According to PFF, Oregon’s Bucky Irving was one of the best tailbacks in the nation for the 2022 season.
It wasn’t a major story when it happened, but the transfer of tailback Bucky Irving to Oregon from Minnesota was quietly one of the biggest portal pickups for 2022.
Irving, along with Noah Whittington, turned out to be a great 1-2 punch at the running back position for the Ducks. Who knows where Oregon would have been without that duo?
But it was Irving’s Batman to Whittington’s Robin and the Batman portion of the pair was graded by PFF as one of the Top 10 tailbacks in the country. Irving finished the season with 977 yards on the ground, averaged 6.7 yards per carry, and scored five touchdowns. He also caught 26 passes and two more scores.
Here are the Top 10 tailbacks for 2022 according to the analytics.
The Ducks had a great 2022 season. Let’s take a look back at some of the best photos from the year as a whole.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but it would certainly take more than that to describe the Oregon Ducks’ 2022 football season.
In Dan Lanning’s first year with the Ducks, the team saw a lot of highs and a couple of lows. We saw Oregon get into the mix for a spot in the College Football Playoff with a Heisman contending quarterback, but also watched as they suffered brutal defeats to the Washington Huskies and Oregon State Beavers.
In all, it was a successful season that set up what is likely to be a very exciting future. As we continue to look back on the 2022 season, we wanted to celebrate all of the best photos that were snapped of the team in action. Here are the best photos of the Ducks during the season.
Bucky Irving was incredible, while Mase Funa and Keith Brown had career days on defense. Our takeaways from the Holiday Bowl.
There’s been a growing sentiment over the past several years that mid-level bowl games don’t hold the same meaning that they used to; that games outside of the College Football Playoff or a New Year’s Six Bowl lack some of the luster. A lot of this has to do with players increasingly opting out of the games in lieu of the NFL Draft, or entering the transfer portal once the regular season is over, leaving a handful of depleted rosters to play on a big stage.
After watching the Oregon Ducks in the Holiday Bowl on Wednesday night, though, it feels like the anti-bowl sentiment needs to take a rest for the time being. The Ducks entered the game with a depleted roster, a major offensive coach missing, and found a way to come back from 10 points down in the 4th quarter and beat the North Carolina Tar Heels, 28-27 in the end.
They showed heart, grit, and toughness. The Ducks showed that this wasn’t a meaningless game.
It won’t go down as one of the best bowl wins in Oregon history, but it acts as a major mile-marker in Dan Lanning’s career in Eugene. He completed his first season with the Ducks on top, notching a 10-win year and going 1-0 in the postseason.
There are a lot of takeaways that we have from this game, from personnel, to scheme, to future outlook. Let’s get into it. Here are our biggest takeaways from Oregon’s 28-27 Holiday Bowl win:
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.
