Engulfed in a sea of Oregon fans, headlined by a strong California based support system and others who had made the trip down to San Diego to flood Petco Park on Wednesday night for the Holiday Bowl, one voice outweighed the crowd of thousands.
It carried a statement delivered with a tone of poise and confidence, from a player who refused to let the situation at hand disturb his mindset.
“This is the play I want us to run,” Oregon quarterback Bo Nix said to his teammates.
The Ducks were trailing 27-21 as they faced a fourth-and-2 on the 6-yard-line with 19 seconds remaining. Having just called a timeout, they huddled as one on the sideline, Nix knowing they needed a call that would put each of his pass catchers in a position to gain leverage on their routes and find space.
“We were all in agreement,” head coach Dan Lanning said. “You trust your quarterback there.”
“I think everybody kind of wanted it,” Nix said. “I just happened to be the one to voice it.”
“When the suggestion was made, my reaction was like, ‘Hell Yea'” Lanning said.
It was a humble comment, from a quarterback who had stepped up and offered a play call to a team whose offensive coordinator had just moved on, at a juncture where they were desperate for a conversion. And a galvanizing response from a coach who poured every ounce of trust he had into his quarterback with the game on the line.
Surely each Duck in that huddle shared a similar response to their coach.
So they broke the huddle, ready to execute a play they had practiced ad nauseam, one that fit the impending situation to a tee.
Seven Tar Heel defenders rushed at Nix and he stood in the pocket as receiver Chase Cota darted underneath the route of receiver Kris Hutson, which helped him gain a bit of space. As Nix backpedaled away from pressure he hurled the ball toward Cota, who corralled it, rolled over his defender Don Chapman and barely broke the plane of the end zone.
The score meant that No. 15 Oregon (10-3) had just overcome the 10-point deficit it faced with nine minutes and change, and the following extra point, which, of course, doinked off the left upright before trickling inside the posts, solidified its 28-27 Holiday Bowl win over North Carolina.
That 10-point margin, which was tough to surmount in its own right, was accentuated by the poor decision making, lackluster third quarter offense and two unlucky bounces that put the Ducks in that spot in the first place.
When it seemed as if Oregon’s offense had hit a wall — a wall of creative ways to get running back Bucky Irving onto the perimeter, or receiver Troy Franklin into the seam of the safeties, like they did in the first half. Nix’s calming presence, the same one he showed in that final huddle, steadied his teammates and gave them the confidence to string together two touchdown-scoring drives.
But the funny part about the hole that they found themselves in with nine minutes remaining, one that if they succumbed to would leave a nasty watermark on a week that had been highlighted by recruiting wins and transfer portal grabs, is if not for a fluky bounce off the feet of two different Tar Heel defenders, they might have been cruising to a two-score lead, not needing to search for the moxie they discovered to negate the Tar Heels’ lead.
Just before halftime, the Ducks had driven into UNC’s territory with little resistance from its defense.
On second-and-5 at the 16, Nix targeted Terrance Ferguson, but his throw trailed the tight end who reached out to make a play. The ball bounced off his forearm, ricocheted off the foot of linebacker Sebastian Cheeks, then off the foot of the trailing defender Power Echols, and into his hands, all without grazing the turf.
Echols’ return flipped the field position, and on the ensuing play quarterback Drake Maye hit J.J. Jones for a 49-yard touchdown.
“We could have easily kind of tanked at that moment,” Nix said. “You know bowl games tend to happen that way; guys start falling apart and not wanting to play, but that wasn’t us tonight.”
Up to that point, the Ducks had built momentum with their perimeter run game. They had rushed for 156 yards, Irving accounting for 117 of those, highlighted by a 66-yard scamper where he followed tight end Cam McCormick to the left edge before breaking back across the field and beating the Tar Heel defense to the endzone.
Despite a 14-14 tie, they had dictated the flow of the first half and had a chance to double up on possessions as the second half kickoff would come their way. The interception and ensuing UNC touchdown upended that game plan.
And for the next 20 minutes of gametime the Ducks seemed like a team, to Nix’s point, that was tanking.
Instead of heavily relying on their run game as they had in the first half, they shuffled between rushing and passing, with play calls that had little rhyme or reason. It was a downfall capped off by a questionable decision from Lanning to keep his offense on the field on a fourth-and-7 from the 27-yard-line, down by seven: a judgment that resulted in a turnover on downs, but one the coach avoided having to defend as it was masked by his team’s comeback.
Time and again the Ducks offense put its defense between a rock in a hard place. And time and again that defense, which was without cornerback Christian Gonzalez and linebackers Noah Sewell and Justin Flowe, instead rounded out by fill-ins from senior Micah Roth to freshman Jahlil Florence, bent, but didn’t break.
They held UNC to subsequent field goals, keeping them in it by a thread. It was an effort highlighted by Casey Rogers’ chase-down tackle on the 2-yard-line that prevented a touchdown and Mase Funa’s tackle for loss which put the Tar Heels in a disadvantageous down-and-distance on a drive where they could have sealed the game.
And after a 20 minute stretch, where the offense gained just 55 yards and failed to score, it finally rediscovered its flow. After Troy Franklin’s touchdown with seven minutes left cut it to three, and a defensive stand held the margin to one possession, the Ducks got the ball back with 2:24 to go, and had to have it.
Nix began the drive with two simple completions to Noah Whittington, then another to Ferguson for 28 yards, before a pass interference on Franklin in the end zone set up the touchdown to Cota.
But the score sat tied at 27, the extra point counted in the heads of fans before it had even split the uprights, and Camden Lewis took the mound, pun intended. Standing just in front of the dirt patch, which had affected his missed field goal earlier in the game, he started his run up and kicked the ball off the left upright and through the sticks.
As the ball eked through the goalposts, it marked yet another win for a program that’s strung together a few recently, both on and off the field. Wins highlighted by a National Signing Day — that despite losing No. 2 quarterback Dante Moore and four-star Peyton Bowen — saw the Ducks rise into the top 10, according to most platforms. And in the ever-shifting transfer portal, the Ducks added offensive linemen Ajani Cornelius and Junior Angilau, along with Alabama receiver Traeshon Holden and Iowa linebacker Jestin Jacobs.
Together, it pushed Oregon’s collapse against its in-state rival further into the rearview mirror, and put a stamp on a season that went how most expected it to.
While the Ducks flirted with a College Football Playoff berth after their win over UCLA, a 10-3 season is respectable for this bunch. This season was always a transitional one, from former head coach Mario Cristobal’s build to Lanning’s incoming 2023 recruiting class. Yes, it got exposed in a 49-3 loss to now top-ranked Georgia and failed to come through in crucial games against Oregon State and Washington. But, it flexed its muscles in that win over UCLA, against a ranked BYU team, and a Pac-12 champion in Utah. And it showed resilience in comeback wins against Washington State and UNC, on Wednesday.
But within that changeover, in his first season at the helm, Lanning reshaped Oregon into a team built upon toughness, one that rediscovered creativity on offense and grit throughout its roster, and one that will remain a tight-knit group moving forward.
“I can’t thank the guys in this locker room enough. It’s really easy when there’s change that some of these guys didn’t pick and some that they did,” Lanning said. “But it’s really easy to buckle up, especially when you see the adversity that we faced earlier in the season when things didn’t go our way, but this group’s never stopped, never wavered… I love to win, but I coach for the relationships. Everybody says blood is thicker than water and I share blood with these guys.”
