ESPN was singing the Ducks praises during the first reveal of the College Football Playoff rankings.
The Oregon Ducks sure made quite the statement this past weekend with that big win over the Utah Utes, and it left an impression on the ESPN analysts, particularly Rece Davis and Kirk Herbstreit — both of whom were in Salt Lake City for ‘College GameDay’.
They had front-row seats to watch the Ducks defeat the Utes 35-6 and as the first College Football Playoff rankings were announced on Tuesday, that impression hasn’t worn off.
Oregon is No. 6 in the country, according to the committee, ranked as the best one-loss team in the nation. ESPN’s experts like where the Ducks are headed, and a few of them made note on Tuesday night that the rest of the nation should be taking notice of what Dan Lanning is doing in Eugene.
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“I wouldn’t want to play Oregon right now,” Herbstreit said on the CFP rankings show. “If you’re asking who the best is, not the most deserving — I’m not going to say they should be No. 1 — If you’re asking me who I do not want to play, it would be Oregon.”
‘College GameDay’ host Rece Davis took it a step further.
“I think Oregon can win the national championship.”
When weighing resumes at this part in the season, your record comes first, followed by who you’ve beaten and who you’ve lost to, if anyone. For the Ducks, that Week 7 loss to the No. 5 Washington Huskies looms large, but the way they lost, and how they’ve looked since then, compared to how Washington has looked since then, has several analysts believing that Oregon is still the team to beat out West.
“If you look at the last couple of weeks since the Oregon vs. Washington game, if you said who looks like the better team, it’s not close,” said Joey Gallaway, a former Ohio State Buckeye and Seattle Seahawk. “Oregon looks like the better team.”
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Huskies fans won’t like to hear that, but since that game, the Ducks have easily handled Washington State and Utah, while Washington has struggled to beat the Pac-12’s worst teams in Arizona State and Stanford. That fact was brought up on Tuesday night when Boo Corrigan, the chair of the CFP selection committee, came on and discussed the decision-making behind the rankings.
“Looking at Washington, they’ve got the big win over Oregon, but there’s a little bit of concern from the committee as it relates to the Arizona State game at home, and the Stanford game on the road — two teams with a combined 4 wins,” Corrigan said.
Going forward, Washington has games against USC, Utah, Oregon State, and Washington State ahead of them.
In the big picture, however, it doesn’t matter all that much as long as both teams take care of business like they’re expected to, Oregon and Washington will battle it out one last time in 2023 for the Pac-12 title in Vegas. Then, and only then, will we know which is the better team and which will play in the national semifinal.
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