Duck fans, Joey Harrington is not walking through that door; Kellen Clemens is not walking through that door; and Dennis Dixon is not walking through that door.
Okay, Dixon might, and he might be on the sidelines, but he’s not going to walk out and strap on a helmet as an Oregon Duck to quarterback the team.
Does he get massive credit for starting a college football game on a torn ACL last Thursday night in Arizona? Yes, of course. But will Dixon be able to play at all in the last two regular season games, plus a bowl game? Not at all.
This is not a dream, this is not conjecture, this is reality – now that we’ve established this fact, let’s move on.
Duck fans, listen up, and listen well: This season is not over yet, and now is not the time to mope about this team’s chances. Oh, it isn’t going to be easy, and the BCS National Championship is out of the question, but there are still BCS bids at stake in these final two games of the season.
If Oregon beats UCLA and Oregon State, they put themselves firmly in the position to pick up a BCS bowl bid. If the Ducks scrape together and win out, they’ll either win the Pacific-10 Conference and lock up the Rose Bowl (which requires Arizona State losing at least one game) or finish second to the Sun Devils and probably sit inside the top eight of the final BCS rankings. In that situation, a 2005-esque BCS snub is unlikely given Oregon’s success on national TV this season – but an at-large bid could well place the Ducks against Oklahoma.
Cue the drama.
Regardless, before any of the bowl talk can take place, the Ducks need to win. Realize this second note, then: Brady Leaf is the starting quarterback for Oregon and is the team’s best chance at reaching one of those BCS bowl games.
There, I said it, and anybody who saw me during last Thursday’s game may not believe that’s my reaction, but it has to be. What other choice does the team have? Anyone who believes either of the Ducks’ untested redshirt freshmen, Justin Roper or Cody Kempt, is a better option is delusional.
So that leaves the team squarely on Leaf’s shoulders. He may be something of a pariah in Eugene right now after Thursday’s loss, but replacing the quarterback who many thought was the Heisman Trophy front-runner is never easy, especially when you play so ineffectively on a gimpy ankle surrounded by stunned teammates. The Arizona game was never going to be easy after Dixon crumpled to the turf, and as much as I wanted to blame Leaf for it, there are other factors in play – like the coaching.
Judge Leaf’s play after a full week of waking up every morning and realizing, “I am the quarterback of this team,” followed by afternoons where he is the focus at practices. Judge Leaf when he’s not surrounded by teammates stunned by bad turnovers and shocked at loss of their team captain and leader. Judge Leaf if he throws more completions to Bruins than Ducks in the first half against UCLA, or proves himself to be as capable at running the spread-option as your humble columnist would be.
Think back to the summer – how many people now lamenting Dixon’s left knee had written him off after his short season spent in the Atlanta farm system? How many people were piling on with pot-shots at the senior who would in three months’ time lead Oregon to its highest ranking since Joey Harrington was quarterback, and kept the Ducks in the top 10 nationally for seven straight weeks?
Keep everything in perspective, Duck fans – this was a team many thought could struggle to make a bowl game, that has survived a raft of injuries on both sides of the ball, that now must rely on a senior quarterback to step it up and lead the Ducks to a BCS bowl. Brady Leaf is Oregon’s only hope; give him a chance as the starter before calling for a freshman.
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