Reasonable people can disagree about whether the sky is falling on the Oregon football program after their shocking 62-20 loss to Utah last Saturday, and considering that the aghast longtime partisans hadn’t seen a Ducks defeat so thorough since Washington came to town in the 2-9 season of 1977, things aren’t looking good.
The best-case scenario is that this season ends with a decent record in a forgettable bowl game; the worst-case scenario is that this campaign leaves damage that costs people jobs and a program its stability and identity.
Not only did the Ducks get filleted by Utah on Saturday, any good will that was stored up from the close, scrappy Michigan State loss in week two was permanently erased.
Oregon’s performance was pathetic. They got carved up on trick plays, carved up on third down, and so carved up mentally that the game was over long before the Utes put up a 28-0 third quarter.
Vernon Adams Jr., whose biggest accomplishment in his short time with the Ducks so far was passing that pesky old math course and finally showing up in August, played hurt, confused, or some ugly combination of both.
There’s plenty of reason to be frustrated. Mark Helfrich is still running the program as if it’s the CIA; in total contrast with the reality that the Ducks’ head coach is a genial, native Oregonian nowhere near the snarl of Chip Kelly.
Don Pellum’s defense looks hopeless, and whispers about Oregon’s inability to stay ahead of the game and innovate – the biggest reason the Ducks won so many games in the last ten years – have blossomed into shouts.
The question from here is, where to for Oregon fans?
Because Autzen Stadium isn’t as loud as it used to be. It wasn’t loud in the first quarter against Utah, let alone the third – when, it seems safe to say, the majority of fans still in the building were there more out of awe than any remaining rooting interest.
Autzen’s mystique has been wound down. The sheer emotion that existed when Oregon was on the rise in college football has been tampered. Bandwagon fans have piled in, expectations have turned into entitlements, and the reality is that this program is changed.
Oregon isn’t in the SEC. It isn’t a school that fires coaches. It’s a school that has stood by its guys, promoted from within, and been rewarded. From Brooks to Bellotti, Bellotti to Kelly, and even Kelly to Helfrich, Oregon has been on the upswing.
That was bound to end. In the last three years, Oregon lost its greatest coach, its greatest defensive coordinator, and its greatest player. The team reached two national championship games in five years, won a Rose Bowl and a Fiesta Bowl, and poured players into the NFL.
Short of that elusive national championship, there’s no more upward mobility in Eugene – and it holds true here, just as it does everywhere else, that it’s a lot easier to build something great than maintain it.
Expectations for this season were unrealistic. The idea that Oregon would plug in Adams and not miss a beat was simply naïve. I wrote about the Ducks’ culture and their Kelly-bred advantage over the rest of the sport, forgetting that Florida and Auburn recently lost Heisman winners and disintegrated, and that nothing tears apart culture like entitlement and losses.
None of this is meant to excuse the Utah loss, and, specifically speaking, the manner of the Utah loss. It was unacceptable. And everyone everywhere knows it.
The Ducks don’t get a pass. What they get is adversity – and adversity is a beautiful thing. This season isn’t ending in the College Football Playoff. From here on in, Oregon has a choice: Dig in and find some grit, or fold.
You have to hope the Ducks have enough respect for where they’ve come from and who they’re playing for to dig in.
Helfrich, certainly, has an appreciation for the overwhelming humbleness of the roots the Ducks have risen from. Steve Greatwood spoke last year about how, in the aftermath of the Arizona loss, it felt refreshing for the Ducks to be so focused on simply winning the next game, just like old times. Joey Harrington reamed out bandwagon fans this week on Comcast SportsNet.
Oregon doesn’t wear ugly well. They look best when they focus and pull together – and the noise at Autzen has been a big part of that over the last twenty years.
These Ducks need to figure out who they can lean on. At quarterback, on defense, in the stands – it’s not so much time to circle the wagons, as it is time to clear the wagons out.
The defining moment of Nick Aliotti’s final season as Oregon’s defensive coordinator was when, after being knocked out of the national title race at Stanford, he ripped DeAnthony Thomas – not by name, of course – for shrugging off a Rose Bowl berth as something worth playing for.
Thomas got benched. Aliotti retired.
Oregon is unique, especially among elite college football schools. It has a history – and those fans who don’t know it either weren’t around before Kelly, or haven’t deemed that history worth knowing – and that history demands that the Ducks and their supporters demand from themselves a certain level of affinity for the place they’ve signed up for.
What this group has to do now is wipe away the excess noise, and embrace a unique opportunity to prove itself again. It starts with Colorado this weekend.
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