Noah Whittington earned the start — and jump-started the Ducks

After head coach Dan Lanning and players A’Mauri Washington, Gary Bryant Jr., Dante Moore and Malik Benson made individual appearances at the postgame press conference, we weren’t sure if that was it.

Some members of the media left.

Is there anyone else?

Noah, I thought. 

You’ve got to bring out Noah Whittington, the Ducks’ reliable 5-foot-8, 203-pound bowling ball of a running back. The guy who ran 35 yards, from the Ducks’ 25 to Montana State’s 40, on the first play of the game. 

The guy who set the tone.

There had already been questions about Makhi Hughes, the much-hyped Tulane transfer, not getting the season-opening start Saturday, Aug. 30, in front of 57,257 fans at Autzen Stadium, followed by lots of compliments about Whittington, now in his fourth year at Oregon.

“His mindset,” said Bryant, who caught a 14-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter of the Ducks’ 59-13 rout of the Bobcats, when asked what sets Whittington apart.

“That guy is up early. He’s taking care of his body … doing all the little details, just doing everything right. Everything he wants is going to turn out for him.”

Whittington has played at Oregon behind the likes of 1,000-yard rushers Bucky Irving and Jordan James, now both in the NFL, so competing in practice against a guy the likes of Hughes, who rushed for 1,401 yards and 15 touchdowns last year at Tulane and has been listed on pre-season All-American lists, is nothing new. 

In fact, Whittington prefers it.

“I like competition, regardless,” he said. “I’ve been competing since I got here.”

Asked if the Ducks’ snagging Hughes in the off-season fired him up, Whittington quietly said yes.

“Yeah, that pumped me up,” he said with a little curl of a smile.

Whittington rushed for 779 yards in 2022, his first season with the Ducks. His 68 yards rushing on 10 carries Saturday were only his eighth-best production at UO.

But the fact that he beat out a back the caliber of Hughes for the start says plenty about the pluck of Whittington, a humble and soft-spoken young man from Fort Valley, Georgia, who came to Oregon as a transfer from Western Kentucky.

“Just everything that he does,” Lanning said when asked how Whittington — who scored a 1-yard touchdown to make it 31-0 Ducks with just over four minutes to go before halftime — sets the tone of a talented running back room. 

“He’s serious all the time. He loves what he’s doing, he loves his teammates, he works really hard at practice, and there’s results on the field because of that.”

Whittington’s mindset, the determination he showed on that first play, running left and seeing no room, and quickly shifting to the right and running wide down the right sideline, firing up the crowd and his teammates, and making the statement: This will be different from last season’s opener against another FCS team, Idaho.

The Ducks won that contest 24-14, but it was a one-possession game late in the fourth quarter and resulted in lots of grumbling by Ducks fans who would eat their words — think Oregon 32, Ohio State, 31 — Oregon was 13-0 and Big Ten champs in their inaugural season in the conference.

“I think it just got the ball rolling for the very special offense that we have,” Whittington said of that opening play. “I feel like the first play, no matter if it was to me or somebody else, the tone would get set regardless.”

Yes, the Ducks were determined not to come out flat this time around, also knowing their last game – against those eventual national champion Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl 241 days earlier – was about the same first-half disaster (down 34-8) as the Bobcats experienced Saturday (down 38-3).

Even if they didn’t want to talk about that much.

“Of course, last year, you can say that Idaho game wasn’t the right way to kick it off, and it wasn’t,” said Moore, who got his expected first start at quarterback for the Ducks. 

“This year, we’re not even thinking about the Idaho game, we’re not thinking about if we’re going to come out flat. We’re just thinking about how we’re going to attack as a whole unit when it comes to that first drive.”

As for Hughes, he didn’t appear in the backfield for the Ducks until late in the first half. 

Junior Jayden Limar and true freshman Jordan Davison got in the game before Hughes did, Limar scored the first points for Oregon — an impressive 16-yard run, wide left — and Davison, a load at 6-foot, 236 pounds, led UO with three touchdowns on three short, powerful runs.

“We’ve got a ton of really good backs,” Lanning said. “They earn it every single day in practice. And (his teammates) would tell you that Noah Whittington’s earned that, every single day in practice, in his leadership and how he’s worked.”