for free as Oregon head coach Dan Lanning addressed the media following the game, “Different than what we thought it may look like. On the same note, we have to give a lot of credit to Idaho. They played a really good game. They didn’t give us anything for free.”
Let’s examine the self-inflicted wounds, the things Oregon extended to Idaho to stay in this game longer than they should.
In consecutive drives in the third quarter, Lanning elected to go for fourth down at the Oregon 36 and 45 yard lines up 14-0. Idaho was able to stuff tight end Kenyon Sadiq and running back Jordan James in each situation.
It is Lanning’s aggressive nature that gave Idaho a short field, something they were able to capitalize on once. I doubt Lanning would be this aggressive against a Power 4 opponent or a team capable of paying, but I also felt Lanning was pressing and that to me is a giant red flag. I get his confidence in his defense, but you got a two-possession lead, punt the football, and see if the defense can create an opportunity for the offense. There is a component of realizing what position you put the defense on, they can administer pressure with the field to operate with. A shortened field puts unnecessary pressure on a defense to be mistake free and Idaho did make them pay on it.
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That is the microview, the macroview concern is when Lanning is pressing, does he seem to go for it in situations that can be damaging? We saw this against Oregon State in 2022 which allowed the Beavers to rally back against Oregon. We saw this against DeBoer and Washington in consecutive years in their regular season matchups. To me, Lanning is still trying to play speed chess, and at this level of college football, where you have to adhere to a component of classical chess to be successful.
The other glaring issues came from the ground game and the offensive line. Idaho did an amazing job at controlling the line of scrimmage as Oregon was able to get 107 yards rushing and only 2.9 yards per carry. In comparison last season, Oregon was No. 3 in the nation at 5.9 yards per rush.
Lanning said of Idaho’s defense of the Oregon ground game, “I thought they did a good job of stopping our interior run game and we struggled at times to get the ball in the perimeter and be able to move it down the field. I think they did a really good job of staying on top defensively as well to stop us from creating explosive plays down the field, and they did a good job generating pressure, so we have to evaluate some of those looks.”
Oregon’s offensive line was easily penetrated by the Vandals’ defense. It was exposed that Oregon misses what Jackson Powers-Johnson provided in the interior last season, as the Vandals had three sacks and six tackles for loss. With Oregon not able to get the ground game going, it forced Oregon to go through the air, starting quarterback Dillon Gabriel was 41 for 49 passing 380 yards and two touchdowns, but Oregon did not have a pass play for over 25 yards compared to Idaho’s three.
Lanning wouldn’t recognize if Idaho was even in their matchup, “We don’t live in hypotheticals. That’s the score of the game. That’s the reality. There are things that we did that put us in situations where we didn’t get to finish drives and that’s the reality. They stopped us on fourth down at times. When we went for it, they did a great job stopping a punt fake, so there were some opportunities out there that we didn’t take advantage of, and they did. The score is what the score was,” but in a lot of ways they were equal to the task.
It’s only one game, but a game where Oregon had a greater than 99% chance of winning, one many thought would be over at halftime and a great opportunity to see the bench perform didn’t materialize in Eugene.
What did materialize is a bunch of questions that have no answers. Can the running game recover? Oregon won’t even be a .500 team in the Big Ten if they run for less than three yards per carry, their schedule won’t permit that to be. Quite frankly if they run less than three yards per carry against Boise State, I don’t see the Ducks surviving that game either.
There were no explosive pass plays and only three runs of 10 or more yards, this was a team that looked like a team that was hoping to gain bowl eligibility versus a deep run in the College Football Playoff. Maybe my last line was an overreaction, it’s one week, but the improvements Oregon has to exhibit with Boise State coming to Autzen this Saturday have to be dramatic.
