First things first: USC and Utah also would have lost to Georgia this past weekend. The Dawgs look like one of the two best teams in the nation alongside Alabama, better than Ohio State and Oklahoma. No Pac-12 team would have come especially close to Georgia. We can admit that.
However: USC and Utah would not have lost by 46, or even 36. The fact that the Ducks were so non-competitive in this game was — and is — the true eye-opener. No one expected Oregon to actually win (well, except for Ducks Wire staff writer Donald Smalley), but plenty of people felt Oregon would at least put up a fight against Georgia.
That did not happen.
Our friends at Ducks Wire are sifting through the wreckage and making a damage assessment of this disastrous game for Oregon, the first game of the Dan Lanning era as head coach in Eugene.
Here’s a snippet from editor Zachary Neel:
We knew that Georgia was good, and that its offense was going to be hard to stop. I didn’t think it was going to be this good, though. Maybe I didn’t think that Oregon was going to look this bad?
You pick which one is the truer statement, but I’m actually going to focus on the negative here for Duck fans. We came into this season touting the Oregon defense. With Noah Sewell and Justin Flowe in the middle, Brandon Dorlus up front, and Christian Gonzalez and Bennett Williams in the secondary, this unit was supposed to be among the best in the nation under Dan Lanning.
They were anything but on Saturday afternoon.
Georgia finished the game with 49 points, 571 yards, a 90% conversion rate on third down (9-for-10) and points scored on seven of their eight drives.
[mm-video type=playlist id=01eqbz8sj88pxak7gd player_id=01f5k5y2jb3twsvdg4 image=https://trojanswire.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]
[listicle id=47516]