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Oh yeah, Oregon had some things to work on.
EUGENE — In most weeks, Boise State and its star running back Ashton Jeanty would be the headline coming into Oregon’s second game of the season.
His own coach calls Jeanty the “best player in the country,” UO coach Dan Lanning calls the 5-foot-9 junior one of the best backs the Ducks will face this year and, on paper, there’s quite the argument to be had after Jeanty’s school-record 267 yards and six touchdowns in BSU’s Week 1 win over Georgia Southern.
“He’s one of the best stiff-arm guys that we’ve gone against,” Lanning said on Monday. “He runs really physical.”
Boy, that sure would be fun to dive into. A little strength-on-strength matchup in Week 2: Boise’s world-class rushing attack against an Oregon defense that looked stout in a Week 1 win over Idaho and spent its entire offseason bulking up its front-seven.
Again, that would usually be the storyline after a win against an FCS team.
But on Tuesday in Eugene, the aftermath of that Idaho win still hung over Oregon like the fog of a long Saturday night.
To be clear: players and coaches have said they’ve moved on. They’ve taken their medicine, they’ll tell you. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t nice. But Sunday’s “trip to the doctor” set the table for a series of hard practices this week to try and shake a 10-point win that had the fanbase reacting as if it were a 30-point loss.
Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel said the truth is somewhat in the middle after Oregon’s 24-14 win.
“There’s a bunch of opportunities on our end that we didn’t maximize,” said Gabriel, who completed 84 percent of his passes for 380 yards and two touchdowns in his Oregon debut, but also struggled to effectively move the ball downfield against consistent — and unexpected — Idaho pressure. “You look at a bunch of things: two fourth-down conversions that we should have been converting on. We had the right play call, but certain things didn’t go our way execution-wise. … When you look back, of course after the game you’re emotional and you have certain thoughts, but then you dive deeper into film, you watch it two or three times and you realize that there are opportunities there. We just didn’t take advantage of them.”
He is right. The Ducks had three scoreless possessions during the critical middle-eight minutes that Lanning considers so valuable. The Ducks quadrupled Idaho in penalty yardage, averaged six fewer yards per completion, lost a fumble, missed a field goal and came away from playing the No. 7 team in the FCS having allowed 60 percent of last year’s sack total.
“I think there’s a lot of nuggets. You go back and you look at the overall game and you’re winning in a lot of categories. The categories we really didn’t win on were situational football and the way we ran the ball,” Lanning said. “…We had 87 snaps. They had 48 snaps. So you had the ball a lot more, but we weren’t creating the explosives that turn into positives. Finding ways to do that, a lot of that comes with effort to the ball, finishing and proper mechanics. But you look at it and you study those pieces. How do we create those things? And then you attack it and you build your practice plan around that as well. A lot of the things we saw that were places for us to improve, those are exact things that we worked on today.”
On Tuesday, Oregon offensive line coach A’lique Terry wore a T-shirt that read, “2.9 YPC – Idaho.” Gabriel called the practice “fiery,” while defensive back Dontae Manning said the team is motivated to put last week behind them.
“We went and saw the doctor and we’re ready to go back out there and show the world what we’ve been working on,” he said. “The doctor really didn’t like what he seen, but we’re just going to go back in there, correct it and take it to the practice field.”
Fortunately, the Ducks have some reinforcements available against the 2023 Mountain West champions. Wide receiver Gary Bryant Jr. practiced on Tuesday, so did right guard Matthew Bedford. The former Indiana starter missed the second half of fall camp due to a knee injury, forcing the Ducks to reshuffle their line with sophomore Iapani Laloulu at guard and walk-on Charlie Pickard at center.
Bedford is expected to play on Saturday, though Lanning did not indicate how his return will impact who gets sent to the bench.
“I think Charlie handled a lot of things really well. Charlie certainly wasn’t the guy that didn’t play well on the offensive line,” Lanning said. “I think as a unit, that’s the unit that has to play well together and it takes all five guys being on the same page and executing at a high clip. And he’s part of that unit; so he has ownership in that. But on the same note, there were multiple guys that didn’t play to their standard or our standard on Saturday.”
The Ducks will have the opportunity to get back on the right footing against the Broncos, and Gabriel said their ability to do so will come down to situational football.
“I think that’s the message: How do we maximize the opportunities we get?” Gabriel said. “Because it’s going to be maybe four or five, maybe six plays a game that could be the difference.”
— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor
