A record crowd of 60,017 had come to party on Saturday at Autzen Stadium. Injury-ridden Washington was supposed to be just another helpless victim of the No. 1 team in the country, and a blowout was expected.
Yet, through the entire first quarter, there was little to cheer about as the teams found themselves tied at 0-0. It wasn’t until the second quarter that Oregon finally got going, and eventually ran away with a 53-16 win.
“You’ve got to play a full game,” head coach Chip Kelly said. “And we played a full 60 minutes. I’ll give Sark (Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian) a lot of credit, he had that team up, ready to play, and I think eventually we wore them down. We’ve got a little bit more depth than they do.”
Though the defense managed to hold Washington at bay during the opening minutes of the game, the Oregon offense was uncharacteristically rusty. The first two drives ended in punts, while the third came to a close after a turnover on downs. Penalties were a problem, and Darron Thomas was facing constant pressure from a fired-up Husky defense.
Thomas, however, was unfazed. He simply told his teammates to calm down, and in the second quarter things finally started to fall in Oregon’s favor.
Thomas completed a long pass to wide receiver D.J. Davis for 38 yards, followed immediately by a 15-yard completion to Jeff Maehl. That set up a Rob Beard field goal, and Oregon was finally on the board.
Later in the quarter, after Washington tied the game with its own field goal, Thomas led a 10-play, 62-yard drive culminating in a LaMichael James touchdown.
“That’s the thing about Darron that’s great,” Kelly said. “He bounces back, he doesn’t let anything kind of affect him and gets ready to go on and play the next snap.”
Oregon scored once more in the first half when Thomas kept the ball and ran 34 yards for a touchdown. Washington added a field goal to make the score 18-6 going into halftime.
At the intermission, Kelly’s message to his players was simple.
“He just told us to go out there and play how we know how to play,” Davis said. “He didn’t really give any pep talk or anything like that, just told us to go out there and handle business.”
The second half, however, began with another mistake, as Thomas fumbled and the Huskies recovered the ball at the Oregon 17-yard line. Quarterback Keith Price then completed a quick pass to wide receiver D’Andre Goodwin for a touchdown. All of a sudden, the lead was cut to 18-13.
With Oregon in desperate need of a response, freshman wide receiver Josh Huff took the kickoff and scrambled 80 yards to the Washington six-yard line. Thomas hit Maehl in the end zone, and the lead was pushed back up to 12.
“Josh did some nice things,” Kelly said. “Our special teams, we’re a full team … they had to play a lot of starters on their special teams, but because of the depth we have, we don’t have to do that.”
Washington would score only three points throughout the rest of the game. Running back Kenjon Barner earned solid playing time in his first appearance since a serious concussion against Washington State, and threw in a touchdown late in the fourth quarter.
“I’m really happy that he got that touchdown,” Maehl said. “[It will] probably give him a lot more confidence going on to the rest of the year.”
An injury to backup quarterback Nate Costa did plague the second half. An extra point snap was botched, flying over Costa as he positioned himself to hold the ball. He eventually recovered the ball, but injured his knee as he fell out of bounds. His status going forward is unknown.
Despite a lackadaisical first quarter, the Ducks finished with 522 total yards on offense while holding Washington to 263. Thomas threw for 243 yards while running for 89 more, while James compiled 121 yards on the ground and three touchdowns. Return specialist Cliff Harris, meanwhile, gathered 127 punt return yards as well as 52 yards on kickoff returns.
It wasn’t Oregon’s best game of the year, but for Kelly, a win is a win.
“I have yet to coach a perfect game,” Kelly said. “I know I make a lot of mistakes, and I know our players are going to make a lot of mistakes, but that’s what college football is all about … when you make a mistake, can you bounce back?”
On Saturday, the Ducks proved they could do just that.
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