Oregon football is in a rhythm.
The Ducks are crushing everyone with the misfortune of being in their path this season and have viewers chuckling as they roll over opponents if they were middle school flag football teams. Last Thursday’s game was evidence of that.
An early Oregon mistake and a hole in the defense allowed Arizona State to jump to a surprising lead in the first minute of play. Finally, here is somebody who can challenge the Ducks a little.
Guess again. Seventeen minutes of play, two turnovers and 43 points later, Oregon held a 36-point advantage over the Sun Devils. It wasn’t even halfway through the second quarter.
The Ducks’ explosive openings to games have been their biggest strength, as Oregon is averaging a 16-point lead at the end of the first quarter, and a 26-point surplus by the half. The average score of an Oregon game at halftime is 33-8.
While Oregon is ravaging the opposition practically from the coin toss, many Duck fans aren’t excited about the Ducks’ second-half play. Big margins of victory are sexy, but in five of the seven games this season, Oregon’s reserves have allowed teams to shave points off the big lead before the game finishes. Against Tennessee Tech and Arizona, Oregon’s biggest lead of the game (and the season) was 49 points. In both those games, the Ducks ended up winning by that exact amount. But in the other five matchups, Oregon allowed the final score to reflect a closer game. Against Washington State and Washington, the Ducks let both teams score the games’ final touchdowns to cut down deficits.
More troubling were the Ducks’ battles (if you can call them that) with their trio of state schools — Arkansas State, Fresno State and Arizona State. Oregon had leads of 47, 32 and 36 against those teams and allowed leads to be sliced to 23, 17 and 22 respectively.
But even if Oregon is letting off the gas, putting in the backups – really early – and letting a few scores slide by, the Ducks are still winning every quarter of play. In the first quarter, Oregon is scoring, on average, 19 points, while allowing four. In the fourth quarter, often with second and third-string guys in, Oregon is still outscoring the opposition, nine points to seven.
While the average point differential declines per quarter, Oregon is still better than the squads they face, every step of the way, no matter who is playing thus far.
The biggest question that remains is what happens when the Ducks have to play a full 60 minutes. We know they can crush the opponent by halftime, so second-half effort is practically uncalled for, but what will happen when a team like USC or maybe Oregon State (!) asks more of Oregon? Can Marcus Mariota play in crunch time? He has only seen the fourth quarter in four games, and is 15 of 18 passing for one touchdown and a pick in that time. Kenjon Barner has a grand total of 10 fourth-quarter carries all year, and De’Anthony Thomas hasn’t played an offensive minute in the final quarter in 2012.
So while the first units aren’t playing much in the home stretch, what is to say they can’t replicate their first-half efforts in the later stages? If the Ducks keep rolling, we may never find out.