Big Season, Small Opener
On the benefits of eating celery.
Somebody told me that Oregon’s move to the Big Ten was going to mean they’d lose historic rivalries, but Idaho comes to town this week to renew a border war game that dates back to 1894.
In fact, 67% of the Ducks’ non-conference schedule is features teams from the original Pacific Coast Conference: Idaho and Oregon State.
And to add even more regional flavor, their other preseason opponent is Boise State, everyone’s favorite team-that-never-quite-made-the-jump-to-Power-Five.
Whoever said college football was losing it’s geographic charm clearly never looked at this schedule.
Or at a Comcast Big Ten Network blackout calendar.
Whenever the state of Idaho is mentioned, people often latch onto one of two tired clichés: 1) their propensity for forming militias and 2) their “famous” potatoes.
And when it comes to the latter, Idaho has been crowing about its potato prowess despite the fact that the biggest name in spuds, Ore-Ida—named for both Oregon and Idaho—is actually operated in Ontario, Oregon.
So, not only has Idaho clung to a lackluster state mascot, but much like their militias, they’re just playing dress up and participating in textbook stolen valor.
In this case, stolen potato valor.
Tomorrow, however, we’ll stand up against these Vandals and reclaim our french fries, tater tots, and all other things spud-adjacent.
But believe it or not, I didn’t come start a blog to rant about potatoes.
I’d rather talk about a more relevant vegetable: celery.
As we all know, when you chew a bite of celery, you burn more calories than you consume. And that’s essentially what I expect this Idaho game to be like.
Will it be fun to beat up on an FCS team? Definitely. Will we get to see some young guys like Jayden Limar score three touchdowns? Absolutely.
But as far as meals go, the real meat (and potatoes) of the schedule doesn’t come until October 12th.
In a perfect world, Dillon Gabriel will play for a drive or two into the second quarter—maybe even the whole first half—and then Dante Moore and Austin Novosad will take the reigns.
It’s a day for development and fact-finding vs. actually defining how good of a team we’re really going to be.*
*Unless, of course, we score 100. In that case, we’re allowed to say we’re the best football team of all time.
Obviously a big bonus of playing a celery team is that it gives us a safe space for us to keep our eyes on some injuries from Fall camp—and who might step up in their place.
As a proud subscriber to Tyson Alger’s I-5 Corridor, I learned that Indiana transfer guard, Matthew Bedford, is hurt and will sit out indefinitely (although he did dress for practice this past Wednesday).
Bedford’s absence opens the door for senior Nishod Strother to step into a role he’s been expected to fill for a few years now, and we’ll hope he can stabilize our highly-anticipated offensive line.
Maybe Strother will lead Limar to a 150-yard game, but we also might see a lot of Jesuit walk-on, Charlie Pickard, and we’ll definitly keep our eye on the heir-apparent at center and 247Sports Freshman All-American, Poncho Laloulu.
We’re immediately putting our o-line depth to the test, and that’s good because these guys might play 17 games this season.
But we’re just talking about Game 1 here, so let’s talk about Idaho real quick.
The Vandals were a playoff team a year ago, finishing second in a stacked Big Sky Conference. In fact, they were literally only two points worse than the conference champion and national runner-up, Montana.
Idaho has shown steady improvement under third-year Head Coach Jason Eck, who has given them a much-needed boost since they dropped down from the FBS level.
The Vandals’ star QB from the last two seasons, Gevani McCoy, transferred to Oregon State and just got named their starter, so we’ll see him in a few more weeks, but their new QB, Jack Layne, is returning to a familiar setting.
Layne played at Lake O, which makes this game something of a homecoming for him.
This will be Layne’s first season as the full starter, and while he’s inexperienced, he did throw six of his eight total touchdowns in a single game last year against Idaho State.
So we know he likes to throw, which could mean a lot of chances for this new-look Oregon secondary to eat plenty of celery.
In case I have to say it outright, I don’t think Idaho has any shot at keeping this close tomorrow.
We’re not going to find ourselves in the same position as Coach Prime last night—biting our nails and praying for a miracle against NDSU.
Our former PCC rivals are on a great trajectory, and they could threaten for a conference title or more this year, but we all know that Oregon has wagyu-level talent.
As long as the Ducks score a lot of points really fast and turn the ball over a half dozen times, they’ll get to sit their starters and move on to Boise in their brains.
It’s not rocket science—it’s not even potato science—it’s just eating a ton of celery on a 90-degree day in Eugene.
I’m all over the place this week, but maybe that fits into my overall point.
We all have hopes and dreams, but this team hasn’t truly given us anything to react to yet.
I hope to see Dillon Gabriel start the day 9-for-9 with two touchdowns and then sit his butt down for the rest of the day.
I dream of seeing a 100+ yard receiving game by Kenyon Sadiq.
And I pray that Kam Alexander gets two picks tomorrow just so I can squeeze at least one more week out of my “Kam is CB1” take.
Here’s hoping all our dreams come true.
72-6, Ore beats Ida.
Go Ducks.