The Oregon Ducks broke the program record for scoring on Saturday afternoon against the Portland State Vikings, putting up 50 points in the first half of an eventual 81-7 win.
They tallied 729 yards of total offense, converted 38 first downs, saw eight different players score a TD, and watched just five passes fall incomplete between three different quarterbacks.
Is anyone surprised?
Personally, I wouldn’t say so. With QB Bo Nix returning for one final year, we knew that the ceiling would be high for this offense, despite the fact that OC Kenny Dillingham was being replaced by Will Stein. When you put returning weapons like Bucky Irving, Troy Franklin, and Terrance Ferguson around Nix, and throw in transfers Tez Johnson Traeshon Holden, and Gary Bryant, then you’ve got the makings of a deep and talented unit that could easily compete on a championship stage.
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The offense was never the question coming into this season — we always knew that the Ducks would be able to put up points at will.
Whether or not the defense could keep points off of the board, though, is what Oregon’s championship dreams hinged on.
After the first game of the season, I think that Duck fans should feel relatively confident that the answer to that question will end up being a yes. Personally, I left Autzen Stadium on Saturday evening feeling pretty good about the outlook for Tosh Lupoi’s unit. There was one unfortunate drive near the start of the game — PSU went 75 yards in 8 plays and scored a TD on their second possession — but other than that, the Ducks’ D was stout.
“We had two critical errors in that drive, made a really bad execution in the red area on that touchdown,” Dan Lanning said after the game. “Ultimately, I think what you saw is when you don’t do your job, bad things can happen. We had a couple of guys not do their job early in that series. It led to a long drive and I think we all settled down after that and realized, ‘Hey, all I gotta do is my part, my 1/11th and the rest will take care of itself.’”
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The rest certainly took care of itself after that. If you were to take away that single drive for the Vikings, then Oregon held Portland State to just 125 yards of total offense and zero points. The Ducks forced nine punts on the day, and only allowed four third-down conversions.
Yes, the opponent was Portland State, an FCS school that went 4-7 a year ago in the Big Sky Conference. I understand that all of this should be taken with a relatively large grain of salt. Oregon is supposed to put a beatdown on the Vikings. In the end, you can only take care of the task at hand, and the Ducks did what they needed to do in order to shut down their opponent on Saturday.
“I don’t know if they really got tested today,” Lanning said. “That’s still set to come, right? We’re not interested in reading the press clippings of this game, it’s about the future and we have some good players out there but we have to be able to execute at a high level moving forward. And again, we’re gonna play some really good teams moving forward.”
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The Ducks weren’t going to show us on Saturday that they had a defense capable of slowing down Caleb Williams and the USC Trojans, or shutting down Michael Penix and the Washington Huskies. They weren’t even going to convince fans that they could limit Tyler Shough and the Texas Tech Red Raiders a week from now.
Even pitching a shutout against Portland State wouldn’t prove that this defense is where it needs to be in order for Oregon to reach its ceiling in 2023.
But they did enough to show that it’s still possible.
We know that throughout the season, Bo Nix and the Oregon offense will put up numbers at an impressive clip, and they will likely rank among the nation’s top offenses yet again. When the year ends, there’s a good chance that Will Stein’s unit is good enough to score on even the best teams in the nation.
Will the defense be able to hold up its end of the bargain and carry the Ducks to heights not seen since 2019?
We can’t know that answer just yet — it’s too early. But I’m more open to the possibility now than I was a day ago, and that’s a good start.
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