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The Ducks eked out a win against lowly Cal, but boos and calls for backup quarterback Ty Thompson dominated the conversation on a Friday night in Eugene.
(Eric Evans photos/GoDucks.com)
EUGENE, Ore. — Oregon won and the go-ahead score saw Anthony Brown Jr. sprint toward the sideline, dive, barrel through the pylon and end up in a heap in front of an Oregon student section that had mercilessly booed him for the previous 30 minutes.
Brown got up. He flexed. The students erupted and the rest of Autzen followed. The Ducks would hold on to win 24-17, and the fancy “Road to the College Football Playoff” graphic ESPN displayed for the Ducks in the first half Friday night will continue to wind on for at least another week.
The Ducks are 5-1. They’ll — likely — still be in the top-10 at the end of the weekend.
Everything is fine.
…
Still here? Good. Story time.
I once saw Justin Herbert’s heart ripped out. Five years ago, the 18-year-old was leading an improbable comeback. He had tied a school record with six touchdown passes, the Ducks were once down 21-0 and there, in a second overtime in Berkeley, he dropped back for a throw that was supposed to sail 23 yards for the win over Cal.
He just didn’t see the linebacker.
Interception. Game over. The Ducks lost 52-49.
Herbert put his hands to his head. His eyes welled. It was the first time as a Duck that he felt a loss was on him, and player after player and coach after coach lined up for hugs to usher him through a hard — but needed — learning experience.
“We were in a great position to win that game,” Herbert said after. “I made a mistake and let the team down.”
It was his second career start.
Just three weeks earlier, few except Oregon diehards really even knew Herbert . He came into that camp that year as a barely-recruited kid out of Sheldon, started out fourth on the depth chart and no one had an inkling he’d see the field until one night at Washington State, with Oregon’s season very much spiraling down the drain, the Ducks shoved him out there for the second half out on the Palouse and told him to fly.
The next week, in his first start, Herbert’s first pass was picked off and the Ducks lost by 49 points to Washington. Then came the Cal loss.
And then, a win. In Herbert’s third start he led a bad Oregon team to a 54-35 win over Arizona State. He threw for 489 yards, competed 74 percent of his passes and connected for four touchdowns and no interceptions. The Ducks would lose three of their next four games to close out that season 4-8, but you could see growth. You could see the future. And we all know how the rest played out.
Anyway, I thought about that a lot today watching Brown get booed up and down the Autzen turf. And that will be confusing for anyone reading the stat line. Brown finished 20 of 28 for 244 yards, a touchdown pass and no interceptions. His heady play in the fourth-quarter, along with a second-half infusion of defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux, keyed an Oregon win that keeps all the discussions alive.
“With the injuries he’s had and the amount of games he’s played in the stadiums he’s played in, he’s not going to be shaken,” Oregon coach Mario Cristobal said. “He’s not going to flinch.”
Brown, Cristobal insinuated, is a fourth-quarter quarterback for a team that thrives in the game’s final period.
The problem: Oregon wouldn’t have to be such a good fourth-quarter team if it could play with any sort of semblance of a top-10 program for the first three quarters.
For much of Friday, the Ducks dinked and dunked and tried to paper cut the Bears to death. They rarely attempted to stretch the field, and instead relied on swing passes and dump-offs to an overworked Travis Dye to march up field. Cal’s safeties played close to the line of scrimmage for most the game, daring the Ducks to try and take the top off.
And the fans were frustrated. Long lines to get into Autzen Stadium due to COVID-19 protocols made for an extended arrival for the crowd, but once packed in, Autzen was rocking with 50,008 in the stands on a Friday night. And it was a crowd that so desperately wanted to cheer for something after the two-week hangover from the Stanford loss that a clip of Herbert, in the “I’m Coming Home” montage, nearly got a standing ovation. The current football team gave them little to cheer for, except for a few teases of Ty Thompson throwing a ball with Robby Ashford on the sideline.
Thompson is where this all comes to a head. He’s the five-star 2021 quarterback recruit, the best the Ducks have ever had on paper. He’s a muscular and mobile 6-foot-4 and 223 pounds and is viewed as the future of the program.
But everything the Oregon coaching staff has said indicates he’s not ready. Because if he was, he probably should have played by now. Whether it should have come in the Stanford game when Brown was ineffective — though the Ducks were down offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead — or on Friday when it was clear Brown just wasn’t getting it done for most of the game.
The circumstances are different than five years ago with Herbert, sure. For one, that Oregon team was going nowhere in 2016. The Ducks initially had a grad transfer starter in Dakota Prukop, and eventually Oregon’s staff made the call to take a look at what they had on the depth chart.
The 2021 Ducks are still in the thick of everything, and while Thompson has a better high school resume, Herbert is a year-and-a-half into an NFL career that legitimately looks destined for the Hall of Fame. Not everybody is throwing for six touchdowns in their second start and nobody is expecting that from Thompson. But then again, nobody expected that out of Herbert. The Ducks took a risk, let Herbert learn on the fly and three years later he completed his era’s turnaround with a win in the Rose Bowl.
This Oregon team has much more to lose, and I’m not sure Thompson is the answer. Then again, I know if Oregon wants to remain in contention this season, the answer can’t be to wait until the fourth quarter to put away a team that’s 2-8 over the last two seasons.
These aren’t supposed to be the high-scoring Ducks of your nostalgia years. Cristobal builds his teams in the trenches, then tries to squeeze the life out of opponents without causing too many of its own mistakes. And, to his credit, the coach is 30-11 at Oregon with a pair of conference championship wins.
More often than not, it works for him. But I was just struck on Friday by how much the Oregon crowd wanted to be excited by something. From cheering the video of Herbert to giving long-time coach Mike Bellotti a rousing applause when he was honored on the field in the first quarter.
Bellotti won 116 games at Oregon. His final four games saw Oregon win with scores of 35, 55, 65 and 42 points. Then Chip Kelly came in and revolutionized the whole damn thing. And while those offenses could strike so quickly it felt like you couldn’t blink, lately you can get away with a solid first-half nap before buckling in for the final stretch.
— Tyson Alger
