Oregon’s defensive line held Michigan’s Chris Perry, the nation’s top rusher, to 26 yards.
Counter that with the negative 23 rushing yards that the Ducks’ handed Michigan quarterback John Navarre, and suddenly Michigan’s ground assault is not a factor.
Then, add in two blocked kicks and four quarterback sacks, and the Ducks’ defense can say it had a successful day.
“I’m really proud of our (defensive line),” Ducks defensive lineman Igor Olshansky said. ?The defensive line had a great game, but not just the D-line — everybody went out and played real hard.”
Olshansky’s biggest play of the day came on Michigan’s final scoring drive.
With just more than two minutes left in the game, the Wolverines scored on a 36-yard pass by Navarre to Steve Breaston, putting Michigan only four points down, 31-27.
On the point-after attempt, Olshansky went high and got a hand on the extra point.
The Ducks had another blocked kick in the game — a punt blocked by free safety Keith Lewis, that, after a handful of Oregon players had a hand on the ball, resulted in a one-yard touchdown carry by Jordan Carey.
“We knew coming in that Oregon had a strong defensive front, and that they were well coached,” Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr said.
Oregon’s defense allowed Michigan only three scoring drives, and all three came through Navarre’s air attack.
Navarre finished with 360 passing yards. He was intercepted twice and had six passes tipped or broken up by Oregon defenders.
“The coaches did their best to get us away from the running game,” Perry said.
On the ground, Michigan had negative three yards rushing.
“You have to play disciplined defense against them,” defensive lineman Devan Long said. “That’s a great team and Perry’s a great running back.”
Three Oregon defenders also lent a hand to four quarterback sacks, totaling 30 lost yards for Michigan.
Robby Valenzuela had two of those, leading to 15 lost yards. Long and Justin Phinisee also had one sack each.
“Oregon is a team who does a lot of different things defensively,” Carr said. “We didn’t know if they would do the same things as they had in previous years, and they didn’t have to use a lot in their first few games, so it took us a while to get used to what they were doing.”
The Michigan offense didn’t have a lot of time in the first quarter to figure out the Ducks, as the Wolverines only had possession of the ball for 56 seconds in the first 15 minutes.
Oregon’s defense gave up only five third-down conversions in 16 Michigan attempts, and one fourth-down conversion in three attempts. All six of the successful conversion attempts came on pass plays.
“We felt we needed to stop the run, and if we stopped the runthen we’d try and do something to stop the pass,” Oregon head coach MikeBellotti said.