Oregon Ducks running back Bucky Irving earns our player of the game honor in his team’s big victory over North Carolina in the Holiday Bowl.
The Oregon Ducks finished the first year of the Dan Lanning era by grinding out a surprisingly defensive battle at the Holiday Bowl – the Pac-12’s first since 2014.
And although Bo Nix tossed two touchdown passes in the fourth quarter to lead Oregon to the victory – his team wouldn’t have been in a position to win at all without the performance of our player of the game, running back Bucky Irving.
Irving broke open the scoring in San Diego with a two-yard touchdown run early in the first quarter, and he racked up a 66-yard score to give Oregon a 14-7 lead in the second.
Irving finished with 149 yards and two touchdowns – but it wasn’t just his performance on offense that earned him player of the game honors.
He also returned four kicks for a total of 106 yards, including a 37-yard return and a 30-yard return – helping Nix and the offense with decent field position.
Oregon heads into the offseason with a nice feather in the cap, and a very strong recruiting window last week has a lot of optimism around this program heading into the new year.
According to PFF, a transfer was Oregon’s best offensive player in 2022. That transfer was not Bo Nix.
If a survey was taken of 100 Oregon Duck football fans and they were asked who was the Ducks’ best offensive player, the vast majority would say quarterback Bo Nix with some saying receiver Troy Franklin.
They wouldn’t be wrong. Nix was absolutely incredible and was on the verge of being a Heisman candidate. Franklin had a breakout sophomore season and was one of the best receivers in the Pac-12 this season.
But according to Pro Football Focus, the analytical site that tracks every snap and grades everyone accordingly, a transfer was definitely the Ducks’ best offensive player. Except that transfer isn’t Bo Nix.
Here are the Top 10 Oregon offensive players and to no one surprise, the line makes up half of the list, showing they were the best in the conference.
For the list, we made sure only to qualify those with 200 or more snaps for the regular season.
A look at how Oregon’s RB room stacks up in the coming years after recent transfers, recruiting news.
At this point in the college football season, nearly everyone in the nation is seeing their roster go through a makeover of sorts. For some teams, that means a complete overhaul, and droves of players decide to enter the transfer portal and find a new home. Other teams will see numerous players leave for the NFL draft, leaving a spot to fill behind them. A lot of schools will also have the prospect of highly-rated recruits coming to town to fill a need.
For the Oregon Ducks, we’ve got a little bit of all three of those scenarios. We’ve already seen a few players enter the transfer portal, and as the offseason grows longer, you can expect more to declare for the NFL draft. That allows us to take a look at some position groups as a whole and assess how the future looks.
Today, we want to look closely at the running backs room. We got word earlier in the week that Byron Cardwell will enter the transfer portal, which came as little surprise On top of that, there are a few players who could decide to leave, but it feels like this is a relatively solid group going into the offseason.
Stock up? Troy Franklin. That’s an easy one. Stock down? Dare we say Justin Flowe?
At this point in the season, we shouldn’t exactly be surprised when the Oregon Ducks’ offense puts up gaudy numbers like this.
For the sixth-straight game, Oregon has scored more than 40 points in the game, and they’ve picked up more than 500 yards of offense in 5 of their last six games. Quarterback Bo Nix is playing better than he ever has in his career, wide receiver Troy Franklin is breaking out as one of the best pass-catchers that the Ducks have seen in quite some time, and the offensive line has established itself as one of the most dominant units in college football, leading the Oregon rushing attack to endless success, where they’ve had more than 200 yards on the ground in 5 of their last 6 games.
It’s safe to say that when we take a look at the offense, the stock is going to be up across the board.
The defense still needs a little bit of help, but with a defensive-minded head coach like Dan Lanning, and a solid staff of coaches around him, I have faith that Oregon will get things clicking on that side of the ball in due time. As we do every week, let’s identify players who saw their stocks go up, and a few who might have seen a slight dip against UCLA:
Bo Nix stock is at an all-time high. What about Jeffrey Bassa? How do we feel about Dont’e Thornton at the midway point?
