Oregon Ducks head into championship game with Penn State buoyed by undefeated season

If you follow college football and you live in Oregon, there is little chance that you don’t already know that the University of Oregon Ducks are having their best season since 2010. Last weekend, the No. 1-ranked team completed a perfect 12-0 winning season — for just the second time ever — with a victory over rivals Washington Huskies. If you have high hopes that they’ll win their upcoming Big 10 Conference Championship game on Saturday and go on to take the title, then you’re definitely not alone. We get more details about the season and championship prognostications from Zachary Neel, the managing editor of USA Today’s Ducks Wire.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Oregon Ducks football team has now gone where only one Ducks team has gone before. With their win over Washington last weekend, they ended their regular season with a perfect 12-0 record. The last time Oregon accomplished that was in 2010, when they won the then Pac-10 Conference and went on to narrowly lose to Auburn in the national championship game. Hopes are high among fans that this year they can go all the way. They’ll play Penn State in the Big 10 Championship game this Saturday and then the college football playoff awaits.

Zachary Neel is the managing editor of USA Today’s Ducks Wire. He joins us to talk about Oregon’s undefeated season and the road ahead. It’s good to have you back on Think Out Loud.

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

Miller: So, the Ducks started their season with a relatively close win against Idaho and then a really close game against Boise State - a one-point game. What kinds of adjustments did they make after, I don’t know, two wins but a shaky start?

Neel: I think it was more of just a feeling out period, if I’m being completely honest. When you get this new day and age of college football where you’re dealing with so many players from the transfer portal, you just kind of have to feel each other out and get used to playing with each other. I mean, Oregon’s starting quarterback this year, Dillon Gabriel, those were his first two games in Oregon. So there’s gonna be a little bit of growing pain. You’re gonna feel things out. They started to play a lot better football as the season went on. I think they’re playing their best football of the year right now. It’s just a growing period and you’re just kind of feeling everything out.

Miller: When did you realize that this was going to be a special team?

Neel: Oh, that’s a good question. It definitely wasn’t those first two weeks, I’ll tell you that. There were some concerns just because it didn’t look as you expected it to. But I think in week seven, when this team beat Ohio State, who was then the No. 2-[ranked] team in the country – they beat them by one point here at Autzen Stadium – that’s when it was like, OK, this team can go up against the best in the nation and surprisingly win. They were not favored to win that game. A lot of people did not expect them to. So once they did that, I think the nation started taking them a lot more seriously.

Miller: The Ducks beat Boise State, as I mentioned, and Wisconsin … I guess it was three points each. They beat Ohio State by one point. And there’s a couple ways you can look at that. You can look at it and say that if a couple plays had gone different in just a handful of games, then they would be 9-3 right now, instead of 12-0. But another way to look at it is that the Ducks, this team can win in blowouts, and they can sort of batten down the hatches in close games and find a way to win really close games. What have they shown you in those close games?

Neel: Yeah, I buy into that second narrative much more than the first narrative. I mean, people want to talk about the best teams in the nation, that they blow out everyone every week. But sometimes those best teams struggle late in the year when they get into these close games because they don’t know that pressure. They have not felt that before. They don’t know how to perform when the knuckles get white, so to say. I think Oregon has shown, in some of these late games, that they don’t flinch, they’re able to keep their composure. And when the pressure gets ramped up, they still are true to who they are and they play with that same intensity.

Miller: What have the biggest surprises been for you this season?

Neel: Biggest surprises … I think the Oregon defense has really surprised a lot of people because, historically, Oregon has been known as this flashy offensive team. They score 40, 50 points a game. They’re a blur offense, they’re super fast and they can always put up points. This year that hasn’t been so much the case. Not to say that the offense has been bad by any means, but the defense has been so incredibly good. It’s arguably the best defense in program history and that’s something that fans wanted Dan Lanning to bring with him from the SEC, this SEC-style defense with big bodies up front, really good defensive linemen, linebackers. They’ve shown that this year. So I think that this is one of the best defenses in the nation and definitely the best in program history.

