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A lot gets put on the shoulders of the expected players at Oregon.
Oregon needs Dante Moore to be a leader, and it should, considering his stature as the team’s starting quarterback.
One of the beautiful things about college football, though, are the moments when the “Who was that?” players get the opportunity to walk in stride with the ones on billboards.
Take tight end Andrew Olesh, for example.
OK, Olesh isn’t that obscure — he was a four-star recruit in the 2025 class who signed with Penn State and redshirted before transferring to Oregon in January. He’s 6-foot-5, 235 pounds, has good hands, runs well and figured to eventually work his way into Oregon’s rotation once he developed as a blocker.
The Ducks were losing Kenyon Sadiq, but they still had Jamari Johnson. Olesh wasn’t supposed to carry much pressure right away.
Plans are malleable in college football, though. So is health.
Johnson has missed Oregon’s last two games and enters Week 4 against No. 12 USC listed as “questionable” on Oregon’s availability report. That’s pushed Olesh into the starting lineup the last two weeks, where he caught one pass against Oklahoma State, then two — including his first career touchdown — against Portland State.
“I think the coaching staff has done a really good job developing me,” Olesh said. “And the more I play and the more I dip my feet in the water, the more I do that, the better I’ll get. And I need to develop blocking, so getting in the game really helps.”
Oregon coach Dan Lanning said Johnson has practiced this week and “should have availability” against USC. That would be a good thing for the Ducks.
But so, too, were the experiences Olesh gained while Johnson was out — from making his first start and scoring his first touchdown to being introduced to Oregon’s media staff Wednesday before his first game-week availability.
He now has an opportunity to start doing more.
Going back to Cali for Moore
It’s got to be pretty cool being 17, in California, with NIL money and the profile of being UCLA’s quarterback.
And Dante Moore will admit: It was.
“I was moving around, doing things…experiencing things,” Moore said on Wednesday. “That’s a place that’s special. Beautiful weather. Of course, the beach. You can do all these things. It’s a big city — lot of people there.
“I kind of miss it.”
But Moore will also admit that it’s easy to lose focus around Hollywood. And as he makes his return to SoCal with the No. 20 Ducks, Oregon’s quarterback is ready to show off how much different a move — and some maturing — can make.
That’s a lot of points
Nothing quite like a “Did Oregon run up the score?” discussion to prove how ready we all were for conference play to get underway.
And, well, I’m not innocent.
But at some point, you have to look at the team that keeps signing up to get flattened into the Autzen Stadium turf.
Local Roots, Rising Ducks
When the ball hit the back of the net, Cloe Chase didn’t react with joy.
Instead, another emotion surged through her.
Relief.
The junior striker spread her arms wide and tipped her head to the sky. She sighed and smiled widely, joining her teammates to celebrate the third goal of a 3-0 win over San Francisco on Aug. 23.
“I was ecstatic, but I didn’t really know what to do,” Chase said, laughing. For the Marist graduate, the score — the first of her college career — was a long time coming.
So is the arrival of Oregon women’s soccer. Read more from Lindsay Schnell on Oregon’s best start (6-1-1) in five years.
INSIDE look
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Stats, in some ways, are for losers from that standpoint. You don’t care about touchbacks or non-touchbacks. You care about average starting field position.”
— Oregon coach Dan Lanning when explaining Oregon’s lack of touchbacks against PSU on kickoffs.
UPCOMING GAMES
Thursday, Sept. 24
Soccer: at Northwestern, 4:30 p.m. (B1G+)
No. 20 volleyball: at No. 6 Wisconsin, 5 p.m. (B1G+)
Saturday, Sept. 26
Men’s cross country: Cowboy Jamboree, Stillwater, Okla., 6:15 a.m.
Women’s cross country: Mike Johnson Classic, Monmouth, Ore., time TBA
No. 20 football: at No. 12 USC, 4:30 p.m. (NBC/Peacock)
No. 20 volleyball: at No. 15 Minnesota, 4 p.m. (B1G+)
Sunday, Sept. 27
Women’s soccer: at Illinois, 11 a.m. (B1G+)
STORIES I’m WORKING ON
We’re going to catch up next week with a very familiar face from some of Oregon’s best seasons.
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A 4:30 p.m., top-25 kickoff between a pair of West Coast giants?
Enjoy this one.
Tyson
