I Previewed The Next Episode Of Ducks Vs. Them

In which I travel through time.

If you’ve been following Duck football on the internet this season, you’ve probably seen at least one weekly installment of Ducks Vs. Them.

The well-funded video series is produced by Oregon’s creative department and features highlights from each victory, as well as a peek behind the curtain of Professor Dan Lanning’s team meetings and motivational tactics.

Whether it was smashing a Washington helmet at halftime, using the film Gladiator (2000) to encourage domination of Michigan in the Big House, or literally training them to have a Pavlovian response to the song “Jump Around,” Dan has been Zimbardo-ing this group of 18-24 year-olds all year long.

So far, his big brain hypotheses have been proven correct.

And since Dan is such an open and magnanimous guy, he personally reached out to me this week and granted me access to the greatest thing our donors have ever gifted him: his time machine.*

*Because the only explanation for his mad genius is that he has already seen the future.

The time machine looked a lot like RoboDuck’s egg. It was goopy and smelled like Lincoln Riley’s burnt brisket, but you better believe I stepped into that thing, no questions asked.

I needed to see what Dan has seen.

After a brief flash of green and yellow light, I was transported into the luxe leather seats of Oregon’s team theater. The date is January 6th, 2025, and on the screen it began to play: The Rose Bowl episode of Ducks Vs. Them.

It opened with a cinematic shot of the sun rising over the Brookside Country Club, followed by a rose-covered float from the Rose Parade on that New Year’s morning.

Suddenly, we’re welcomed by the voice of Jerry Allen:

“Well folks, it’s finally here. Oregon is back in the Grandaddy of them all… The Rose Bowl! And, if you can believe it, the game has gotten even bigger than it already was!”

We see the Ducks sprint out of the tunnel, their shiny silver helmets glistening under the Pasadena sun.

Cut to: The first offensive drive. Dillon hands it off to Jordan James on an inside run. JJ gains 6 yards to set up 2nd & 4.

Flashback to: Oregon’s football building, the words on the screen read: TEAM MEETING, MONDAY.

Dan is speaking in front of his motivational powerpoint for the week.

Dan: “I wanna tell y’all a story. It’s about a great big boat called the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

Dan proceeds to run through a handful of slides in which he explains that the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald was once the largest ship on the Great Lakes, until one day she got caught in a storm and all 29 of her crew-members were lost.

He pulls out a boombox and begins to play Gordon Lightfoot’s, “The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald,” to which the team seems surprisingly responsive.

He calls Jordan James up to the front and he says:

“We’re giving the ball to Jordan on the first play of the game fellas, right? And when he gets it, is he gonna be the ship or the storm?”

The players respond in unison: “The storm!”

Cut back to the Rose Bowl: We hear Dan and Will Stein cheering over the in-game headset, “That’s the storm right there, man.”

The highlights roll on.

We see one Tez Johnson catch after another. He’s bouncing around, slipping tackles, and diving into the endzone.

Flashback to—inexplicably—the postgame locker room from last season’s Fiesta Bowl.

“Listen up fellas, this time next year, Tez is gonna score the first touchdown in our playoff game, right? And it’s all gonna be because we did this…”

Strength coach, Wilson Love, hands Dan a machete while a team manager walks in with a literal goat on a leash.

“We talk all the time about sacrifice, men. And it’s about time we mean it.”

Dan swings the machete with authority, the goat lets out one final bleat.

Cut back to the Rose Bowl sideline. The whole team is congratulating Tez.

“Shoutout to that goat!”

We get an immediate flashback to a classroom at South Eugene High School in 2018. Dan Lanning pushes the teacher out of the way, and starts scribbling on the chalkboard:

“J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER”

“Oppenheimer. Inventor of the atomic bomb. Explosive guy, right? And that’s what we’re gonna be on the field. Explosive. And y’all know who I’m talkin’ about.”

Dan points at a young Bryce Boettcher in the back of the class.

“This is for you. You’ll know when to use it.”

He hands Bryce a stick of plutonium.

Cut back to the Rose Bowl where Bryce Boettcher—clearly glowing green with radiation—is delivering a punishing hit in the backfield.

And then Dan showed the team a clip from Fight Club (1999) and handed Josh Conerly an envelope with a, “homework assignment,” similar to the domestic terror plot from the movie.

Conerly reads his out loud: “Make number 11 quit and question why he ever decided to play football.”

Oh, sorry, that wasn’t part of my time travel fantasy, that was just a thing Dan actually did in the Penn State episode of Ducks Vs. Them…

But this cycle went on and on. The last thing I remember hearing was:

“So y’all have heard me talk all year about The 2008 Housing Crisis, right?”

And then I was beamed back to present day. I’m sitting in RoboDuck’s egg, covered in goop.

Dan is gone, likely building his next powerpoint.

It remains to be seen whether all of that is truly what our future looks like, but I felt the need to share it with my dear readers either way.

And it’s too bad it got cut short, because I really wanted to see how Dan was going to connect subprime mortgages to making clutch field goals.

So, if you live in the Eugene area, it’s probably wise to hold your goats extra close in the coming weeks. And maybe try to avoid standing too close to Bryce Boettcher.

Overall, prepare accordingly. The playoffs are about to get wild.

Go Ducks.