Oregon swaggers its way to a damaging loss

Confetti from a college football weekend.

Rome Odunze

Things just weren’t clicking for Dan Lanning on Saturday.

Or kicking, for that matter.

The Oregon coach was swinging for the fences at Washington, the first time both teams had carried a Top 10 ranking into this angry version of the Cascadia Cup. He went for a 2-point conversion, and an 8-7 lead in the first quarter, and got it. Came up to win this game, he explained.

At the end of the first half Oregon trailed Washington, 22-18, and Lanning disdained the field goal on fourth down at the Huskies three. Bo Nix’s pass to Bucky Irving was defended by Dominique Hampton.

Late in the third quarter Oregon was down 29-18, with a fourth and three on the Huskies’ eight. Nix’s pass to Troy Franklin, his best receiver and maybe anybody’s best receiver, went awry.

The Ducks came back at full throttle. Nix threw a 30-yard touchdown to Franklin. He threw a 49-yarder that led to a 10-yard touchdown run by Jordan James.  Oregon was taking hunks out of Michael Penix, Washington’s unearthly passer, and running through tackles, particularly when Bucky Irving had the ball. 

Now they led 33-29, and when Steve Stephens and Taki Taimani stacked up Tybo Rogers on the Oregon one-yard-line, Nix had the ball and the lead with 6:33 left.

Four minutes later, the Huskies made their stand on their own 47. But they had used all their time outs. It was fourth and three. A punt, if executed well, puts Washington in unfavorable territory with Penix hurting, in need of a touchdown and with no way to make time stop.

Instead Lanning put all his money on the Final Jeopardy answer. He went for it. Nix rolled left, the Washington defense outnumbered his receivers, and the pass was incomplete to Tez Johnson, the kid whom Nix’s family had adapted, years ago in Alabama.

Now Penix put his gloves on and went for a double left hook. First came a 35-yard shot to Ja’Lynn Polk. Then came an absolute zip-line throw to Rome Odunze for an 18-yard touchdown, and a 36-33 lead with 1:38 left.

In doing so, Washington coach Kalen DeBoer refused to listen to the dramatists who wanted him to coach out of fear. Instead of squeezing the clock and scoring the winning TD when it was too late for Oregon to respond, DeBoer kept his sanity and went for the score as soon as he could get it. 

Sure, that meant Nix would get time for another shot, but it also meant that Lanning had no choice but to turn to Camden Lewis, the kicker he had scorned all day, to boot a 45-yarder for a tie amid the lungpower of the Husky crowd. Instead of kicking field goals when he should have wanted to, Lanning did it when he had to. Lewis missed wide right, and Washington stayed unbeaten, and Oregon took its first loss.

And, inevitably, people remembered the video of Lanning exhorting his team before it walloped Colorado, 42-6: “They’re fighting for clicks, we’re fighting for wins.”

Funny, how you never see those inspiring speeches when they don’t work.

Lanning, of course, is not the only coach who thumbs his nose at conventional fourth down strategy. Brandon Staley of the Chargers has nearly turned it into his brand. Coaches know that the media, by and large, love such boldness, and the players always want to go for it, and that the analytics experts also support it. Looking at a spreadsheet is much safer than actually reading the room, adjusting to each individual situation, and making a rational decision.

But coaches who punt and accept the field goals as they come are not disinterested in winning. More often than not they’re showing maturity and patience, and trust in their defensive units. 

There is this strange belief these days that kicking a field goal is some sort of admission of defeat. As of Saturday, they still add points for field goals. Three points, in fact. They don’t deduct.

To be fair, Lanning didn’t dodge responsibility. “I think this game is 100 percent on me,” he said.

Otherwise it was a fabulous game, as advertised, the kind that will make us more nostalgic for the Pac-12 than we can imagine. It was the first strong test for Washington, which has some defensive questions to answer but has possibly the game’s best eraser in Penix, who has 20 touchdown passes and three interceptions.

Penix was at Indiana when DeBoer was the offensive coordinator there, in 2019. DeBoer spent the next two years as head coach at Fresno State, and the Bulldogs upset UCLA on the road and went 9-3 in 2021. DeBoer then got the Washington job and, with Penix, is currently 17-2. Jennifer Cohen was the athletic director who hired him, and she is at USC now. Just something to file away whenever Lincoln Riley boards the NFL limousine.

Washington will join the Big 10 with USC, UCLA and Oregon. No matter who’s in their conference, Washington should be a winner. Most of the time, it has been. Don James was probably the second-best coach in Pac-12 history behind John McKay, and the support and the money and the stadium setting and the other assets of Seattle are ideal. 

But the Pac-12 has saved its best football for last, and the Huskies close their season with USC on the road, Utah at home, Oregon State on the road and Washington State at home. So if they go undefeated and win the Pac-12 championship game against the second-place team, they will richly deserve their second trip to the College Football Playoff.

