College football, in all of its wackiness, parity, and controversy, is often referred to as the world’s longest beauty pageant. The question is not so much many wins a team gathers, but how pretty it looked while doing so.
Operating under that analogy, the Oregon football team took a devastating tumble on the runway in the season opener against LSU. The Ducks were sloppy and undisciplined in the 40-27 loss, committing 12 penalties and four costly turnovers.
Head coach Chip Kelly’s squad rallied in the following two weeks against Nevada and Missouri State, but the victories did little aside from begging an all-important question:
Which is the real Oregon team — the would-be contender that looked overmatched against the Tigers, or the juggernaut that dismantled its next two opponents by a combined margin of 125-27?
“All in all, we’re 2-1,” defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti said. “I said last week, all we could be was 1-1. Now we’re 2-1. Two games that were, grand scheme of things, fairly easy.”
And therein lies the conundrum when it comes to assessing Oregon just three games into the season. Even the coaching staff admits that the two victories provided little in the way of challenges, and it still remains to be seen whether the Ducks can contend with the nation’s elite.
Asked if the team was ready for its first Pac-12 matchup this week at Arizona, Kelly chuckled.
“My only answer is, it better (be ready),” Kelly said. “Because we can’t schedule another one before we play Arizona.”
Still, despite the general uncertainty surrounding the team, positive signs abound. The penalties that plagued Oregon in Dallas have abated, and the Ducks have yet to turn the ball over since facing off with a ball-hawking LSU team.
The penalties, in particular, proved irksome to Kelly in the aftermath of the LSU game, and the team’s fate may ultimately rest upon how successfully it can avoid the yellow flags.
“The big thing for us is staying out of the penalties, and staying out of the long-yardage situations,” Kelly said. “If you continue to move the ball on first down, you can get into some workable second- and third-down situations, and when we can get into a rhythm, our players settle down and they start to play really well.”
That much was evident as the offense hummed to the tune of 69- and 56-point outputs in weeks two and three. At their best, the Ducks have proven to be just as explosive as the team that made it all the way to the BCS National Championship Game last year. Yet, particularly on a young offensive line that has yet to fully gel, there is still plenty of work to be done.
“We shouldn’t have those plays where we turn around and LaMichael (James) is in the backfield,” senior left guard Carson York said. “That’s breakdown and errors. So we want to eliminate those negative plays. Every week there’s a lot of things we can improve on for our group, and we really need to find those things and focus on them.”
In all, the season’s first three weeks have been something of a “feeling-out” process; an examination of what works and what doesn’t on a team that lost 11 of last year’s starters to graduation.
“You try to build in these early games,” Kelly said. “We still have a lot of question marks, especially in terms of depth and things like that, and who’s going to play where.”
Some of those questions have been answered. Redshirt freshman center Hroniss Grasu looks to have grabbed a hold of the center spot for good, and true freshman De’Anthony Thomas responded to ball security concerns with 495 all-purpose yards in just three games.
At the same time, more pressing issues seem to pop up by the day. An injury to senior Michael Clay has the team scrambling to fill the void at linebacker, while the return of cornerback Cliff Harris from suspension creates a logjam among defensive backs.
As Pac-12 play begins in earnest, players, coaches and fans alike will have the chance to see what Oregon is truly made of. For his part, quarterback Darron Thomas remains confident about what is left to come.
“I think everybody was waiting for us to bounce back (after the LSU game),” Thomas said. “Because they wanted to see what kind of team we had. They thought that was our team that we had out there (in Dallas), but we had to show guys that we’re coming out this year hard and ready to go.”