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The five things you need to know from this weekend in the Northwest.
Hand up: I’ll be the first person to say I never expected to spend part of my weekend looking through stats to compare Bo Nix to other Heisman candidates halfway through the season.
I was ready to bury the guy’s Oregon career back in Atlanta. You probably were too.
Nix’s two interceptions were back-breakers in a game the Ducks would have lost anyway, but considering his history as a three-year starter at Auburn and the fact that some form of “Welcome to the Bo Nix experience” starts trending on Twitter anytime he makes a mistake, it felt like Oregon was in for another year of quarterbacks setting the message boards on fire.
I didn’t think Nix could get better. I was wrong.
On Saturday, Nix completed 80 percent of his passes for 265 yards, rushed for 70 yards and three touchdowns and turned any of those worries about the Ducks being upset in the desert into a good laugh. Statistically, Nix is having the best season of his career. Tactically, he is the maestro of the No. 5 offense in the country and has led the Ducks to five consecutive wins and we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves here, but the numbers aren’t THAT far off the Heisman Trophy pace.
For example:
Here’s Marcus Mariota’s stats through six games in 2014:
1,621 passing yards, 69.7% completion, 17 touchdowns, 0 interceptions.
290 rushing yards, 5 touchdowns.
Ducks 5-1
And here’s Nix:
1,526 passing yards, 70.4% completion, 12 touchdowns, 3 interceptions
331 rushing yards, 8 touchdowns
Ducks 5-1
The only drastic difference there are Nix’s turnovers, which have been minimized since the Georgia game. Actually since Georgia, Nix is averaging 329.4 total yards, 4 total touchdowns and .25 turnovers per game.
“I didn’t see the ball put in jeopardy,”Oregon coach Dan Lanning said of Nix after Oregon’s 49-22 win over Arizona Saturday. “He’s playing like a smart quarterback right now, operating the way he’s been operating. He’s obviously really talented, does a great job with his feet, but gives us a chance to win when he plays like he did tonight.”
Said Nix: “When we stay out of our own way, when we just execute the play that’s called, and when we own the ball and we don’t have a bunch of penalties, you kind of just see what we’ve been doing the past few games.”
For the last five games, what they’ve been doing is averaging 50 points per game.
To be clear, Nix has a ton of ground to cover. A week ago he wasn’t even among the 19 players receiving votes in The Athletic’s weekly poll, with players like Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud and USC’s Caleb Williams predictably leading the charge.
And while Nix has a long way to go to catch Stroud statistically, Nix has arguably been the better quarterback than the heralded Williams so far in 2022.
Williams: 1,590 passing yards, 64.9%, 14 touchdowns, 1 interception, 178 rushing yards, 3 touchdowns
Stroud: 1,737 passing yards, 70.6%, 24 touchdowns, 3 interceptions, -4 rushing yards, 0 touchdowns.
The Bruins are coming
Nice timing with this bye week. Outside of Colorado on Nov. 5, Oregon’s next five games have a heaping of storylines and challenges.
Oct. 29 is against Cal and a coach the Ducks nearly hired in December.
Nov. 12 is against the Huskies at Autzen for the first time since 2018.
Nov. 19 is against Utah, the team that thumped the Ducks twice in the final four games of the Mario Cristobal era.
Nov. 26 is against Oregon State, a game which, if things really going right here over the next month, could have a whole lot riding on it.
Of those games, none come close to matching everything that comes with No. 11 UCLA and Chip Kelly traveling to Autzen next week.
From a football perspective, the Bruins are a bear. Like Nix, quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson has played himself right into the Heisman race (1,510 yards, 15 TD, 2 INT) and UCLA’s offense is producing at the best rate for Chip Kelly since his days at Oregon.
The Bruins’ 7.7 yards per play is first in the Pac-12 and No. 9 in the nation, and their 41.5 points per game rank second in the Pac-12 — just half a point behind the No. 1 Ducks.
Oh?