Miller: And they had 10 sacks last weekend against Washington?

Neel: Yeah, that was incredible. That tied a program record – didn’t break a program record, shockingly. But yeah, tied a program record. It was really something to see, especially against a rival like Washington. I’m sure they had a lot of fun doing that.

Miller: And just to remind folks, the recent history last year, in terms of the Oregon-Washington matchup.

Neel: The last two years, actually. I mean, Oregon, Dan Lanning, had never beaten Washington before in his career. They lost in 2022 by three points. They lost twice last year, both in the regular season by three points and in the Pac-12 Championship by three points. So these are some very tightly contested games against your most hated rival, to lose three games by a combined nine points. It makes sense that Oregon went out … and no disrespect to Washington, they’re a worse team this year than they were last year. They lost a lot of players. So Oregon was a huge favorite going into this game. It made sense that they went in there and wanted to kind of put their foot down and act some revenge from last year.

Miller: OK. That’s now the past, a couple of days out, but it’s the past. The future is Penn State. How do the Ducks match up against Penn State?

Neel: It will be very interesting. There’s not a lot of history between Oregon and Penn State. The last time these two teams played was in the 1995 Rose Bowl, which Penn State won. So it’s been a long time since they saw each other on the field. Penn State is one of your classic Big 10 teams. I mean, they’re a very physical team up front. They run the ball very well. They’ve got a really good defense. They’re not as pass-happy as the Ducks or a traditional Pac-12 team used to be. I think Oregon matches up really well. And that’s not a shock to say because Oregon is the No. 1 team in the country and currently the favorites to win the national championship. But they have their work cut out for him on Saturday – it’s not gonna be an easy game by any stretch.

Miller: How would you describe Head Coach Dan Lanning right now for folks who have not been following him in the past or this season?

Neel: Oh, man, what word to use? I think passionate, probably, is one of the best ones you can use in just a little bit … with like a tint of crazy. He’s a young coach and he is so bought in, all in, eager and passionate. He’s a really good motivator.

Oregon, they do this cool thing every week where they release what they call a cinematic recap of their previous game with behind-the-scenes footage of locker room speeches and sideline footage, stuff like that. And it always shows kind of what Dan Lanning did that week to motivate his guys. This last week, the footage showed that Dan Lanning showed up at halftime of their game with a Washington helmet. He had one of his strength coaches take a sledgehammer to that helmet and say, “Hey, we want to bash these guys’ heads in on the field.” It’s just that type of motivation. So I think fans have really bought into him because he’s a young guy. He …

Miller: He’s only 38, right?

Neel: He’s 38, relates to the players, relates to the staff, relates to the fan base. I heard a lot of people call him the “King of Eugene” recently because he seems like he can do whatever he wants right now.

Miller: It does seem like he is both very good at motivating his players and very savvy at crafting this image of himself … and not him alone, there is a big publicity machine in Eugene that’s very focused on Duck’s athletics. And right now, Duck’s athletics equals football. I mean, what stands out to you in the way the university has been capitalizing on the team’s success?

Neel: That’s a good point. It’s very curated. There’s nothing that gets out that they don’t want to get out or that they have not already planned several steps ahead to getting out. They’ve got a really good handle on the message of Oregon football. They’re trying to formulate this image of the new West Coast team. They’re kind of the new kids on the block, so to speak, in the Big 10. They came in and they knew they were going to be really good this year, so before the season started, they started crafting this narrative that they’re coming to the Big 10 and they’re gonna take over. And so far, that’s been the case. I mean, not losing a single game in the regular season, being favored to win the championship going into the postseason, I think they’re doing a really good job with that message so far.

Miller: What has Dan Lanning said about the pluses or the minuses of playing in this championship game, as opposed to having more time off before playoff time?

Neel: Yeah, that’s a very interesting question. And like we were just talking about, Dan Lanning is very buttoned up in the media and he’s not going to really give you any outlandish quotes that he doesn’t want to give you. So he’s been asked about that. He said, “Hey, we don’t have any control over it. We wanna win a championship. We want to win the Big 10 Championship. That was a goal of ours before we got into the season.” So he’s not gonna come out and say, “Hey, we would rather not play in this game and get an extra week of rest in a bye week.” There’s some arguments that that could be the case and that could be better for them. But ultimately, this team wants to come in and win the Big 10 in their first year in the conference.

Miller: They’ve done so well this season that it could be easy to forget that this is their first season in this new conference. Has their performance basically neutralized any lingering upset among nostalgic fans who are sad to see the end of the Pac-12?

Neel: That’s a good question. I don’t know. I’m a relatively young fan. I’m only 30, so I don’t have the same nostalgia that a lot of those Pac-10, Pac-8 fans had. I think they’ve done a really good job of it. I don’t know if there’s anything they could have done this year that really completely negates all of that sadness from those fans. But they’re certainly doing a really good job of getting fans excited about this new era.

Miller: It’s funny how much sports fandom is based on expectations and they can change over the course of the season. Before the season began, what would you have said would have constituted a successful season for the average Ducks fan?

Neel: I think going into the season, the expectation … what would be considered a successful season, was probably getting to the Big 10 Championship or at least being in the hunt for it. And then getting to the college football playoff. Obviously, the first ever expanded 12-team playoff this year, instead of just four teams. So getting in there, some might have argued you need to win a game in that playoff for it to be a success. It’s changed a little bit now, I think the ceiling, the bar has been raised a little bit just because of how good this team is.

I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that it’s “championship or bust” at this point, just because that’s as high as the bar can be raised. Oregon’s never won a national championship before. So I think that, at this point, it would be kind of disappointing if they didn’t win at least a couple of games in the playoff and get to the semifinals or the championship. But I don’t think a lot of Duck fans would tell you at the end of the year that it was an unsuccessful season if they don’t win the championship.

Miller: There are always some nervous fans among a group of fans. What do you see as the biggest vulnerabilities on either side, defense or offense, that nervous fans may be most preoccupied with right now? The vulnerabilities, if there are any, in this team?

Neel: Yeah, there are some. I mean, any team’s gonna have vulnerabilities. What’s kind of shocking is that this vulnerability doesn’t come on defense for Oregon. It comes on offense, which has typically been the strongest piece of the puzzle for Oregon. But they’ve been a little bit inconsistent at times. I mean, throughout the year, the third quarter has kind of been the bugaboo for this Oregon offense. They’ve scored far less points coming out of halftime than they have in any other quarter. And there’s just been some drives throughout the year, or some moments in each game every week, where they just kind of get stagnant on offense and they’re unable to move the ball very well. So as long as they can fix that, I guess, and be a little bit more consistent and not go to sleep occasionally during games, I think that should be fine.

Miller: Meanwhile, and finally, yesterday was National Signing Day. Oregon got both some highly touted signings and they got some players to flip schools, to say, “No, I’m gonna go to Oregon instead.” Is it fair to say that, at this point, they’re really well positioned for years to come?

Neel: Oh, yeah, I think that that’s probably one of the most exciting things that Dan Lanning has going about this team, not just the success on the field right now – obviously, the No. 1 team in the nation. But what they’re doing in the recruiting world, and how they’re kind of stacking the coffers and building depth with elite talent across the board, it’s looking like as long as Dan Lanning stays and as long as this coaching staff stays, Oregon should be in a position to contend for championships for several years down the road.

Miller: But isn’t it the case with the transfer portal that things can change quickly? And if the vibe changes a lot, players could leave en masse?

Neel: Yeah, that’s true. But often, when you see players leaving schools, it’s because they are not either getting the playing time they want or the team is not winning. Right now, Oregon is winning. So if players don’t want to be a part of this, then yeah, they can go somewhere else. And I can guarantee you, there’s probably 10 players for every one player that leaves that wants to come in and join what the Ducks are doing right now.

Miller: Zachary, thanks very much.

Neel: Absolutely. Thank you.

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

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