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There was an Anthony Brown scare, a Ty Thompson debut and a fun little moment for lip readers.
(Ty Thompson made his Oregon debut Saturday. (Eric Evans/GoDucks.com)
The Ducks are 3-0. The Beavers are 2-1. Here are some final thoughts as Oregon and Oregon State closed out nonconference play, beginning with a brief glimpse of the future at Autzen.
The game was closer than it needed to be and the first half was sloppy.
Oregon’s coach said it. Oregon’s players said it.
And sure, a 10-point lead at the half against an average FCS team isn’t exactly the way to come home from the biggest nonconference win in team history.
But also, Oregon had its biggest nonconference win in team history last week, then shook off this slow start to win 48-7 against Stony Brook on Saturday.
We’re not going to needle this one.
The Ducks have earned more credit than that, especially with what Fresno State — Oregon’s Week 1 opponent — did to UCLA Saturday night. Still, Oregon’s last series of the first half showed exactly why coaches take every single one of these games as seriously as they do.
The Ducks were up. They were driving. They didn’t block and Anthony Brown Jr. got walloped.
And just like that, Oregon was down a starting quarterback.
Brown left the field wincing at the half and never returned. Freshmen Ty Thompson and Jay Butterfield split reps the rest of the way.
“He took a pretty good shot there at the end of the half,” Oregon coach Mario Cristobal said. “We were just making sure he was OK. We expect him to be OK and he looks good, so we expect him to be healthy for next week.”
Oregon’s freshmen played fine last night, but through three weeks it’s pretty apparent that Brown is the player the Ducks hoped he would be when he came from Boston College.
He competently runs the offense. He doesn’t turn the ball over. And he gives the offense enough of a threat with his legs to open things up in Joe Moorhead’s system.
He was 14 of 18 with a 159 yards and a touchdown before leaving the game and giving an early start to Oregon’s youth movement.
Dont’e Thornton’s job was pretty clear when he caught a pass from Ty Thompson on Stony Brooks’ 40.
“In my head it was, ‘Ah, man. I got to score,’” the freshman receiver said after his 55-yard fourth-quarter touchdown. “I saw Troy (Franklin) blocking for me and when I cut back the only option for me was to score there because there was nobody in front of me. So I just kept running.
“Then once I scored, the first thing that popped into my head was, ‘Dang, I bet my mom is really proud of me right now watching this game.’”
Thornton is from Baltimore, and at 6-foot-5 and nearly 200 pounds he moves like a gazelle. I haven’t seen an Oregon receiver with his combination of size and athleticism, and it was just a small sampling of the young talent on display Saturday night for the Ducks.
Thompson made his much-anticipated Oregon debut and played most of the second half, going 6-of-9 with 82 yards and a pair of touchdowns. He didn’t look as comfortable as Brown, who has three-plus years of starts under his belt, but he looked like he could move Oregon’s offense.
“He did a nice job,” Cristobal said. “He got the ball out, was accurate and made the right decisions in the run game. He was playing some real, relative time as well. I’m proud of him. I’m proud of (Butterfield) getting in there as well. Both of those guys looked really sharp.”
Butterfield, a second-year freshman, completed 2-of-3 passes for 22 yards.
Freshmen caught 10 passes for 131 yards and two touchdowns — particularly impressive was tight end Terrance Ferguson out of Littleton, Colorado. Ferguson caught four passes for 31 yards and a touchdown, and looks to be the first tight end to make an impact as a true freshman since Johnny Mundt caught 16 passes for 281 yards and 3 touchdowns in 2013.
“I feel like we have a great group coming from that class of 2021,” Thornton said. “We have great receivers and tight ends coming in. In the next few years we’re really going to show everyone we have a great core over here.”
Two weeks ago Oregon State was winless and a little bit under the microscope. Sam Noyer struggled in his debut as OSU’s starting quarterback, the Beavers had just 78 rushing yards and Jonathan Smith’s play calling was being questioned after a failed fourth-and-1 attempt with 8:16 to play.
To be clear, Oregon State has had far worse nonconference losses than this Week 1 30-21 defeat on the road at Purdue. But to start a season in which the Beavers were hoping to convert close losses into wins, this wasn’t a great start for a team looking for its first bowl game in eight years.
“Just a lack of execution,” Smith said after that loss. “We had a couple guys open, we’d miss them. It’s 11-man football. When a guy or two is not on point, that’s hard on the offense.”
Smith made a change at quarterback midway through Purdue, and in the two games since with Chance Nolan under center the Beavers have scored 87 points. They’ve scored on 14 of 19 offensive series with Nolan at quarterback, and Saturday’s 41-0 win over Idaho marked the Beavers’ first shutout since the 2008 season. The defense ranks ninth in the FBS with 27 tackles for a loss.
The Purdue loss was still frustrating. It was a winnable game for a team that needs every win it can get. But the landscape of the Pac-12 has also shifted here in the season’s first three weeks. A one-loss Beavers’ team is certainly looks stronger right now than some of its Pac-12 North foes.
“You’d love to be 3-0,” Smith said Saturday. “But 2-1 is where we’re at, and this is a big win.”
Early on in Mario Cristobal’s tenure there were a few stories written about his apparent abilities as a, well, tough man.
From my guy Andrew Greif in 2017 about Cristobal’s once Secret Service future.
From Dennis Dodd about Cristobal’s MMA work outs.
And from Andy Staple’s mailbag last March answering, “Who would win a Royal Rumble of coaches?”
Spoiler alert: He picked Cristobal.
It’s all rather ironic because, outside of the actual confines of the locker room and field, Cristobal is a pretty cool customer. He’s confident. He’s calm. He always knows where the cameras are and rarely is anything out of his control when he’s in front of them.
But it’s been an angry week for Cristobal, considering it’s supposed to be his Ohio State victory lap. First it was the radio interview this week when Doug Gottlieb kept pressing Oregon’s coach about the open USC job.
“I’m not sure why you brought me on this interview,” Cristobal said, picking up steam as his answer went on. “I was under the impression we were talking about the Oregon Ducks. But since we’re going this route, I’ll say once again: Go Ducks.
“Here I am buddy.”
In the fourth quarter Saturday, Troy Franklin took a high, non-flagged shot during Dont’e Thornton’s touchdown. The play happened close to Stony Brooks’ sideline, which created a perfect environment for jawing when Cristobal came over to check on his player. And if you thought the “buddy” Cristobal gave Gottlieb earlier in the week was powerful, this combination for the lip-readers out there lands like a three-punch combo.
As the broadcast crew said, “Oh.”
By the way, up 41-7 on its next drive, Oregon went for it on fourth-and-1 with 5:20 to play. Again, Cristobal can be purposefully dry publicly, but in these moments it’s pretty easy to see why the locker room buys into this guy.
The Ducks need Kayvon Thibodeaux back.
Brandon Dorlus has played fine. Noah Sewell is great and the secondary flies to the football, but the Ducks just don’t have the same consistent push without one of the best defensive players in the country.
Go figure.
Missing that type of game wrecker kept the Seawolves in the game much longer than they should have been Saturday. The Ducks had one sack, tallied fewer tackles for a loss than Stony Brook and the biggest hit of the game came on Oregon’s quarterback, not Stony Brooks’. With Justin Flowe out for the year, Thibodeaux’s return to peak form is a necessity for this team. And it needs to happen sooner than later as they head into Pac-12 play.
“We played 80 guys tonight,” Cristobal said. “A lot of guys saw significant time and a lot saw their first playing time. We weren’t trying to rest guys, we were just banged up at certain positions and had to play guys.”
Again, the Ducks need Thibodeaux back, but it’s been nice to see Verone McKinley III finally get a little of the spotlight for his play. Oregon’s sophomore free safety had two interceptions Saturday, is up to three now on the season, eight in his career and still has two seasons left of eligibility. Mix in the intangibles that Cristobal talked about in the postgame and McKinley is quickly putting together an Oregon career that’s going to be remembered for a while.
“Verone, man. What a great leader,” Cristobal said. “What a great player. He epitomizes our culture. He just doesn’t stop. All he wanted to talk about was next week and being 1-0, about eating the right stuff and waking up and getting to film early.
“Guys like that drive the locker room.”
I went to Hillsboro Stadium on Saturday to take in Portland State’s first “home” game in 22 months. Yes, Portland State coach Bruce Barnum bought everyone beer.
Expect a longer story later this week.
A visual preview:
— Tyson Alger
