Kellen Clemens is still learning.
Football is just a game to some, but to most players, it’s one of those life experiences where you learn along the way.
Clemens will be a good quarterback. He’s already a good quarterback.
While the Ducks sit alone at seventh in the Pacific-10 Conference, Clemens is still the second-rated quarterback in that conference.
And that’s while he and senior Jason Fife trade significant amounts of playing time. Although Clemens has completed seven more passes than Fife has attempted, Fife is the team’s second-leading rusher with 195 yards and five touchdowns.
All in all, Bellotti’s quarterback-by-committee system is essentially alive and well.
While some have called for Fife to start after spending last season as the Ducks’ lone quarterback, Clemens needs the starting experience for upcoming Oregon seasons.
Clemens doesn’t have next year’s job locked up quite yet, though. He’ll have competition from Johnny DuRocher, the Graham, Wash., freshman who has spent this season as No. 3 behind Clemens and Fife with the intent to redshirt.
DuRocher graduated early to join the Ducks in last spring’s drills, giving him an advantage over fellow freshmen Dennis Dixon and Brady Leaf, also fresh-from-high school quarterbacks.
With a spring battle brewing at quarterback and the current season sinking in a “Pirates of the Caribbean” fashion, some Ducks may be having a difficult time focusing on the tasks ahead: California, UCLA and Oregon State.
Those games are potential blowouts if the recent Oregon squad is the one that shows up for all three games. The Ducks have some things to work on to turn this season around.
But not much time. If things are going to happen, they’ve got to happen now.
The players feel the urgency, but for some unknown reason — maybe a lack of focus or a lack of confidence, it’s all just speculation — they can’t pull their ship upright and win games they know they can and should win.
Perhaps if the best Huskies and Ducks had shown up at Saturday’s game in Seattle, it would have ended the same way — with a Washington victory. My bet is that it would have at least been a scoreboard shootout — back-and-forth scores until time ran out and someone was left standing.
Either way, it would have made for a better game than the blowout that ensued.
Could the missing spark for Oregon be a magical player — a Joey “Heisman” Harrington player who is held on a national pedestal above the rest of his team?
Maybe the Ducks need to have that one figure for all the media attention and public scrutiny to focus on. Then the other players can just go about their jobs without worry of a story if they do really well or really horribly.
Whatever the problem is, Oregon needs to clear its head and figure out how to solve its woes. After one glorious season of 11-1 football in 2001, the bar is set at a superhuman level for future Ducks.