Normally on Sunday mornings, we take a dive back into the game film from the previous day and get a deeper look at how some of the players on the Oregon Ducks’ roster played in the previous outing. In the last five games, it’s been a pleasant experience; the week before that, not so much.
This week we don’t have that ability, as the Ducks enjoyed a well-time bye week while the rest of the college football world introduced some chaos into the picture. That gave us an opportunity to recharge our batteries and continue to assess the first half of the season, trying to pinpoint how we got here after that opening week loss to the Georgia Bulldogs.
Part of that team assessment needs to come down to the roster, and figuring out who deserves credit for showing up for the Ducks, and who still has a little bit more to give.
With a slight wrinkle on what we do every week, let’s identify the Oregon players who have seen their stock go up this season, and a few who might have seen a slight dip through the first six games:
Oregon’s rushing attack is unrivaled, and their young secondary came to play against an elite passing team. Here are our 5 takeaways from Saturday’s victory.
A lot of wacky stuff took place in the Pac-12 conference on Saturday.
For starters, an unproven and unbeaten UCLA Bruins team hosted the class-of-the-conference Utah Utes in Los Angeles and shook up the power balance with a convincing 42-32 win. Over in Tempe, a somewhat feisty Arizona State team proved that you don’t need a head coach to be successful, further exposing an apparently fledgling Washington Huskies team, 45-38. Down in Los Angeles, the USC Trojans briefly engaged in a dogfight with the Washington State Cougars before eventually pulling away.
Across the conference, it was clear that there were some weird vibes out and about as spooky season is upon us. That’s the last thing that Oregon Duck fans wanted to hear as their team got set to kick off in the desert against the Arizona Wildcats, a team that has had their goat in the past.
Fortunately, it seems that Dan Lanning doesn’t believe in ghosts, and the tough losses of the past seemed to bare no weight on Saturday’s matchup.
The Ducks took care of business and made it clear early on that this would not be a game that came down to the wire. With a final score of 49-22, we got another chance to see the depth on the roster get a good run while the proven starters sat back and relaxed for the final quarter.
On a day when some of the top teams in the conference faltered, Oregon stayed afloat and proved that they belong near the top of everyone’s power rankings. Here are some of our biggest takeaways from the performance:
“I didn’t know he was that fast.” Teammates had some classic reactions to Oregon QB Bo Nix’s 80-yard TD on Saturday.
Through the first four games of the year, it was made pretty clear that Oregon Ducks’ quarterback Bo Nix was not a player who was going to just sit in the pocket. He was willing to let his legs do a lot of the work when need be.
Of course, we knew that from his time at Auburn, where he had just under 900 yards rushing in three years with the Tigers. In Eugene, though, it was becoming apparent that his running ability was improving. Through five games with the Ducks, the passer had amassed 261 yards on the ground with 5 touchdowns.
Despite all of that prior knowledge, it still took everyone by surprise on Saturday night when Nix broke the pocket up the middle and took off. He kept going, and going, weaving through a couple of defenders and splitting a gap into open daylight. It ended in an 80-yard TD, the longest of Nix’s career, and the longest by an Oregon QB since Taylor Alie’s 87-yard TD in 2015.
More than the numbers it provided, this play gave both fans, teammates, and coaches a new look at what Nix is capable of with his legs.
“I didn’t know he was gonna pull the ball like that,” RB Bucky Irving said on Tuesday. “So I was excited for him when he ran an 80-yard TD, just celebrate with him after.”
Any notes from the Ducks’ leading running back?
“I didn’t know he was that fast, though. It was exciting to see him get up and get running like that.”
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Nix’s speed wasn’t the only surprise. Wide receiver Troy Franklin says that he was most impressed by the stamina showed by his QB to cap off an 80-yard sprint.
“I think it was a surprise to me that he ran that long, you know, it was 80 yards or whatever,” Franklin said. “But it definitely wasn’t a surprise, Bo can run for sure.”
Not to be overlooked in this highlight is the superb downfield blocking that helped spring the play. While Nix’s elusive abilities got him into the second level of the defense, it was the receivers and tight ends who shepherded him into the endzone.
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“I was like oh s**t, it’s time for me to get busy, you know?” Franklin recalled seeing Nix run up beside him. “Gotta help him. I broke him loose and he did what he did.”
