Think Out Loud

After loss to Washington, Oregon Ducks face off against Utah

By Elizabeth Castillo (OPB)
Nov. 15, 2022 6:13 p.m. Updated: Nov. 22, 2022 6:10 p.m.

Broadcast: Tuesday, Nov. 15

Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon, December 13, 2021.

Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon, December 13, 2021.

Eric Evans Photography / via University of Oregon

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This past weekend, the Oregon Ducks faced off against the Washington Huskies and were met with a brutal loss. But the season isn’t over yet. The Ducks and the Utah Utes will play each other on Saturday and the game has implications for which team will make it to the Pac-12 Championship Game. We’re joined by Zachary Neel, the managing editor for USA Today’s Ducks Wire.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. After an opening season loss to Georgia, the best team in the country, the University of Oregon football team was on a roll. They won their next eight games and their quarterback, Bo Nix, was being talked about as a long shot Heisman trophy possibility. Then came this past weekend, an upset loss to the University of Washington. It dashed a lot of Ducks fans hopes, but there still are two regular season games to go. Zachary Neel is a managing editor for USA Today’s Ducks Wire. He joins us to talk about where the Ducks go from here. Zach Neel, welcome.

Zachary Neel: Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Miller: So I mentioned that the Ducks lost to Georgia in the first game of the season, but that doesn’t really do justice to the game. Can you describe the shellacking in the first game of the season?

Neel: Shellacking is definitely a good way to put it. As you mentioned, Georgia is the defending national champion. They were the best team in the country last year and they are likely [the] pretty undisputed best team in the country this year. Oregon was just outmatched in that game. If anyone knows the Ducks, they have a brand new head coach this year who actually, ironically, came from Georgia last year and was part of the reason they were so good last year. But Oregon, they don’t have the same talent that Georgia has, they don’t have the same big bodies on the field. And they lost 49-3. It was a tough way to get the season started, but as you mentioned, they righted the ship pretty quickly and looked pretty good after that.

Miller: I get losing that badly to a team that everyone knows is, even then, maybe the best in the country, I guess it’s different than losing to just a middling, conference rival. But losing that badly to start with, did that strike fear in the hearts of Ducks fans?

Neel: I think for Duck fans, yes. For players and people on the team and people like myself who cover the team, I don’t think I was too concerned. Because if you know the sport of college football, you know how incredibly good Georgia is. Their team is stacked with a lot of NFL talent, a lot of people that are going to go on and make millions of dollars playing this game. So losing badly to them, especially when your own team is so new and you’re dealing with so many new coaches, new players trying to figure it out. That’s a tough game to play in week one. I think that if Oregon played them later in the year, say if Oregon played them next week, I think it’d be a much different game. I’m not saying that the Ducks would beat them by any means, but I don’t think they would lose 49-3.

Miller: But as you noted, the Ducks really did right the ship to a great extent for the next two months. What was going right for the University of Oregon in their eight game winning streak?

Neel: You mentioned a little bit earlier, a lot of it had to do with Bo Nix, the quarterback. He’s a transfer that came in this year from Auburn where he had an up and down season, or up and down career down there, I should say. And he really started to click and was playing the best football of his career. As you mentioned, he was part of the Heisman Trophy conversation, which is an award given to the best player in all of college football after every season. Oregon’s offense was just dominant. They still have one of the best offenses in the nation by a ton of metrics and a ton of stats. And to be honest, they were playing in a Pac-12 conference that, you know, at the top is decent. But the teams that are not UCLA or USC or Utah are not the best competition in the nation. So they had a little bit of a mixture of solid scheduling where they could take advantage of their opponents and they just really got things going mainly on an offensive end.

Miller: And did you see over the course of those more than two months, the team that, as you noted, had a lot of newness both among players and coaches. Did they gel?

Neel: Absolutely. It takes a while for a new system to be put into place and for players to buy in. A lot of the players on this team have experienced multiple head coaches because at Oregon, we’ve had a few different head coaches in the past 5 to 10 years. So, I think it takes a little bit of time to understand what the new head coach Dan Lanning was trying to get done. But once they kind of got that together and they, like you said, jelled and meshed and they realized that they all have the same goal and were able to work at it, they started to find success and it became addictive. I mean you know how that is. Once you see something working and once you have so much fun doing that, it’s hard to do anything else. So yeah, I think that over the past couple of months, this team got really close, they started to gel a lot and it’s been a lot of fun to watch.

Miller: So let’s turn back to Bo Nix, the quarterback. Why did he transfer to Oregon from Auburn?

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Neel: Down at Auburn, he had a tough go of things. So if you look far back in the story of Bo Nix, his dad was a quarterback at Auburn. He was kind of a “legacy player” is what he’s considered there. He came up. He was a five star recruit, one of the top recruits in the nation and really didn’t have much recruiting because everyone just assumed that he was going to go to Auburn. And it started out great for him actually. In his first ever game, he beat the Oregon Ducks, ironically. But then, there’s some ups and downs throughout his career. Sometimes he made a lot of mistakes because he was trying too hard to make things happen. He had a lot of good moments there as well.

But in the end, bad play plus injuries made him into the transfer portal and decided to come up to Oregon where he actually reconvened with offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham, who used to be his offensive coordinator down in Auburn as well. So I think the opportunity of getting to work with a coach that he was comfortable with and just a change of scenery to try and get his career back on the right track before potentially going to the NFL was really enticing to him and it’s worked out incredibly well.

Miller: Has he exceeded your expectations given his sort of checkered past?

Neel: Absolutely, 100%. I think that I, along with a lot of Duck fans coming into this year, was a bit skeptical about how the move was going to be made. You look at his stats from previous years and, as I mentioned, there were some flashes of greatness, but there was a lot of very spotty play here and there and a penchant to make mistakes. So Oregon, who was used to quarterbacks like Marcus Mariota or Justin Herbert, had grown frustrated over the past few years with some of the quarterback talent. And this seemed like they were bringing in another transfer who was going to be okay, but not great. So when he started doing what he’s been doing and really showing a lot of maturity and less of a pension to make these mistakes and showing all of the upside he had and very little of the downside, it was amazing to watch. He’s blown everybody out of the water so far.

Miller: So the Ducks had that terrible first game against a great team and then won eight games in a row. What was the thinking going into the University of Washington game this past weekend, which was the third to last regular season game of the year?

Neel: The thinking was that the ceiling for this team was very high. I mean, we’re in a college football playoff era now where the four best teams in the nation, at the end of every year, get invited to this playoff between those four. And those teams play for a national championship at the end and there was thinking that Oregon really had a good shot to get into that. They were ranked number six in the country and a couple of the teams in front of them had yet to play each other. So there was bound to be a couple of spots in that top four open up. The way that Oregon was looking and as dynamic as their offense was, there was a real thought that Oregon belonged in that final four and in the playoff. That was all assuming that they could win the last three, maybe four games if they reached the Pac-12 championship on their schedule. But the hopes were very high going into the Washington game.

Miller: And what happened on Saturday?

Neel: What happened was some fatal flaws in the defense that I think a lot of us had been kind of - I don’t want to say ignoring - but making excuses for. A lot of the flaws and blemishes that had been covered up by the prolificness of the offense came out and showed themselves. And credit to Washington, they have a great offense. They’re a really good team, as we mentioned, and Oregon didn’t play their best game. They gave up a lot of yards, a lot of points, and in the end, Bo Nix also got hurt in the fourth quarter. He was unable to lead a comeback drive. In the end, he actually got hurt and had to miss one drive and then came back for the last drive of the game. I’m not sure what his status is for this upcoming week but a lot of things just didn’t break the right way for the Ducks. And in this type of game, when you’re in such competitive matchups with other good, good teams, that’s all it takes. Sometimes there’s a couple things going the wrong way, a couple of missed calls from the refs. That’s all it takes sometimes.

Miller: At this point, what is the best case scenario for the Ducks?

Neel: Best case scenario right now is still what we thought was the best case scenario coming into the season, which is pretty amazing to say. Going into the year, I thought the ceiling for this team was to make it to a Pac-12 championship and potentially go to a Rose Bowl. If you win the Pac-12 championship, you go to the Rose Bowl. That is still very much in play. I think that Oregon fans kind of got a little bit over their skis during the middle of the season because we realized that that carrot of, oh, maybe you can get to the college football playoff that became possible. And so that became everyone’s expectation. And now that that’s not attainable anymore, I think a lot of people are a little bit bummed out realizing that, oh, we can only get to the Rose Bowl. Rewind two months ago after that Georgia loss. And if you told any Oregon fan that they had a chance to get to the Rose Bowl when the season was over, they would have taken that in an instant.

Miller: There’s still the Rose Bowl. That would mean beating the Beavers in a week and a half. What are you expecting in that game?

Neel: In the Oregon State game? It’s gonna be a close one. Oregon State’s very good this year. They’ve got things going in the right direction. It’s a fun rivalry. I’m expecting a lot of fun in that one.

Miller: Well, thanks very much Zach Neel for joining us. I appreciate it.

Neel: Yeah, absolutely.

Miller: Zach Neel is the managing editor for USA Today’s Ducks Wire.

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