I don’t think any of us expected that part. After four years of Cristobal’s offenses averaging no more than 6.75 yards per play — with Justin Herbert! — Oregon’s 2022 offense averaging 7 yards per play is its most since 2015 and not far of the pace of those peak Kelly years in Eugene. And that’s under a first-year head coach in Lanning and a 32-year-old offensive coordinator in Kenny Dillingham.
Yes, it’ll be a top 25 game. It’ll be sold out and, if ESPN has objectivity, GameDay should be on campus. It will be the most important home game since Washington in 2018, when the Cristobal era officially began with CJ Verdell’s run up the middle in overtime. But parts of the Cristobal era felt forced, from the style of the offense to the all out mirroring of SEC mentalities. In the end, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he eventually headed back to the Southeast.
Lanning and Dillingham came into a program with an understandably apprehensive fanbase and have done nothing but win football games — since Georgia — and score a ton of points. And that’s got Oregon fans feeling things they haven’t felt about a coach since the last time Kelly wore that visor on the Oregon sidelines.
Rest up this weekend. Next week is going to be a blast.
Dye finding his way at USC
For much of the season Travis Dye has been an extra for the USC Trojans.
He’s been good, to be sure: the senior running back had totaled five touchdowns coming into Saturday’s game with Washington State, but on a team loaded with talent, Dye wasn’t exactly transferring from Oregon to become a bell cow.
Saturday he was. After averaging just 12 carries per game though five weeks Dye rushed 28 times for a season-high 149 yards and a first-half touchdown. The single game bested Dye’s four-year output (144 yards) against the Cougars while at Oregon.
“The o-line was identifying everything and blocking it,” Dye said. “It was wonderful tonight, all credit to them.”
Dye’s transfer from Oregon came as one of the biggest surprises of the offseason, though the move seems to be turning into one of the rare instances that worked out better for both parties. Dye is home in California, married and an important piece on a team with massive potential.
Meanwhile, the combination of Bucky Irving, Noah Whittington and Nix has led Oregon to 200-plus yards on the ground four times in UO’s last five games.
All hail the rally shoe
Went to the Mariners watch party at T-Mobile Park on Saturday. Yes, it’s a long drive to watch a game on a screen, but I’ve never been to a Seattle ballpark in October and didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity.
With about 10,000 people in the stands, it was a fun and odd environment from the start. You could sit wherever you wanted in the lower bowl and still pay upwards of $14 for a beer.
I grabbed my usual Kid Valley cheeseburger and shake, snagged a spot along the third baseline and then watched as the Blue Jays raced out to an 8-1 lead. At that point, the stadium experience had been unique enough to warrant the $10 paid to get in, but was quickly falling into the, “Probably won’t do that again” category.
Then the guy put the sandal on his head.
He started alone. Camera operators caught him and threw him up on the big screen right before a Cal Raleigh RBI single in the eighth inning. The camera went back to Ben, who was mobbed by his seat mates as a trickle of others in the crowd start fixing their footwear to their heads. Then Mitch Haniger singled. Then Adam Frazier singled.
Then this happened:
And it was bedlam at T-Mobile, with hundreds of people wearing shoes on their heads. The scene still had me chuckling afterwards as fans streamed out of the stadium high-fiving each other. I couldn’t help but think of the pandemic year, and all those games I walked outside of Autzen Stadium when the fans weren’t allowed in the stadium.
Those games were stale, bland and boring.
Saturday, even without a game technically being played there, was an all-time sporting experience for the people who watched that game in the park together.
Maybe there’s something to that.
Power rankings
Alger
1. Oregon
2. UCLA
3. USC
4. Utah
5. Washington State
6. Oregon State
7. Washington
8. Arizona State
9. Cal
10. Stanford
11. Arizona
12. Colorado
Hoffmann:
1. Oregon
2. UCLA
3. USC
4. Utah
5. Washington State
6. Oregon State
7. Washington
8. Stanford
9. Arizona
10. Arizona State
11. Cal
12. Colorado
— Tyson Alger
@tysonalger
