Four numbers to tell the story.
6-0.
1-6.
Those first two numbers? That’s how Oregon started the 2002 football season.
Those last two? That’s how the Ducks finished.
Put them together and it’s 7-6. That’s after years when Oregon fans saw the numbers soar, from 6-5 in 1996, to 7-5, 8-4, 9-3, 10-2 and 11-1 in the subsequent years.
And after six games of the 2002 season, it looked like the Ducks were going to soar again, perhaps even higher than before.
But then it all came crashing down, as a freshman Arizona State quarterback led a second-half charge that opened the floodgates for offenses playing the Ducks over the rest of the season, right down to lowly Wake Forest in the Seattle Bowl. Then Oregon’s star running back went down with an injury, and the offense wouldn’t come back from a deficit to win for the rest of the year.

That’s a recipe for 1-6 disaster.
“We’ll think about this season for a while,” quarterback Jason Fife said.
And after a season with such a severe downturn at its end, the Ducks, like Fife, could only think “why?” They couldn’t answer that question, but could answer the question of “how?”
Over the first six games of the season, and the first half of their game against Arizona State, the Ducks gave up 112 points. In the second half of the Arizona State game and the remaining six games, Oregon allowed 250 points.
The offensive numbers? In the first half of the season, the Ducks scored 246 points, in the second half they scored 155.
Oregon’s first-half offense versus its second-half defense would be a great game.
For the Ducks, there is nothing left to do but look to next year. The Ducks lose two key players, one on offense and one on defense. David Moretti, the team’s leading tackler, will be gone. Keenan Howry, Oregon’s all-time leader in receptions, will be gone.
“Of all the seniors, he’s the one I’ll probably miss the most,” Bellotti said of Howry.

Onterrio Smith, who rushed for more than 1,000 yards despite missing most of the second half of the season with a knee injury, might still leave Oregon early for the greener pastures of the professional game. Junior tight end George Wrighster and junior wide receiver Samie Parker may also make the leap. An announcement by Bellotti on all those players is expected soon.
But if all those underclassmen stay for next year, the losses will be nothing like last season, when six Ducks went in the NFL Draft, starting at the top with Joey Harrington.
Harrington’s departure left a void in the normally-rich quarterback position, a void Fife failed to fill this year. Bellotti said the quarterback job will once again be open when the Ducks start spring practice.
“We’ll go into the spring with a practice order, and they’ll compete for the job,” Bellotti said.
Howry said he thinks Clemens will win the job.
“(Clemens) came out and put some good drives together,” Howry said after the Seattle Bowl. “He was throwing some good balls, so that’s pretty much where it is.”
Bellotti said every position on the team will be open for next year. On offense, the Ducks will still have a talented receiver in Keith Allen, and an offensive line that only loses Corey Chambers and Phil Finzer.
On defense, fearsome linebacker Kevin Mitchell returns, and the young stars of the defensive line, Haloti Ngata and Igor Olshansky, will also be back. And a secondary that took a lot of deep balls this season will only be older and wiser, from experience alone.
“We need to get better, and the only way to get better is to work hard and compete,” Bellotti said.
In the end, as the Ducks finished the season with an almighty collapse in the Seattle Bowl, the words of Bellotti rang true.
“Optimistically, we had hoped that we had remedied (the problems) during our bowl game practices,” Bellotti said after the game. “But the reality is the same problems we had in the second half of the season were there tonight.”
The Ducks can only hope those problems don’t stick around for next season, too.