The Noah Whittington Game

The first and last time I'll ever suggest we bench a guy.

It’s been a helluva season, and I’ve especially enjoyed translating all that success onto this blog for y’all, but last week was a historic performance by me in being wrong about pretty much everything Oregon-related.

When it came to the Illinois game, I thought that Luke Altmyer and Bret Bielema were going to be a real challenge for Oregon.

Wrong!

And even though I explicitly said we’d win, I also said that I, “didn’t expect a full-on UCLA game.”

Wrong again.

Our 38-9 victory was dang-near identical to the UCLA and Michigan State games—we got out to a big lead and then we just let the Rivian drive itself home.

But if we rewind all the way back to my Purdue recap, we’ll find my biggest instance of incorrectness from last week: the moment I questioned if Noah Whittington was worthy of being RB2.

And after Noah’s performance on Saturday we all know that I was dead wrong yet again.

For that kind of wrongness I deserve to stand at the goal line and let him truck-stick me like he did to that poor Illini defender on his way to his first of two touchdowns on the day.

On the surface, a 56-yard rushing performance doesn’t look all that special, but we could all see that Noah’s decisiveness was back in full force. He averaged eight yards per carry, he was incredibly hard to take down every time he had the ball in his hands, and he caught a bonus TD “pass” from Dillon, too.

He looked like the exact kind of Swiss army knife we all hoped he would be in this offense, and I couldn’t think of a better time for him to start running dudes over.

Hopefully Substack doesn’t mind if I post a picture of a murder.

I was clearly wrong to question Noah Whittington, and I have no problem admitting when I’m wrong—unlike our old buddy Jon Wilner, who is now the lone holdout on making us the unanimous number one team:

Never change, Wilner. Never change.

But back on the topic of guys running over guys, Dillon Gabriel came to the game dressed as Jeremiah Masoli for Halloween on a few contact-seeking scrambles.

We have seen DG look fast out in space, and we’ve seen him make a few guys miss, but it was insanely awesome to see him roll over a guy as if he was a Southtowne Lanes bowling ball.

I’m not sure what came over us, but we played physical, we played fast, and we shellacked a Top 25 team in the last week of October—which makes for three ranked victories on the year.

Along with being wrong about our running back depth, I also said we still had questions with our run defense.

Now, Illinois isn’t exactly a Run The Damn Ball type of team, but we managed to hold them to just 132 rushing yards—which would look even better if we subtracted a single 34-yard run, which I’m tempted to do.

Nikko Reed and the secondary were great against the pass, too. Reed broke up passes left and right, and the whole team had eight deflections in total.

We also picked off the usually-smart Altmyer twice. One interception came from Tysheem Johnson, and the other came from the junior cornerback from Junipero Serra High School, Sione Laulea.*

*(Yes, even I had to quickly pull out the roster when I saw #13 catch that ball)

Our defense continues to look elite at all levels, but especially in the front seven. Harmon and Caldwell just make us a different beast, man.

In the past, us Duck fans have been pretty quick to compare our good defenses with the ‘94 Gang Green team, but I bet you haven’t heard that comparison even once all season.

And that’s probably because—for as much as we love that ‘94 team—this year’s defense is far and away the best one we’ve ever had.

It’s much closer to the unit that Dan Lanning built at Georgia than even our most-heralded, beloved defense in history, and I don’t think Rich Brooks himself would disagree with me.

And that defense carried us to another dominant win where we didn’t have to expend that much energy or show very much of our playbook.

And now we head into November with a couple big road games—in key battleground states, I might add—and we’ll finish with a Thanksgiving date with Jedd Fisch.

It’s time to “bear down,” keep our focus, and pray to whoever we pray to that it’s not a month of suffering.

Go Ducks.

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I’ll wrap things up with something a little different today:

If you’re in the Portland Metro area on Saturday night and looking for something to do, might I interest you in some live music?

My cousin Austin plays guitar in this band, Squalm, and they’ll be playing a full set filled with red-hot originals, saucy jams, and even some fan-favorite covers at the Canton Phoenix Lounge in Tigard.

Show starts at 7:00pm

Canton Phoenix - 14455 SW Pacific Hwy, Portland, OR 97224

It’ll be the best damn Duck victory party you’ll ever attend.