Double Cougar All The Way
“I Love This Team.” - Bo Nix
There we were.
The Ducks had the ball at midfield, down 12 points with 5:48 left to play in the game.
Two straight incomplete passes brought us to an absolutely must-get 4th & 2.
You wouldn’t have known it if you were watching Tim Brando and the rest of the Wazzu +6.5 bettors on the Fox broadcast crew, but this was the game.
And then: Bingo.
Bo found Bucky Irving 21 yards downfield—slipping a pass right between the defender’s arms, in a spot where only a backpedaling Bucky could secure it.
We were alive, but still had a long way to go.
One Cam McCormick touchdown and one crucial three-and-out later later, Nix made even more magic with a 50-yard go-ahead touchdown pass to WR1, Troy Franklin, who kept his feet and was blowing kisses to the Coug faithful in the endzone a few seconds later.
Oh, and then: ¡Quack! ¡Quack! Mase Funa’s pick seis put us up by diez, and even with the backdoor cover (your welcome, Brando) the Full Coug had been completed.
The Ducks’ offense looked pretty stellar once again and gained 624 yards in the game, but they struggled to turn all those yards into touchdowns early on due to some repeat playcalling that failed in the red zone. Mercifully, Camden Lewis’ leg kept us in the game with three early field goals, and by the second half Dillingham found his rhythm again.
Over the last three games, it has become increasingly clear that our offense can move the ball at-will, and it can—at the very least—score when it needs to.*
*As long as we aren’t playing Georgia.
Now, the overly simplistic takeaway from watching that 44-41 win for us Duck fans would be something to the effect of:
“Our offense is fun, but man, oh-man is our defense in bad shape!”
Yeah, we missed a bad amount of tackles—especially in the second half. And yes, an undersized guy like Jeffrey Bassa might just be better off if he could quietly move back to Safety.
But overall, I wouldn’t say I’m as down on our defense as some others seem to be. They only gave up 10 points in the first half (Nix’s pick six is obviously not their fault), and an athletic guy like Cam Ward is always going to rattle off a few immaculate (or: incarnate) circus-style plays on you.
In my game preview, I was critical of Trikweze Bridges and looked to him to step up in his role at corner. His interception might be muddied by the replay “controversy” of it all—and the fact that our offense didn’t end up doing anything with that crucial extra possession—but I’d still say that he took a step forward on Saturday. He had some solid open-field tackling (a rare sight that day) and never got personally exposed in coverage.
Also, I’d like to give Mase Funa out another supersized shoutout.
His pick-six amazed me so much—and came at such an improbable moment—that my neighbors surely considered knocking on my door to make sure nobody was in tremendous pain in our apartment.
But seeing big number 18 make a jump on that pass and take it to the house was almost as sweet as his old McD’s order of two McChickens, two McDoubles, twenty-piece McNugget, large shake, and large Sprite that I was morally obligated to eat on Sunday.
I’m not panicking here by any means, but one thing we should watch out for as we progress through Pac-12 play is our pass rush—or lack thereof.
Without Popo for the rest of the year, it seems like teams are aggressively doubling up on Dorlus. To his credit, Dorlus is still getting pressure and being moderately disruptive, but if he really is the talent we all know he can be, it’ll be crucial that he starts winning those matchups at a higher rate.
It will also be important that the guys along the edge (namely DJ Johnson, when he comes back in the second half of the Stanford game) start taking advantage of the added attention that Dorlus demands, and get to the quarterback earlier and more often.
Sacks and hurries will go a long way in easing the pressure off our young corners, and they’ll be extra-necessary as we face the better QBs in the Pac like DTR, Penix, and Rising.
Sure, we gave ourselves a real scare there, but make no mistake, this was a gritty win over a team that ultimately should have been ranked, and will be ranked by the end of the year.
I also wanted to give credit to the great Kevin Peterson, who reached out via Twitter to ask me when the last time we beat two different “Cougar” teams in the same season.
The answer would be 2007 when J-Stew (and our mascot) pounded Houston into oblivion, and then we beat Wazzu later that year.
And just like that, we are King of The Cougars once again.
Go Ducks.
It's nice to be the Cougar King!
I think the lack of pressure up front is a little blown out of proportion honestly, in hythloday's film study this week he had 41% of pass plays resulting in a sack, throwaway, or scramble. There was a good article in the Athletic recently about sacks being a misleading/less important stat - prompted mostly by the fact that UGA was tied for last in sacks at the time (they're now tied for 115th - with the same number of sacks as UMass).
I do want to see more sacks because they're awesome but you just know half of them will result in personal fouls, so maybe throwaways are better in aggregate.