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QuickTake:
Oregon’s win over Oregon State sets the stage for a whiteout showdown with Penn State, where Dante Moore’s early Heisman comes into focus.
The Ducks?
They’re on to the Nittany Lions.
“I know they have a bye this week, so they were able to focus on us, but our focus was on Oregon State,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said after a 41-7 win over the Beavers on Saturday. “But that’s why we’ve got to be able to flip the switch quick and move on and get ready for Penn State.”
It’s the No. 6 Ducks at the No. 3 Nittany Lions. College GameDay will be in State College. It’ll be a “White Out.”
It’s what we’ve been waiting nine months for since the Rose Bowl, the game that’ll truly test the Ducks’ mettle after four weeks of overmatched opponents.
We’ll get onto Penn State, too — after one last Oregon State story. This Bryce Boettcher one is just too good.
The Eugene-born linebacker had one of the best games of his career against the Beavers, tallying nine of his game-high 10 tackles in the first half after setting the tone for the rivalry game throughout the week.
“Bryce is crazy, man,” quarterback Dante Moore said. “We call him Mr. Eugene.”
But after beating Oregon State for the third and final time in his football career, Boettcher shared that he was very close to becoming Mr. Corvallis during his recruitment as a baseball player.
“I was told that there was an opportunity to walk on there (for baseball),” Boettcher said. “The coach calls me, says, ‘Hey, I’m calling on Friday to set up your visit on Saturday.’ Friday rolled around, I never got a call, and I was committing that Sunday either to Utah, Oregon or Oregon State for baseball. And he calls me on Saturday, he’s like, ‘Hey man, I’m sorry I spaced your visit. We’ll see if we can get you down here next week.’
“And I’m like, ‘Yeah, man, sorry about that. I’m going to be a Duck.’”
Big-time plays
Oregon’s receiving depth continues to impress, with four different players catching touchdown passes from Dante Moore against the Beavers and seven players grabbing multiple receptions.
Kenyon Sadiq had 60 yards and a touchdown.
Gary Bryant Jr. had 65 yards and a touchdown.
Dakorien Moore had 63 yards and a touchdown.
And it’s that true freshman who continues to wow me. I didn’t anticipate Moore, at 5-foot-11, being the downfield threat that he’s become, but his ability to separate from his defender, along with his body control while in the air, puts him in a position to make a play on just about every ball Dante Moore launches his way.
“What makes him good is he catches it,” Lanning said. “He’s been a guy that can win those one-on-ones. I think there’s some opportunities that he wishes he had back today, but ultimately, he’s a tough guy to guard, and if he can beat you over the top, he’ll win over the top. If you’re even, he’s going to be able to beat you on the back shoulder.”
Through four games, the true freshman has 12 catches for 207 yards and three touchdowns. And while the Ducks have shown they have balance, sometimes in games like the Ducks will see on Saturday, a team needs game breakers.
A month in, Moore is becoming one.
Defense locks in
Oregon State had one of those drives — the ones that come early in a game against a heavily favored opponent — that can take the air out of a stadium.
The Beavers went 64 yards on 13 plays and took nearly 8 minutes off the clock with their second drive of the game, knotting things at 7-all just before the end of the first quarter when Anthony Hankerson punched it in from a yard out.
The Ducks gave up 42 rushing yards in the first quarter — an area of focus after Northwestern’s fourth-quarter close a week earlier.
But then they flexed — allowing only 25 more yards on the ground the rest of the game. It was Oregon’s best-rated rush defense of the season, per Pro Football Focus, and saw the Ducks cut their missed tackles from seven against Northwestern down to one against the Beavers.
“They had a couple of explosive plays on that drive,” Boettcher said. “On one of those, I was in my gap but I should have shed my block and made a play and I overran it. So one of those is on me. But, technique and resilience — we got back to our process and stopped them the rest of the game.”
Penn State’s rushing attack will be a handful for the Ducks: The Lions have rushed for more than 200 yards twice this season, have nine touchdowns on the ground and are led by Kaytron Allen, a 217-pound senior averaging eight yards per carry.
“We talked about winning the trenches before this game started,” Lanning said. “To be able to rush for almost 300 yards and hold them to under 100 rushing after we started so poorly was a big win for us.”
Stardom could await Dante Moore
Dante Moore is used to the spotlight — that happens when one is offered a scholarship by then-Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh as a seventh grader. He’s a redshirt sophomore in college now, the starting quarterback of the No. 6 team in the country, the face of a Beats By Dre headphones ad campaign and, to date, has played some pretty good football here in 2025 — his four touchdowns on Saturday gave him 11 against just 1 interception on the season.
Moore’s stock is high. But if he’s able to channel his first month of positive play into a win over Penn State on Saturday, the Detroit native will find himself riding shotgun in the Heisman conversation.
Consider this: Before the season began, Moore had the 12th-best odds to win the trophy, per ESPN Bet. After a month where Moore has thrown for 962 yards, completed 75 percent of his passes and led the Ducks to a 4-0 start, he’s sitting in third heading into one of the biggest games of the college football season.
A win at Penn State, against a fellow Heisman-contending quarterback in Drew Aller with College GameDay in town? That’s a recipe for front-runner status.
And after the win against Oregon State — a redemption game for Moore after throwing three interceptions against the Beavers as a freshman at UCLA — Moore shared he’s in a better place to handle everything that comes with that than he was earlier in his career.
“It was me remembering my 18-year-old self, when I played at Oregon State and I was mentally depressed,” Moore said. “The way things were going and everybody knows the struggles that happened. I used it as fuel to make sure that I never get that feeling ever again.”
The uniforms
Do I think Oregon’s “Shoe Dog” uniforms looked cool up close? Yes.
Did they probably look good on TV? Sure.
But from the box? A bit bland. And the “wear black” dress code for fans didn’t create the intended effect – it just left the stadium looking somewhat empty with patches of color scattered throughout.
Let’s keep this orange and green in the future.
The Oregon Throwing League
Three Oregon quarterbacks started in the NFL on Sunday for the first time since 2007.
In the opening act, Marcus Mariota stepped in for NFL Rookie of the Year Jayden Daniels and led the Washington Commanders to a 41-24 win over the Las Vegas Raiders. Mariota went 15-of-21 for 207 yards, with a passing touchdown and a rushing score.
He also, for a moment, thought it was 2014 again.
In the headlining event: Bo Nix and the Denver Broncos appeared to have Justin Herbert and the Los Angeles Chargers bested.
That is, until Herbert did this:
In Duck vs. Duck, it was Herbert and the Chargers coming out on top, 23-20.
As an added bonus: former Oregon QB Tyler Shough made his NFL debut in mop-up time in New Orleans’ 44-13 loss to Seattle.
The view:
Oregon and Oregon State in September isn’t right. But it sure was nice.
The next view:
Beaver Stadium, State College, Pennsylvania. We’ll be there.
