LOS ANGELES — The setting was familiar for the Ducks during Friday’s Rose Bowl media day session. Underneath the chandelier lights of the Los Angeles Marriott ballroom, a set of podiums housed a few select players while the rest congregated at scattered round tables. For thirty minutes, they waited as hundreds of reporters made their interview pit stops.
It was a deja vu experience for just about everyone who had been a part of past BCS teams, but perhaps no one as much as the defensive unit, which for the third straight year faced daunting questions about how to stop an explosive dual threat quarterback. Wisconsin’s Russell Wilson might not be quite at the level of, say, a Cam Newton, but he certainly brings many of same dynamic skills to the table.
And so the Ducks, for the third year running, have quite a challenge on their hands.
“Russell Wilson is another top tier quarterback,” linebacker Boseko Lokombo said. “He’s a dual threat, he can run with the best. We’ve dealt with those kind of quarterbacks before, we’ve had some success and we’ve had some struggles.”
Though it ended in a loss, last year’s national championship game against Auburn saw the Oregon defense limit Heisman trophy winner Newton to just 22 points. Chalk that up in the “success” column.
Two years ago in the Rose Bowl against Ohio State, meanwhile, quarterback Terrelle Pryor had a career day en route to a 26-17 victory. Different years, different teams, as Oregon head coach Chip Kelly would say, but there is certainly something to learn from past experiences as the Ducks prepare for Wilson and the prolific Wisconsin offense.
” I think it helps,” defensive end Dion Jordan said. “Mainly just the experience of just performing in those big games, first of all, and then just against those types of players with that caliber. When you’re playing someone as good or better than you, you gotta step your game up, and I feel like our defense — those guys have done that.”
Wilson, for his part, took full advantage of his last year of eligibility this season at the helm of Wisconsin’s offense. Alongside running back and Heisman runner up Montee Ball, Wilson led the unit to a pristine 44.6 points per game in 2011 (fourth in the country). Alongside Oregon, the Badgers were among just four teams to gain more than seven yards per play, and also averaged 36.5 points in four games against top ten defenses. And, perhaps most impressively, Wisconsin was the first team in FBS history to have one player throw for 30 or more touchdowns (Wilson, at 31) and another run for at least 30 (Ball, at 32).
“They’re as balanced a team as you’ll ever face,” Kelly said. “I think they run for 237 and they throw for 229 (per game), and when you do that over the course of 13 games, and you’re that balanced, it makes it real difficult because when you’re going to defend somebody, you always (say), ‘Well let’s take away what they do well.’ Well, they do both well…It’s a real balanced team and I think that’s the real question is how does each team kind of implement their game plan to attack the defenses.”
The emphasis, as always, is on stopping the run first and forcing the Badgers into third and long situations. Containing Ball, who rushed for 1,759 yards and averaged 6.4 per carry, will be a task in and of itself, but it’s Wilson that stands as the true X-factor.
And that’s where past experiences, once again, will come in handy. Not just on the field against the nation’s best talent, but in the whole process — the media days and spotlights and police escorts from their hotel. They’ve been through it before, and there’s a sense of calmness this time around that might not have been there in years past.
“I think we’re more comfortable, we’re more relaxed,” Lokombo said. “We’ve been to two other BCS games and we’re kind of used to it, but now we want to win one, and we’re working hard to get this win.”