Just by the nature of a win, the mood surrounding the Hatfield Dowlin-Complex was at a much more confident level Sunday, according to Oregon head coach Mark Helfrich. The Sunday previous, the Ducks were trying to regroup from one of their worst losses at Autzen Stadium ever. This one however, came the day after Oregon outscored Colorado 24-7 in the second half to win 41-24.
The performance did not indicate that Oregon’s 62-20 loss to Utah was an anomaly, though. Questions at the quarterback position persisted all night, as Oregon’s signal-callers completed just 12 passes. On the contrary, the Ducks’ running backs carried the ball 46 times, with Royce Freeman leading the way with 163 yards on the ground and two touchdowns.
Oregon now looks ahead to a date with Washington State next Saturday, and Helfrich addressed questions pertaining to the quarterback rotation the Ducks used, their run-heavy game plan and the progression of their defense at his weekly Sunday press conference.
How heavily will you rely on the run game until you can figure out the quarterback carousel?
It certainly helps. Going into that game and every game, you want to establish the run. You know how great Royce is, he was getting stronger and stronger as the night went on. Whenever you can run the ball, you can kind of do anything, so it’s something you kind of want to get going.
Is the vibe here much different than it was Sunday of last week, what did a win mean to you guys?
It’s confidence in some areas. It’s also, we need to get a lot better in some areas. The nature and the conversations and the corrections are a little bit different after a win than a loss. You have a very captive audience with our guys. So many things in the game, we tackled better but we still missed tackles, we aligned better but we still had missed alignment things. Again, a thousand things after a win or loss. As long as were in this together and we’re in fix it mode, we got a chance.
In general, do you see progress on the defense?
Definitely. We improved in every phase, which is encouraging. There’s still a lot of meat on the bone in every phase. We did a nice job in four man pressure, making them as one dimensional as possible was big. We made a few plays in the secondary, we missed a few plays in the secondary. But, I think coming out of that, we’ll improve.
How do you balance utilizing the strength of your rushing attack while also not becoming predictable? 
That’s the million dollar question. If you can run the ball, you have the ability to do anything. You can dial people into certain looks, but that’s all predicated on being able to run the ball.
You mentioned Saturday that you thought you saw enough from Taylor Alie and Jeff Lockie for them to both have play time. Could you talk specifically about what you saw from Taylor, because I think most people would have just assumed it would have just been Jeff last night?
Taylor had a fantastic (fall) camp. He had a lot of people in his camp as far as supporters of where he fell in the depth chart. Those guys have both done a great job of staying competitive through this. Taylor is a playmaking guy, and I know I have a couple plays in there that he’ll just shake his head and slap himself aside the face – he had our primary read wide open for a touchdown missed it, a couple of obvious overthrows, but that’s stuff he’ll learn from.
Would you be comfortable with playing two quarterbacks again?
I would be comfortable doing it if it made sense. The game dictated that, and there were some things that I thought both guys would do better than the other. They played well enough and executed to their deal at a high enough level to warrant that. We’re not done game planning for Washington State, but we’ll see.