The blocking was perfect, the escapability was impressive, and the stamina reflected a cross-country runner rather than a football player. It all resulted in a play that helped buoy the spirits of a surging team, and offer head coach Dan Lanning a little bit of an opportunity to rib his leading man.
“I gave him a really hard time last week. We threw the throwback to Bo at Washington State, and I told him ‘I didn’t expect you to go down like that’ so I’ve been kind of jabbing him for a long time here,” Lanning said after the game. “That run was fun. When he got over there after, he was sucking wind on the sideline. So he was running hard; he let up a little bit at the end and their defender came in there aggressive with an opportunity to punch it out. But I’m proud of the way he finished there. He might have to do just a little bit of extra conditioning for 80-yard runs.”
I’m not sure how many more times Nix will be asked to sprint 80 yards in his career, but if he ever does again, it will certainly turn some heads.
Bucky Irving can slip out of one tackle and run through the next. As Dan Lanning said on Monday, he runs with violence.
The Oregon Ducks went into Saturday’s game against the BYU Cougars expecting a physical affair that was going to be won with grit and toughness. While there would be explosive plays on the perimeter that could sway the outcome, the bulk of the contest would be played within the trenches.
So it was encouraging when, on the second play of Oregon’s opening drive, running back Bucky Irving slipped through a couple of tackles and bounced it outside for 5 yards. On the very next snap, he broke through the line, lowered his shoulder into a defender, jump-cut another, and picked up 36 more yards, setting the Ducks up with a 1st-and-goal opportunity.
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The two runs did a great job of showing exactly what Irving, a transfer from Minnesota, brings to the table for the Ducks.
On Tuesday, I got the chance to speak with Irving after Oregon’s practice. I asked him if he could describe his running style in a couple of words.
“Elusive,” he quickly said. “Physical.”
When asked a similar question on Monday, head coach Dan Lanning had a different word to describe Irving’s mentality.
“I’ve seen Bucky run with violence,” Lanning said.
“I’ve just got that mentality of ‘Don’t let the first guy bring me down,'” Irving said.
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There weren’t many people who could bring Irving down on Saturday, as he rushed 14 times for 97 yards, the most by any Oregon player this year. There were numerous instances where Irving showed physicality or elusiveness in his game, but no play better encapsulates all three attributes as well as this 11-yard run to open up the second half.
Got the chance to talk to Bucky Irving today and I asked him to describe his running style in a couple of words.
While Irving gets the credit for the numbers on the stat sheet, as any good running back is always sure to do, he made a point to identify the guys who help him attain the success he’s had so far this season.
“I feel like our offensive line doesn’t get the recognition for the great job that they do every week,” Irving said. “I want to always give them a compliment or a great job for what they’re doing to open great holes for all of our running backs.”
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The Ducks’ veteran front is one of four teams in the nation yet to give up a sack this season, and they’re responsible for opening holes big enough to allow Oregon to rush for 176 yards per game, which ranks No. 52 in the nation.
There are plenty of backs who are capable of succeeding on Oregon’s depth chart, but the most enthralling through the first three games has been the transfer from Minnesota. Maybe it’s because he’s new, and we are hard-wired to be attracted to the latest and the greatest. There’s something different about Irving that has caught my eye through 12 quarters this season, though. He’s multiple and can do many things.
He’s physical. He’s elusive. He runs with violence.
Bo Nix’s stock continues to rise in Eugene, while Oregon’s CB2 position leaves a lot to be desired. Our stock report after the win over BYU.
After a dominant performance against a highly-rated team like the BYU Cougars, there’s no arguing that for the Oregon Ducks, the stock is on the rise.
Dan Lanning and the Ducks faced a lot of questions going into Saturday’s top-25 showdown at Autzen Stadium, and they did a great job of answering nearly all of them, turning a highly-anticipated matchup into a blowout that was virtually over by the midway point in the third quarter.
Though it was an impressive win on Saturday, at Ducks Wire, we want our stock report to be objective and accurate. While Oregon was great, there are still things to work on. Let’s identify players who saw their stocks go up, and a few who might have seen a slight dip against BYU:
