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Bennett Williams’ father, Garey, wanted the ball during Cal’s famous kick return against Stanford in 1982. He’s glad he didn’t get it.
(The Williams Family, Courtesy of Garey Williams)
The bye week is over. A Friday kickoff approaches.
Let’s jump right into the mailbag.
Are you still going to run the Bennett Williams profile you said you were writing? Shane W.
Unfortunately, no. I’ve had a lot of rewrites for game stories on deadline, but this is one of the first times I had a feature story ready to drop that got completely wiped out.
Damn injuries. But, in appreciation of the three-interception season Williams had going before breaking his leg, here are three things I learned while reporting on the Oregon defensive back.
1. Williams fits in quickly. His dad, Garey, remembers when Bennett was young and they were on a family trip together at Disney World.
“He’s just going up to strangers and asking them if they wanted to come over to our house for dinner,” Garey said. “He’s just running around, going up to people and talking. That’s very different from my other son, who would just close his eyes if he didn’t want to talk to you.”
After a freshman All-American season at Illinois, he spent two years at College of San Mateo and joined Oregon prior to the 2020 season. He still keeps in touch with teammates and coaches from his previous two stops, and just days before his season-ending injury, he was telling Garey how close the current Oregon secondary was becoming.
“They joke around all the time,” Garey said, “but they’re really, really supportive of each other.”
2. Garey understands that feeling. He’s a substitute teacher at St. Francis High in Mountain View, Calif. — the school where Bennett and his younger brother, Fresno State DB Evan Williams, attended — but still has text threats with teammates from his days as a defensive back at Cal during the 1980s. Garey was on the field for “The Play” back in 1982, when his Bears used five laterals off a kickoff to come back and beat Stanford as time expired — all while the band rushed onto the field.
Inside the Williams Household, a few pictures from Garey’s playing days line the walls.
“He’d see replays on TV, or the pictures on the wall. He just loved football,” Garey said of Bennett. “He’d be two years old in our living room telling me to tackle him.”
3. Garey wanted the ball during “The Play,” and looking back, he’s kind of glad he never got it.
The ball was on the other side of the field for much of Cal’s return, but when it turned back toward his side, he — No. 32 — positioned himself to take a lateral from Mariet Ford. Garey considered himself one of the best athletes on the team, and the Bears practiced this sort of thing on Sunday mornings. He was ready. He wanted the ball.
But Ford’s lateral ended up in Kevin Moen’s hands, who took the ball into the end zone while crashing into a Stanford trombone player.
“When I saw that band on the field, I just stopped,” Garey said. “I was thinking that this is stupid, this isn’t going to be legal, that we’re just going to have to do this bad boy over again. But Kevin goes in to score and history is made.
“If that ball came to me, I may have just stopped.”
Because you didn’t watch the game live due to a “wedding” how much responsibility sits on your shoulders for the Oregon loss? Kevin P.
I gave that wedding 110 percent and have the wine stains on my favorite shirt to prove it.
So, roughly 40 percent of the loss is on me.
The Cristobal era has been a success no doubt, but it’s had its share of head-scratching losses. Where does this latest one rank? Ryan P.
Cristobal is 29-11 at Oregon. The Ducks are currently in the top 10. They are a pretty good football team. In fact, Oregon has been a pretty good football team for most of Cristobal’s tenure in Eugene.
But yeah, there have certainly been some rough losses.
Let’s rank them.
11. 2017 Las Vegas Bowl
Boise State 38, Oregon 28
The details: Willie Taggart had taken off the week prior, Cristobal was frantically trying to shore up a recruiting class and Royce Freeman didn’t play. We’ll give him a pass on this one.
10. 2018 Utah
Utah 32, Oregon 27
The details: A one-score loss on the road against one of the conference’s most consistent programs? That will happen. Even if the Ducks spoiled a Justin Herbert three-touchdown afternoon.
9. 2021 Fiesta Bowl
Iowa State 35, Oregon 17
The details: Yes, it was a deflating bowl game to end a deflating season. But the No. 25 Ducks weren’t exactly favorites against a very good No. 10 Iowa State team. It’s never fun when the quarterback carousel is spinning in the final game of the season.
8. 2020 Cal
Bears 21, Ducks 17
The details: So what if the Ducks were shut out in the second half against a previously winless opponent? All it did was serve as an audition for Tim DeRuyter, who would eventually become Oregon’s defensive coordinator before the 2021 season.
7. 2019 Auburn
Tigers 27, Ducks 21
The details: This was a hard-fought game that came down to the final play. Had the Ducks made just one more stop on defense, or had Herbert’s Hail Mary landed in the end zone, this would have gone down as one of the biggest wins in program history. It’s an acceptable loss, but one that took the entire season to build back from.
6. 2018 Washington State
Cougars 34, Ducks 20
The details: Coming off the first top-10 win of the Cristobal era, the Ducks came out flat and couldn’t make up for it in a demoralizing road loss. It was College GameDay’s first time on the Palouse. Coug fans celebrated accordingly.
5. 2018 Stanford
Cardinal 38, Ducks 31 overtime
The details: In truth, it’s not a terrible loss. In Cristobal’s first Pac-12 game, his Ducks nearly beat a top-10 opponent. It’s just that the Ducks had the ball, up a field goal, with a minute to play. Then came the CJ Verdell fumble.
4. 2018 Arizona
Wildcats 44, Ducks 15
The details: The Washington State loss the week prior cost more, but in WTF terms, there may not be a more head-scratching loss than this 29-point blasting by an Arizona team that would lose seven games in 2018.
3. 2020 Oregon State
Beavers 41, Ducks 38
The details: Oregon’s undefeated record coming into the game may have been smoke and mirrors. Still, the Ducks were No. 9 in the country and playing against an unranked Oregon State team — then looked like the second-best team on the field for most of the game. Fans didn’t get to see this one in person, but the car horns blaring throughout Corvallis certainly made everyone aware of the final result.
2. 2021 Stanford
Cardinal 31, Ducks 24
The details: It’s fine that Oregon is 4-1 after five games. In fact, it’s really good considering the injuries they’ve suffered and a schedule that included Ohio State on the road. The problem is the Ducks won that Ohio State game, which ramped up expectations. And when those expectations come crashing down in the form of a frustrating, penalty and injury-filled game of football against a team that has taken plenty of pleasure in ruining seasons, well, that hurts.
Four times in the last nine years the Cardinal have knocked off an undefeated Oregon team.
Yuck.
1. 2019 Arizona State
Sun Devils 31, Oregon 28
Details: This wasn’t a bad Arizona State team, and we’ve seen flashes over the last couple of years how good Jayden Daniels can be. Still, Oregon went into Tempe as the No. 5 team in the country and just a couple of wins away from a College Football Playoff berth. Then Daniels out-dueled Justin Herbert, throwing for 408 yards and three touchdowns as Oregon’s best chance so far under Cristobal evaporated in the desert.
I have to trust that the coaching staff top to bottom of U of O is of the highest quality, possibly the most experienced in the PAC-12. I have to also assume that they are playing the best quarterback they have available. They don’t coach solely for the love of coaching, they need to win as much as us fans want to see them win. So I don’t think we should fire the coaches, I believe they are doing the best they can with what they. I believe part of the problem last week has to do with missing the offensive coordinator with no time for preparation. The question I have is, is Brown trying to do too much himself when he gets behind in a game?
It seems to me that he keeps too many balls on the option play trying to carry the whole offense on his back. Am I out of line thinking that the pressure gets to him? He has the experience and the ability, does great in practice, but when things aren’t going our way offensively, he seems to lock up. — Spybeck.
This might be the most rational response to the Stanford loss. This is the internet, you know? This doesn’t belong here.
Basically, I agree with your entire premise. As Cristobal said last week, they believe Brown gives them their best opportunity to win right now. And while Ty Thompson or Jay Butterfield might be the player to build the program around for the future, the Ducks are still very much in the thick of the conference race. The university wants, at very least, that trophy inside the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex. And there are plenty of coaches with performance incentives who aren’t going to happily stand by if there’s a better option on the sideline.
Brown helped the Ducks beat Ohio State. He played poorly against Stanford. He owned it.
“Excuse my language, but I played like shit,” he said afterward.
But that response might be part of the problem. Brown has been very good in practice. He has been OK in games. He puts a lot of pressure on himself to perform and it’s not hard to see why.
He moved across the country and waited a year for this opportunity. This is his only chance to lead a premier college football program and the team needs him. And there are some within the building who think he puts too much of that pressure on himself. So maybe it was a misread when he didn’t see Verdell open for a walk-in score. Or maybe he felt like he needed to be Superman.
This is a weird college football season. The Ducks certainly aren’t playing at a level of a traditional playoff team, but this might be the year where you don’t have to. Alabama even lost this past weekend. The Ducks might think that Brown is good enough to give them a shot at…something.
I do think people are overlooking the Joe Moorhead situation from Saturday. A team is prepared to lose a play caller, but it makes it harder when it happens just a few hours before kickoff.
You are czar of football right now, you can make three changes. What are they? — Brian Johnson.
1. We’re going to add some nuance to the targeting penalty. I don’t hate targeting. The rule was born with good intentions. But with the speed in which this game is played, it’s obvious there needs to be a change to the rule.
Targeting will be treated like flagrant fouls in the NBA. A Targeting 1 will result in a 15-yard penalty. A Targeting 2 will result in a 15-yard penalty and an immediate disqualification. That’s up to the referee’s discretion.
2. I can’t believe I’m typing this, but I’ve become a bit of a Formula 1 racing fan as of late. Blame the pandemic and the excellent Drive to Survive series on Netflix. The reason why they get ya: Formula 1 makes everything available to Netflix — from behind the scenes access in the garages to live radio feeds of the conversations between drivers and their teams. Again, never would have guessed myself for a racing fan. But it turns out, when you make it incredibly easy to access the storylines and the scenes, you get hooked.
I’m using this all as an extended lead-in to distract from the fact that the media member is calling for better access. How original. But it makes sense, no? Let’s open up practices across the country. Turn this back into a sport and less like a guarding of state secrets.
3. You know how the NFL plays a few games in London a year to try and draw in the European crowd? They should do that with the Pac-12, but instead of London, have them play on the East Coast. Let the Ducks and Beavers play a game out in Fenway Park. Bruins and Trojans at the Big House and the Apple Cup in the Big Apple. Basically, we’re realizing Larry Scott’s life-long dream of Silicon Valleying everything it can out of the conference. It’s like Postmates. The football comes to you.
Hey Tyson! Any insight into the offensive line at this point in the season? I’m not remembering anything huge in the Stanford game (as far as o-line) but there were some glaring mistakes in the two games prior, especially right before half. I believe one even led to AB getting banged up and not coming back during the Stony Brook game? Just curious if you’ve heard anything about what’s happening there. — Adam B.
The offensive line has been….fine? Fine. FINE.
It’s just weird to type that for a program that prides itself on being very good in the trenches.
This certainly isn’t the best offensive line in the Pac-12. It’s far from the worst. It’s been really good in blocking against the run, but has struggled in pass protection.
Why?
I think they’re still getting a feel for themselves. The main six of Ryan Walk, Alex Forsyth, Steven Jones, Malaesala Aumavae-Laulu, T.J. Bass and George Moore are in their second season together, but the Ducks have also worked in true freshman Jackson Powers-Johnson (79 snaps) and junior Dawson Jaramillo (115 snaps).
“Honestly we got to keep getting better,” Cristobal said Sunday. “I don’t think anyone on our team is looking for praise. I think we’re at the point where every ounce of focus is on, ‘Hey man, let’s go get better.’ We did that during the bye week. We feel like our focus is strong and it has to be.”
Consistency is what I want to see here. The Ducks protected well at Ohio State against the most physical front they’ll see all season. Then they’ve struggled against inferior competition. It’s a bit of a microcosm for the whole team.
— Tyson Alger
