Good Chuck Culpepper Column on Ducks

[jrw]

"Where some teams didn’t beat too much of anybody, Oregon beat three teams from the top 10 and four from the top 25 with its oft-dazzling offense and highly ranked defense."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/12/08/oregon-penn-state-big-ten-championship/

[Utki]

INDIANAPOLIS — In a way, this nutjob of a college football regular season roiled with enough unusual turbulence that it often seemed to obscure the one team sailing pristinely through it. Look, there’s Oregon way back over there, at the summit yet in the background, carrying on like some lovely frigate with all the latest accessories.

 

 

The standings around the country teemed with two- and three-loss teams, including those unaccustomed to losing that often, but there sailed Oregon, still unbeaten. The arguments and vitriol proliferated from Alabama-or-Mississippi to Alabama-or-Miami to Alabama-or-SMU to Indiana to BYU to others, but there’s Oregon, still inarguable. Penn State threw a heap of havoc and 518 total yards into the Big Ten championship game Saturday night, but look, there’s Oregon, filling its 45-37 win with mastery of both plays and moments.

Then the conference season closed and the confetti rained and the victors hung out on the podium and the quarterback wore a lei, and there around midnight beamed the electronic scoreboard, in bright yellow with one word previous generations never could have imagined dominating this setting: “DUCKS.”

 

 

Ducks!

 

“I just try to keep the train on the tracks,” said Coach Dan Lanning, that former linebacker from Kansas City, Missouri, and from William Jewell College who hasn’t bothered to reach age 39 even yet, and whose third Oregon team debuted in the Big Ten at 13-0 and stayed on the tracks at No. 1 in every weekly College Football Playoff list, with a No. 1 seeding for the first 12-team playoff clear as midday come midday Sunday.

Let the underlings sort out the muddy.

 

Where Vanderbilt beat Alabama and Northern Illinois beat Notre Dame and Kentucky beat Mississippi and Arkansas beat Tennessee and Michigan beat Ohio State and Georgia beat Texas twice and others beat others, nobody ever did beat Oregon. Where some teams didn’t beat too much of anybody, Oregon beat three teams from the top 10 and four from the top 25 with its oft-dazzling offense and highly ranked defense.

 

While Oregon resides so far from Indianapolis that its thunderous fan base couldn’t travel with the volume of, say, Michigan last year, it upheld the early-season talk it conducted among itself “about how you get an opportunity to invade a new environment,” Lanning said, “and somewhere maybe you didn’t belong, and get the opportunity to take over that environment.”

 

They took over that environment even when the environment rebelled, their steady hand above all the unsteady. They looked unstoppable and unstoppably pretty as they surged to a 28-10 lead with their one-year quarterback Dillon Gabriel in his sixth college year as maestro, and wide receiver Tez Johnson zigzagging toward 11 catches and 181 yards and the MVP trophy. Yet they also looked sturdy of vessel whenever Penn State kept proving its improving caliber and making things urgent. The game became a microcosm of the season.

 

When the playoff-bound and third-ranked Nittany Lions (11-2) ran off drives of 75 and 64 yards to get to within 28-24 shortly before halftime, and got chunks of the 292 rushing yards they’d get against a defense allowing 112, and kept things tense after halftime at 31-24, Oregon got Gabriel’s improvisation from the pocket and his zing from midfield to the 26-yard line to Johnson, who angled his way to the end zone for a 48-yard touchdown and a 38-24 lead.

 

When Oregon faced a shouting fourth and two from the Penn State 35 with 8:59 left, Gabriel stepped back and threw a high-difficulty 13-yard pass over the middle to tight end Terrance Ferguson, who wound up 20 yards downfield to foreshadow a touchdown for a 45-30 lead.

 

And when Penn State got the ball down eight with 2:11 left and got to its 46 with quarterback Drew Allar throwing promisingly up the right sideline, Oregon’s Nikko Reed got a hell of an interception that Penn State Coach James Franklin called “a heck of a play.”

 

To listen to Ducks telling it, their deep bonds together seemed to exceed their limited time together, with Gabriel just in from two seasons at Oklahoma after getting there from three seasons at UCF, after getting there from high school in Honolulu.

 

Of Ferguson and that fourth and two, Gabriel glowed and said, “I love him to death,” and: “Great route, even better catch, and you just see him make a play in the big-time moment. That’s the trust aspect of it.”

 

Of Johnson and all the plays, Gabriel glowed for a good while and said many things including: “As everyone knows, I’ve played football for a long time, and when you’re around people that love the game, love life, and do what they do in a special way, you appreciate that. . . . I’m proud of the leader he is. I’m proud of the way he fights through adversity and [is] a guy that we’ve been through a bunch together within a year’s time, but the growth together is enormous.”

 

Of Gabriel, Lanning said: “This team believes in him. They’re grateful every day they get to step on the field with him. He’s about connection and people first. But the poise he shows in big games is unmeasured. I haven’t been around players like Dillon. I’m really grateful that I get to share the field with him.”

 

Coach Dan Lanning and quarterback Dillon Gabriel embrace after the Big Ten championship game. (Robert Goddin/Imagn Images)

 

Oregon had begun this season with mysterious difficulty eluding Idaho. It then had edged a fantastic Boise State, 37-34, at home but only through the conveniences of a punt-return touchdown and a kickoff-return touchdown. Then it cooked along, pipped Ohio State, 32-31, and zipped through all 10 of its Big Ten games (including the championship), with a romp through Illinois and a strong stomach through Wisconsin and Penn State.

 

The Nittany Lions got 124 rushing yards from Kaytron Allen and 105 from Nicholas Singleton, seven catches for 84 yards from the great tight end Tyler Warren, a good outing from the improving Allar. They just couldn’t quite catch Oregon after Oregon sprang ahead.

 

 

“To be quite frank,” Penn State defensive tackle Dvon J-Thomas said, “they sped up our defense. That’s a credit to their offensive coordinator. They did an incredible job of speeding us up. To be frank, we also just made a lot of mistakes. That’s a credit to them. When you have such a talented team and you’re playing at an elite level, the margin of error is very, very small.”

 

And so receivers darted about the field with cunning and vigor. A tight end, Kenyon Sadiq, opened the scoring up the right sideline when his 28-yard touchdown catch during which he went ahead and leaped over a guy. Beauty flourished all around. “They do a really good job,” Franklin said, “of making it a space game.”

 

Then, when that game got turbulent beneath them, they kept going, just as when the season got turbulent beneath them and they kept going. “I think our guys do an unbelievable job of understanding the reset button,” Lanning said, of forgetting the recent past and any of its howling plays. Now they get to forget the past all over again and begin the 12-team concept as its first front-runner. Squint into the distance, and you can see them out there. They’re Ducks who’ve been seaworthy the whole time.

 

[Fitnessczar]

Can only read if you are a subscriber to the Washington Post.

 

Nevermind. Thnks for the cut and paste

Edited December 8 by Fitnessczar

[Grandpa Duck]

Thank you, jrw. That is a really fun read!

[Grandpa Duck]

The wonders of auto correct.  Jew replaced jrw.

[jrw]

On 12/8/2024 at 12:54 PM, Fitnessczar said:

Can only read if you are a subscriber to the Washington Post.

Sorry, all…did not realize that. And, thanks to Utki for the copy and paste. 

[Sandy Rocks]

What a great article. Someone who has seen and understands these ducks who just plod along doing their thing ignoring the fray around them, singularly focused. It is amazing how the number one team is ignored so much. The media crew that called that game were much inferior to Herbstreet and Fowler who have called multiple games for the ducks and respect them.