Buff It Out: Colorado Game Review
Anthony Brown had his best game of the season for the third game in a row.
There won’t be a regular Pac-12 Check or Power Rankings this ❌eek. Instead, I’m going to drop a rivalry special in honor of the triumphant return of this ❌onderful little Hate ❌eek of ours.
As for the Colorado recap, I’ll spare you the Xs, for no❌…
The Oregon Ducks hung 52 points on a much lesser team while showing off their fully realized offense and getting to dive deep into the defensive depth chart.
Feels good, don’t it?
Turns out, the offensive renaissance we witnessed at UCLA was not an aberration. It was Joe Moorhead and AB living their best lives, and they repeated that success at an even higher level in this "styl*sh” win over Colorado.
Your quarterback, Anthony Brown, turned in his best game of the year (for the third game in a row) by going 25/31 for 307 yds and 3 scores. He even had a fourth touchdown to DJ Johnson snatched away from him by an illegal man downfield call, but all-in-all QB1 capped off a fantastic October in which he slanged 1,033 yards and led the Pac-12 with a 71% completion rate.
Everyone’s favorite Never-Beaver, Devon Williams, has also spent the last few weeks showing out. His 5 catch/95 yard/1 touchdown day against CU was his third game in a row as the lightning rod of this offens, and our clear-cut WR1.
Travis Dye had himself a chill day by his standards (where he still scored two touchdowns but you know, he didn’t make a big deal out of it). He also got to dance to Shout.
But the real running story of the day was the emergence of Byron Cardwell, who—and I would never say this if I didn’t mean it—is giving me wonderful flashbacks to one LaMichael James. Cardwell’s 127 yards and one touchdown didn’t just come in garbage time or relief either, he was a primary pillar of Moorhead’s game plan on Saturday, and he absolutely answered the call.
Young Seven McGee (along with wideout Troy Franklin) also found the end zone for the first time in his Duck career, and all of the sudden Travis has some peace of mind that he can take a breather every now and then. The young bucks have him covered.
After the Ducks’ offense jumped out early, the defensive game plan went the way of the backups.
Bryan Addison had by-far the highest snap count of any defender with 63, while a guy like Noah Sewell finally got some rest and got to play less than 40 snaps for what is probably the first time in his life. If that doesn’t tell you something about Oregon’s methods of preservation, I don’t know what will.
On the injury front, the Verone and Steve Stephens injuries don’t appear to be anything dire, but with our luck this season we might as well throw a couple of prayers up just for good measure.
We already know that Bennett Williams is out for the year, and I saw that Happle was in an arm cast, so he’s probably out for a couple more weeks, too.
The secondary has been through enough already, man.
Let’s be clear, 29 points is a lot of points to give up to Colorado (15 of those came in true garbage time, but you could also argue that all 29 of those points came in garbage time). HOWEVER, I will 100% accept giving up 29 points to Colorado and still winning while trying to avoid massive injuries as we head into a crucial November stretch.
Would I have liked to see Kayvon, Popo, and Dorlus eat quarterback for lunch all day? Yeah. But we were up by twenty all day so we might as well let the Buffs throw scared-money slip screens on our backups.
Save some energy for Seattle.
Happy Hate ❌eek everybody, Go Ducks!