Sometimes you just need to turn to the music of the Grateful Dead.
And I’ve had one particular song of theirs stuck in my head all week thanks to Oregon’s next opponent, the Maryland Terrapins (named after the native turtles of the Chesapeake Bay region).
Terrapin Station (1977) is one of the Dead’s most ambitious and sprawling creative achievements—and yes, even by their standards, it’s a long one. It’s also one of my wife’s favorites, which is achievement all its own.
The lyrics are partly about a love triangle, but they also tell the story about some version of God ultimately leading us all to the great big turtle in the sky.
“Some rise, some fall, some climb, to get to Terrapin.”
And—conveniently for me and the format I’ve been praying I’d get to use for this specific article—that lyric is a perfect way to organize my thoughts about Oregon’s season to this point.
The Ducks have been on the rise.
They were just named No. 1 in the first college football playoff rankings, they haven’t lost to a team not named Washington since 2022, and Dan Lanning has been calling timeouts just to let his guys watch Michigan fans walk out of their own stadium.
But we also fell back to reality just a tiny bit last week with key injuries to Tez Johnson and Marcus Harper.
Now, it doesn’t sound like those injuries are as serious as we once feared, but it was a stark reminder of late-season losses like Dennis Dixon, Kellen Clemens, and Chris Boucher, that us Duck fans remember all too well.
And yet, there’s still more of the mountain left to climb.
Less than a month ago, Dan was still the Can’t-Win-A-Big-Game coach, and now the whole country spends every week calling him a genius and a mastermind.
But he knows that isn’t real. He knows lasting success doesn’t come after one big win. It comes from even bigger wins, and a lot of them.
And this Maryland game might not seem like anything special in the grand scheme of that climb, but it’s a November football game and we should know better than to take those lightly.
The Terps (4-4 (1-3)) are 16th in the Big Ten and they’re not super good at football.
They do, however, happen to have the 12th-ranked passing offense in the country, and their quarterback, Billy Edwards (#9), is third in the conference in passing yards. He’s one of the better* signal-callers we’ve faced all year.
*That’s not saying much. Will Howard is basically the only good QB we’ve encountered.
Their offensive coordinator, Josh Gattis, likes to air the ball out, but he’s really more of a fail-son in the world of college football.
He was once a highly-sought after assistant coach and passing game coordinator, but he got pushed out at Michigan a few years ago for not living up to expectations and he just got fired last year by Mario at Miami.
If Mario Cristobal, of all people, thinks you’re not producing enough offense, that’s when you know you’re down bad.
But now that Gattis has landed under Maryland head coach/offensive-minded Yoda, Mike Locksley, he seems to have Billy Edwards and the passing game rolling just a little bit.
Last week, we saw Oregon’s secondary struggle to stop Michigan’s Colston Loveland even though he was literally their only receiver.
Maryland has their own favorite target, wide receiver Kai Felton (#10), who is 6th in the whole nation in receiving yards, and certainly has the talent—and a more competent QB than Loveland did—to repeat that same kind of success.
But I’d venture to bet that Dan’s pet project for this week has been to find a way to completely neutralize the Terps’ strengths in the passing game and force them to run the ball with their putrid, 107th-ranked rushing offense.
Maryland racked up just 59 yards in a loss to Northwestern and a hilariously bad 56 yards in a WIN over USC.
That’s not a lot of turtle power.
Our secondary still boasts the second-best coverage grade nationally according to PFF, we’ll have an even healthier Jordan Burch against a significantly worse UM offensive line, and Dan & Tosh have been calling defense like their lives depend on it.
If I were an insane person I would predict another shutout from our defense, but I think I’ll be smart enough to stop just short of that by end of this article.
I think.
Maryland’s one-dimensional offense could lead to a deep pass or two—and maybe even some longer runs since we’ll go all-in against the pass—but our defense will still surely have an incredible day when it’s all said and done.
But the biggest thing for us to all zero-in on tomorrow will be Oregon’s offensive side of the ball, specifically the right guard spot on the o-line.
Marcus Harper’s injury means that we’ll see guys like Kawika Rogers slide into that role—and maybe we’ll even get a Dave Iuli sighting if he’s finally healthy for the first time this season.
And knowing the level of opponent we’re facing, it’s very possible that we could see Dan repeat his strategy from the Boise State game where we constantly rotated guys around and tried to build more depth up front.
I know it’s tempting to simply follow the football itself during a football game, but I insist that you’ll learn way more about the rest of the Ducks’ season if you spend a few drives exclusively watching how our o-line gels together compared to their early season woes.
Are we getting a good push up there? Are guys tripping over each other whenever they stunt or pull? Are our running backs avoiding that interior gap like the plague because they don’t trust their blockers?
The Terps are 99th-ranked in total sacks, averaging just 1.62 per game, so it’s not like we’ll be facing a true challenge, but that’s also what I would’ve said about the Idaho game, so who knows?
Remember, November is dark and full of terrors.
Some teams rise, some fall, and the Ducks will have to keep climbing over decidedly weaker teams like Maryland if they plan on eventually ascending to the big turtle in the sky.
38-6, mallards over Maryland.
RIP Phil Lesh. Go Ducks.
Great read. Heading to the game tomorrow, will definitely keep an eye on that O-line!!