Choose Life: Cal Game Review

Once again, not really a review, but more of a re:Boo.

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I said this after the Arizona game, but I feel like I might have to say it again:

This season ain’t gonna be pretty.

Oregon is probably going to win some more football games in the next few months, but we will surely pay for that success with our collective mental healths.

And I’m starting to get the feeling like the Ducks could care less about any of that.

I’m not saying that the drive-killing holding calls shouldn’t be seen as correctable. I won’t try to convince you that the struggles in pass protection are “all part of the plan.” And I’m not even crazy enough to tell you that Anthony Brown is anything close to the greatest of all time.

I respect my audience too much to try a spin zone that insane.

But this season is slowly revealing itself as the football version of March Madness. It’s survive and advance. This team is in triage, and phrases like “style points” or “playoff resume” are a waste of our time.

If we get there, we’ll think about rankings and junk in December, but until then, it’s 1-0. Just win. That’s it. And while we’re at it, maybe we can find an opportunity to simply embrace our new lives on the razor’s edge.

We have half a season left with Kayvon Thibodeaux, we’re 5-1, and we control our own destiny in the North.

Let’s ride this dragon, folks. People pay good money for this kind of rush.

The edges of our seats might already feel well-worn this season, but all of the sudden the Ducks are traveling to a pretty good UCLA team and they also get to be the subject of College Gameday. This is what we live for, right?

Sure, we’d love to beat that Cal team by more, but I also just love beating Cal, period?

Anthony Brown—with a great deal of help of a superhuman KT—pulled us from the depths in the final ten or so minutes of that game.

In those last two drives, AB moved the ball like we’ve been waiting to see him do since Ohio State. He hit a dime of a touchdown pass to Jaylon Redd, and he once again showed his inner compass for the goal line as he ran in for the go-ahead touchdown.

I really wish that version of him was the one we could have for a full four quarters, but I won’t look a victory in the mouth—especially not this year.

Numbers can lie, but AB threw for 244 yds, 71.4% comp., and scored two total touchdowns.

Objectively, it was his best game in a month.

Subjectively, the boo birds of Autzen Stadium could not be sated, and there is apparently no longer a friendly environment for the Oregon Ducks to play football in.

I’ve said it a bunch this season, but I don’t really care what an individual person’s opinion is on QB1. I’m done fighting that battle. I’m perfectly fine if a fan believes that another guy should be the starter. I’m not here to tell anyone that they’re a “bad fan” for thinking that.

I, too, have wavered in my faith on more than a zillion occasions.

But the Oregon Ducks play just six or seven home games every three hundred and sixty five days. If anybody was to waste one of those precious few days by booing the very team they purport to love, then that sucks.

If someone’s gonna boo, I hope they can at be honest with themselves about it.

Booing isn’t a crime of passion. It’s not a price-of-admission right. It’s just baby behavior. It’s an announcement to 54,000 of their closest friends that they haven’t quite found a way to healthily regulate their own emotions, so being loudly unhappy in the greatest place on Earth is how they’re gonna work through their issues instead.

Look, people also have every right to boo whatever they want, even “their own” team. And I have every right to say that those kinds of people are lame.

That’s it though, that’s the whole soapbox, I promise. Because we have seen the light that the boo-boos refuse to see.

They haven’t allowed Cristobal to take the wheel and steer us into at least six more games of nervous adrenaline and pure, edge-of-your-seat torture/excitement—but there is even hope for them yet.

There is still time to welcome Travis Dye into your heart. To throw away that basic human instinct for control or even a shred of certainty. For one moment, just allow yourself to stop looking for logic or analysis or reason.

Who needs reason when you’ve got Duck football?

If you can’t tell, I’m getting delirious, but I’m having fun, everyone should try it.

Go Ducks.