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As Oregon flies through its final season in the Pac-12, The I-5 Corridor pays respect to the opponents the Ducks face for the final time as conference foes.
They just had to finish in Tempe, didn’t they?
The Oregon Ducks’ last road game of the Pac-12 era might seem like a blip on the radar for outsiders. The No. 6 team in the country playing against a team that lost 55-3 to Utah two weeks ago doesn’t exactly send chills down the “upset” spine.
Oregon fans should know better. Tempe is where more Pac-12 chaos has happened than any city outside of the Palouse. In some cases, that’s led to some of the most thrilling individual games in Oregon history (more on that later).
In others, it’s led to absolute heartbreak.
This week, it’s the Ducks versus the Sun Devils in a game Oregon’s favored to win by 23.5 points, featuring an Arizona State coach who is very familiar with the way Dan Lanning goes about his business.
We’re not predicting an upset here. These Ducks are too good for that.
But we have seen far too much go down in the desert to know better than to take this game lightly.
Buckle up, Oregon fans. It’s time to say…
Goodbye, Arizona State
A great moment for Oregon
All right, gather around, boys and girls.
Vernon Adams Jr. has a confession to make.
When we were talking last week about his career resurgence with the BC Lions, the former Oregon quarterback and I started talking about that 2015 Arizona State game.
You know the one.
The one the started late in the desert and ended in triple overtime 116 points later.
It was one of the wildest games of the Pac-12 era, with no play emphasizing that point more than the final one of regulation.
Oregon trailed by seven points and faced a fourth-and-goal from ASU’s 8 with 22 seconds left. Adams took the snap, bounced around and flushed out to his right. With two defenders chasing him down, he eventually uncorked a throw off his back foot from ASU’s 25 that sailed into the middle of the end zone, where Dwayne Stanford tracked it down, absorbed a massive hit from teammate Johnny Mundt and secured the catch to the ground.
“I remember being open for a long time before that,” Stanford said. “Then Vernon starts doing Vernon things and I remember going up and catching it and thinking that I was about to get smacked — that somebody was going to hit me pretty hard and put a good lick on me.
“Thank God it was just Johnny, so it wasn’t so bad.”
Of course it was Johnny — that’s who Adams, eight years later, admits he was throwing the ball too.
“He was there, wide-open,” Adams said. “Then Too Tall Dwayne Stanford came out of nowhere and made it his ball. I’m glad he did because he got it and we went into over time and we did what we needed to do.
“But that’s the first time I’ve said that. Johnny was the first person I saw, then it was just Dwayne going up.”
A great moment for Arizona State
It’s pretty clear that Jayden Daniels is a great quarterback.
And with how things are trending, the LSU senior may very well come and swipe the Heisman Trophy from the hands of one of these Northwest quarterbacks.
He’s got more passing yards than Bo Nix, more passing touchdowns than Michael Penix Jr. and, no joke, nearly nine times as many rushing yards as the two players combined.
LSU is No. 15 in the country at 7-3, but if Nix and Penix start splitting votes, don’t be surprised if one of the most respected football players in the country emerges late to win the Trophy.
With that all being said: Daniels was nationally unknown before Nov. 23, 2019. The four-star true freshman quarterback had been up and down for the 5-5 Sun Devils when Justin Herbert and the No. 6 Oregon Ducks came to Tempe needing a win to help secure a playoff spot.
He was very up that night.
Daniels passed for 408 yards and three touchdowns, including the 81-yard go-ahead score to Brandon Aiyuk with 2:04 left for the 31-28 win.
“The great thing about Jayden (Daniels) is he’s humble as well,” then-ASU coach Herman Edwards said. “He has a lot of fun playing football. I love talking to him on the sidelines, especially here towards the end of the game. I told him ‘It’s time. Can you throw a touchdown or do something? We need some scores here.’ Then he threw the one to Brandon (Aiyuk). I don’t know how long that one was, but it was a long one.”
A Great moment for sheets
The forgotten thing about that 2015 triple-OT game: That was the last big go-around with sign stealing.
If you’ll remember correctly, that was the game where Oregon earned some national attention not just for the way it won the game, but for the white sheets held on the sidelines to cover up Oregon’s play signals on offense.
Oregon offensive coordinator Scott Frost didn’t really beat around the bush when it came to the reason why.
“From the intel we got, I’ver never heard of a team going to the length they go to try and get signals,” Frost said.
Said Washington State coach Mike Leach the same week:
“I mean, you’ve got two straight schools with concerns over it, back-to-back, and they have a reputation for it that extends beyond that,” Leach told The Spokesman-Review. “The conference probably ought to investigate them and see what they’re doing, make sure nothing is illegal.”
ASU coach Todd Graham didn’t run away from the accusations, either.
“Do we steal signals? Yeah, we do. Do people steal our signals? Yeah, (they) do,” Graham said then.
So, what was really going on? I got in touch with Nate Costa, who was an offensive analyst for the Ducks back in 2015. Costa said what they thought Arizona State was doing wasn’t exactly to the levels of Michigan’s alleged exploits with Connor Stallions.
“Our intel is ASU was all in game,” Costa said. “Never a pre-scouting operation in person. Possible signal-scouting from TV copies, which is popular with certain staffs.”
Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to matter much: The Ducks also scored 61 points and averaged 7.1 yards per play.
“We were an all signal operation, with no desire to huddle or wristband. So the sheets were both a way to hide signals, but also a way to call attention to what was going on,” Costa said. “What they were doing was not illegal of course, but I’ve always viewed it as unsportsmanlike. So the fact that we won the game and called attention to their operation (or what we thought they were doing) was a double win for the Ducks.”
Pain scale: 2/5
Again, some of these games have been great. And maybe from an outsider’s perspective, the Oregon/Arizona State game is one of those mid-range regular season games that undersells and over delivers when it comes to the outcome.
Nobody expected Arizona State to beat Justin Herbert and the Ducks in 2017. Nobody expected Arizona State to beat Justin Herbert and the Ducks in 2019. And nobody is really expecting Arizona State to beat Patrick Herbert and the Ducks in 2023.
What could go wrong?
I think Oregon fans will be just fine leaving this relationship in the desert. The lost few days in the sun, however, will take some time for Northwest sportswriters to properly grieve.
Breakup song: Gone Forever — Three Days Grace
I feel so much better
Now that you’re gone forever
I tell myself that I don’t miss you at all
I’m not lying, denying
That I feel so much better now
That you’re gone forever
— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor
