This column won’t be fair. Not really. Not when Oregon football is the cream of the crop 95% of the time. Not when this was never the year the Ducks were expected to win a National Championship. A different seeding, or a lucky break somewhere, anywhere, could have seen this team playing in the final and could have changed the entire complexion and narrative of this playoff, of this team, and of the very perception of this program.

Not when this team has looked so strong during the regular season, and in most postseason games, not when every game it loses seems to be against a sure-fire National Championship finalist.

The thing is, it’s never Oregon winning those big-time postseason matchups, and unless you win the last game of the season, no one really cares.

We have to talk about the Oregon Ducks.

Not in the same sentence as the Penn State’s and USC’s of the world — teams known for getting close but never over the hump in the regular season — that’s too harsh, too melodramatic. But they should be mentioned in the same paragraph.

If you’re reading this, you know what Oregon football is supposed to be about. Substance over style. Feeding the studs. Attacking the trenches. It works so beautifully, so well against all but about four teams and coaches, and then is blown to pieces.

It’s a bit underwhelming, isn’t it? When a season ends. All the recruiting build-up and fall football and transfer portal talk. All the coach-speak and press conference watching and redshirt monitoring.

Then, in 60 minutes of game time — or really 30, given how the first half against Indiana went — it’s over. 239 days and counting til Sept. 5 and the start of next season.

Until then, Oregon will have a lot to think about. I didn’t think the Ducks were 34 points worse than Indiana on Friday — having a quarterback gift-wrap 21 points off turnovers certainly doesn’t help — but I didn’t think Oregon was anywhere near as clean, or as disciplined, or as well coached as Indiana.

That’s not something that you can say often, but when you are Oregon and national championships are the standard, it’s a reality that must be addressed.

“First things first, the quarterback has to protect the football,” quarterback Dante Moore said. “(Indiana) has a great defense, great disguise and different looks, but you can’t win football games if you’re causing turnovers. (That’s) something of course I need to work at.”

Moore, who is a projected top-five pick in the NFL Draft, was noncommittal about returning to school.

“I’m going to talk to Coach Lanning and talk to my family and everybody,” Moore said. “But at the end of the day, don’t want to think about that right now.”

Unlike most of the program, he really shouldn’t have a lot to think about — returning to school is the logical, career-wise choice.

Defensively, Oregon did what it does in most games against tough competition, which arguably makes the result worse. The Ducks’ defensive line was largely dormant, and their corners got beaten on every one-on-one ball Indiana threw. Really, it looked like every loss against Ohio State, or Washington, or Indiana earlier this year. Notice a trend?

Oregon is an organizational marvel, one of the best-run and most forward-thinking programs in college football. The Ducks have built a monster, a team that’s so deep, so fast, so effective, so ferocious at every level. They win in the trenches. They dominate the turnover battle. They wear down opponents. They won the Big Ten in their first year in the conference.

Then the playoffs come around, and, well, this happens.

In the post-game press conference, the vibe was downtrodden and full of clichés. The Ducks were 0-11 on third down after starting the game 3-3. The drawing board they will want to get back to should be broken by now, though.

Now, Oregon’s coordinators, Tosh Lupoi and Will Stein — two of the best in the country — will be gone. Oregon will likely be fine, and hire from within, but even that can take some adjusting.

The big-picture outlook of the Ducks is less rosy. Oregon may never have a better opportunity to bring home a national championship than this year. Georgia, Ohio State and Alabama were all eliminated before Friday, and who’s to say the transfer portal, NIL and a larger playoff pool won’t lead to more Indiana’s down the line.

Oregon’s been among the best in the world for more than a decade now, and the process Lanning has established has been truly remarkable, too. But although it’s worked for a long, long time, it hasn’t been quite good enough. 

Just not when it matters the most.