The Sunday Duck Report: Oregon remembers its DNA

We’ve all gotten our jabs in on these Ducks, a team that’s warranted more criticism than any other in Dan Lanning’s tenure. The offense has been inconsistent at best, off-the-field issues have drawn headlines and a season that began with championship aspirations seemingly fell apart a week earlier with another sputtering loss at Illinois.

I was ready to be critical on Saturday. Friday brought news of freshman receiver Messiah Hampton’s arrest. Saturday’s 12:30 p.m. kickoff came in the cold and fog, and when the Ducks went down 20-6 late in the second quarter, it seemed like another weekend lost to dissecting another listless performance.

Happy Halloween, right?

But boy, would we be foolish to judge a game on half a performance. Maybe a season, too.

Because the Ducks came back. They fought their way to a 34-26 win over No. 20 Northwestern in a great college football game.

Yes, this season is this season. A national championship is likely out of reach and it’s easy to declare a year lost when that goal is no longer attainable.

But Oregon still had five games to play, contention or not. And down 14, at home, the Ducks sure had a lot of reasons to quit.

But they didn’t.

What more could you want from an afternoon?

“We got winners in that locker room, and again, that’s not always reflected in the scoreboard,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said. “… And I just thought the energy on the sideline was outstanding today, even in moments when it didn’t look the most positive. I thought our guys really handled that extremely well.”

And oh, there were moments.

Raiola missed some throws and was lucky to recover his own fumble in the first quarter. In the second, he returned to the sideline to boos after a bad snap harpooned a promising drive and forced the Ducks to settle for a field goal instead of a touchdown.

But Raiola also completed 71 percent of his passes, including some of the easy, short outlets he’s missed in recent weeks. Others were spiraling, arching shots that hit receivers in stride — the type of throws that make you understand the thought process behind bringing him here in the first place.

The biggest was his 75-yarder to Dakorien Moore with 10 minutes left, a pass caught near Northwestern’s 33-yard line that the sophomore receiver carried the rest of the way into the end zone.

“You could see the way we were playing, the way we were calling the game, and just how we were attacking — we weren’t going to go down without swinging,” Raiola said. “I think that kind of got lost a little bit. I don’t think we completely lost it, but we got back to our DNA and I’m proud of our guys.”

It wasn’t just the quarterback. You could see it on the sideline with Lanning, who flexed in a pumped-up rage after freshman Brandon Smith’s 35-yard run — after injuries to Jordon Davison and Dierre Hill Jr. — ignited Oregon’s first touchdown drive of the second half.

You could also see it in the way Lanning approached the game, with Oregon getting back to its love-it-or-leave-it roots of being aggressive on fourth down.

When the Ducks faced fourth-and-goal from Northwestern’s 2-yard line with 14:19 to play, Lanning kept the offense on the field and watched as Smith punched through. Instead of tying the game with a field goal, the Ducks took the lead.

“There’s a couple fourth downs in that (Illinois) game that I normally would have gone. And I’m not talking about like fourth-and-7. Like, fourth-and-1, where we’ve been aggressive in the past that we weren’t,” Lanning said. “We were playing not to lose, and we were playing small ball, and that’s not what we do…That’s what I heard our players saying on the sideline all day, ‘We’re not playing small ball.'”

On Halloween, the Ducks played fearless with their former head coach trying to haunt them from the opposite sideline.

And yes, Chip Kelly got some scares in. Northwestern’s offensive coordinator constantly put quarterback Aidan Chiles out in space, where he was effective against the Ducks with his arm and his feet. He schemed up some head-scratchers that turned into points, like Northwestern’s 64-yard, first-quarter touchdown that began with three players lined up in a row offset from Chiles in the backfield.

How do you even prepare for something like that?

“That has existed in (Kelly’s) history, but you could chase ghosts for a long time trying to find plays,” Lanning said. “…They have so much variety that they carry off of that formation. And, again, that’s one that they haven’t necessarily lived in a bunch. So, you don’t get to spend a lot of time on it, and coaching defensive football, sometimes you’re chasing ghosts. They found a great wrinkle. They showed us that formation the first series, but didn’t necessarily show us that play, and they probably saw something that they liked, and knew that they could take advantage of it.”

The Wildcats were throwing haymakers. But as Oregon’s offense began punching back, its defense finally found its footing.

Northwestern’s ensuing drive after Moore’s 75-yarder in the fourth quarter ended fruitlessly when the Wildcats missed a field goal. On their next — and final — possession, D’Antre Robinson picked up a sack on second down and Teitum Tuioti swatted down Chiles’ third-down attempt to force a punt.

On another chaotic college football Saturday around the country, Oregon got the ball, up eight, with 1:43 left to play — then finished things off with the most entertaining play of an entertaining Saturday: Raiola’s third-down conversion to Jamari Johnson, where the quarterback rolled to his left, pirouetted to his right and lofted a pass, like a fadeaway jump shot, to Johnson, who just managed to secure the thing before hitting the ground.

Autzen exploded.

After the fireworks, after passing a sign held by fans announcing “our first game at Autzen,” and after the locker room speeches and interviews, I ran into Tuioti in the stairwell of the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex.

A week earlier, the senior linebacker was called upon to explain the Illinois loss, when he criticized his team’s complacency.

He didn’t speak with the media after Northwestern, instead allowing Koi Perich and Brandon Finney Jr. to speak of a defense that limited Chip Kelly’s Wildcats to 26 points.

I joked with him that it was unfair that he had to talk after the losses, but not the wins.

He smiled big and continued down the stairs in his flip-flops.

“Hey,” he said. “I’ll take it.”

What more could you want?

This story is part of Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s new Sunday Duck Report. For the full report, subscribe to the free newsletter here.