PASADENA, Calif. — The national conversation over the past month has been surrounding the Ducks’ newfound recruiting dominance in the state of California. But on Tuesday night, at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, it was the two Oregon kids who made the winning plays in the 106th edition of the Rose Bowl Game.
Justin Herbert, the hometown hero who grew up in the shadows of Autzen Stadium, ran for a career-high three touchdowns in his final game as a Duck. Brady Breeze, the Lake Oswego native who spent much of the 2019 season as a backup, recorded 11 tackles, forced a fumble and recovered another for a game-altering touchdown.
On the shoulders of MVP performances from the two Oregonians, the No. 6 Ducks (12-2, 8-1 Pac-12) rode off into the Southern California night as Rose Bowl champions with their 28-27 defeat of the No. 8 Wisconsin Badgers (10-4, 7-2 Big Ten).
“This is what I dreamed about since I was a kid,” Breeze said. “We came here and we did it.”
After a first half in which the offense struggled to move the ball, it was Breeze’s 31-yard scoop and score that changed the complexion of the game and swung the pendulum in Oregon’s favor. For many fans, it looked eerily similar to Tony Washington’s scoop and score against Florida State on the very same field, exactly five years ago. Breeze was one of those fans.
“I was a little kid sitting in that section up there,” he said. “And now I’m here playing in the Rose Bowl. I was just excited to be a Duck when I got a scholarship. Now I’m able to score a touchdown in the Rose Bowl. It hasn’t even sunk in yet.”
If the fumble return for a touchdown wasn’t Breeze’s biggest play of the night, it was his forced fumble on Danny Davis with Wisconsin driving and seemingly in control of the game. Deep in the fourth quarter, he jarred the ball loose and into the hands of his teammate Bryson Young. But Young isn’t just Breeze’s teammate. He’s his roommate, and one of his best friends.
“We’ve been talking about this,” Young said. “Late nights, talking about the Rose Bowl. Big stage, and he came out and did it. I’m so proud of him. It’s an amazing story. Make a movie or something about us, man.”
Herbert’s journey shares a lot of similarities. Coming out of Sheldon High School, just 4.2 miles from the University of Oregon campus, he held four scholarship offers: Montana State, Northern Arizona, Portland State and Oregon. He chose Oregon despite being slotted as the third-stringer on the depth chart when the Ducks kicked off the 2016 season — a season that included eight losses, four wins, and no game to play in the postseason.
Now, when he goes back to Eugene, he’ll forever be known as a Rose Bowl champion.
“This is everything that we’ve ever worked for,” Herbert said, holding back tears. “From 4-8 to 12-2, there’s no better feeling. This is where Oregon football belongs. So happy for this program and everyone in it.”
He doesn’t usually get like that after games. His postgame interviews are almost always stoic and calculated. He hides his emotion from small rooms of no more than 20 reporters. But on this night, on this stage, his emotion came to surface in front of 90,000 people.
“It’s better than I could ever imagine,” he said. “This is the greatest feeling in the world. Being able to be out here with your teammates and guys you love, it doesn’t get any better than this.”
Like Herbert said, the Ducks are back on the national stage. Talk to anybody around the program and they’ll tell you the program’s trajectory aims even higher, and the recent recruiting dominance in California is one of the driving factors of that reality.
But on the first day of the new decade, the two kids who wore Duck jerseys to grade school and spent their Saturdays in the fall at Autzen Stadium brought a Rose Bowl title back to their home state.