Oregon can afford no more losses. It basically has the same schedule Washington has. With Georgia, Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State, Florida State, North Carolina and Oklahoma still unscathed, it’s illogical to expect two Pac-12 teams to make the Final Four. 

And that is exactly why Saturday was so gripping. The 4-team CFP is ending this season, and so is the inability to exhale for 10 hours every Saturday. In a 12-team playoff, this game would have been a glorified dress rehearsal for the conference title game and then the big tournament.

Instead the crowd knew exactly what was in dispute here. At the end, the fans descended upon the Husky Stadium field, with hugs and tears and relief and deliverance. 

It is hoped that no one tripped over the nine points that Dan Lanning, disdainer of clicks and kicks, had left there.

More confetti from a college football Saturday:

Notre Dame 48, USC 20

—  The Trojans (6-1) hoped their defense would become more like their offense in South Bend. The opposite happened, and it wasn’t pretty. Caleb Williams was flummoxed by the Irish pass rush and threw three interceptions, a couple of them borne of panic. He was held to 199 yards passing and was sacked six times.

— Notre Dame’s first three touchdown drives covered 12, 2 and 50 yards. When USC got to within 31-20 on a touchdown pass to Brenden Rice that was set up by Zachariah Branch’s 60-yard punt return, the Irish (6-2) retorted with Jadarian Price’s 99-yard kickoff return touchdown.

— The Trojans turned it over five times and never got a takeaway, which is how Notre Dame won with only 13 first downs. Now the schedule gets serious for USC, with four ranked teams among the last five opponents.

North Carolina 41, Miami 31

— When the NCAA refused to let double-transfer Devontez Walker play, coach Mack Brown went from Carolina blue to purple. That’s not healthy for a 72-year-old man, but Walker became eligible for Saturday’s game, and suddenly everyone understood. Walker caught three touchdown passes from Drake Maye and the Tar Heels improved to 6-0.

— Walker caught six balls for 132 yards, Kaimon Rucker had two and a half sacks, and Omarion Hampton chugged 24 times for 197. This counteracted Tyler Van Dyke’s 391-yard passing night for Miami (4-2), as did four Miami turnovers.

— North Carolina does not play Florida State, although they could meet in the ACC championship game. It has back-to-back November dates with Duke and Clemson that could complicate its long-term goals. In four of their six games, the Tar Heels have scored 40 points or more.

Oregon State 36, UCLA 24

— The Bruins have not won a Pac-12 title since 1989. And now they never will.   Dante Moore threw three interceptions, including a 67-yarder for a touchdown by Ryan Cooper to give the Beavers a 23-10 halftime edge.

— UCLA (4-2) had already lost a league game to Utah. It had given up 12.2 points per game before D.J. Uiagalelei fired three touchdown passes and the Beavers (6-1) rolled up 415 yards, 199 more than Washington State could put on UCLA a couple of weeks ago.

— Oregon State is 3-1 in conference play and closes with Washington and Oregon. Uiagalelei, the transfer from Clemson, threw three TDs, two to Jack Velling, a tight end who has 29 career catches and eight scores.

Missouri 38, Kentucky 21

— The Tigers hadn’t won in Lexington since 2013 and they quickly fell behind 14-0. They responded with a 39-yard touchdown on a pass from punter Luke Bauer to Marquis Johnson. Kentucky (5-2) never recovered from the shock, and Missouri (6-1) rolled up the next 13 points. Brady Cook’s one-yard score to begin the fourth quarter put Missouri ahead for good.

— Missouri didn’t let Kentucky have a touchdown after the first quarter and piled up three takeaways, four sacks and six tackles for loss. Darius Robinson had two of the sacks and two and a half negative plays. He’s a graduate student who didn’t begin football until his junior year of high school in Canton, Mich.

— Eli Drinkwitz, whom the Tigers hired from Appalachian State, is gradually annexing territory in the SEC wars. Missouri’s only loss is to powerful LSU, 49-39. It will now attend its third consecutive bowl game, and that hasn’t happened since 2008-11. 

Air Force 34, Wyoming 27

— The Flyboys keep winning by continuing to ignore the thrill of the wild blue yonder. Their feet are firmly grounded as they go to 6-0. In this one John Lee Eldridge turned a sweep into a 58-yard touchdown with 2:17 left to break the tie with the Cowboys (5-2).

— Air Force has won four consecutive bowl games with Troy Calhoun coaching. The Falcons have won 39 of their past 50 games and are bidding to win their sixth Commander In Chief Trophy, decided by head-to-head outcomes with Army and Navy, since 2010.

— Their option attack is still a tough nut for most conventional defenses. Air Force has run the ball 357 times this season and thrown it 28 times.