New jerseys, a new quarterback, and an entirely new conference welcomed Oregon to start the 2024 season. Dan Lanning’s third year in Eugene is his most anticipated one yet. The No. 3 ranked Oregon Ducks aren’t just conference title hopefuls this year. With another star-studded recruiting class and impressive transfers, Oregon looks to be a playoff-caliber team come December.

Without thinking too far ahead, the team had to get through its first challenge of the year. The Idaho Vandals. Idaho finished last year as the second-best team in the Big Sky with a 9-4 record.

That being said, they certainly did not play like it.

The first game of the season tells a lot about the preparation each team made in the offseason. How does the tackling look? Was there much penalty trouble? These questions are answered by Oregon with flying colors. Idaho proved to be a lot tougher than expected and kept it a 14-point game up until halftime.

“Great teams are able to learn from tight matches,” Lanning said. “This was a tight match. We didn’t create some of the explosive plays I was hoping we could create offensively and gave up a couple of critical plays on defense.”

Although it wasn’t a perfect start to the season, the Ducks have a lot more games coming up to get things just right, and Lanning will ensure his guys "go to the doctor" to get better.

Week one was ideally supposed to allow the starters to get loose while also giving the younger players a chance at playing time. That’s how it was supposed to be today, but the unexpected close matchup meant a full day's work for the top of the depth chart. A long season awaits, but after week 1, I have a few takeaways.

Conservative Play-Calls

Under Will Stein, Oregon fans are accustomed to high-scoring offenses with a handful of deep shots sprinkled in the mix. With Gabriel starting in his first game with his new school, it was expected that the Heisman hopeful would fit perfectly. While efficient, that feared deep attack just wasn’t on full display. The slow 14-0 start at half proved it. Checkdowns to running backs and end-arounds to the speedy Tez Johnson were a majority of what we saw.

“We have to be a team that can create some explosive plays, and we didn’t get enough of those today,” Lanning said.

Even after the half, the offense could not get things going. Most passing attempts went for 3-6 yards with almost no attempts at burning the opponent downfield. No electric plays, tough yards all around, and two failed fourth-down attempts made it hard for the offense to find rhythm.

Slow Start for Stewart

One of the many transfers to join the Ducks over the offseason was former 5-star Evan Stewart from Texas A&M. The speedster has a plethora of highlight plays already on his tape and was ready to add to it in his Oregon debut. He got a shot at the endzone early but couldn’t beat the man coverage. After that, he didn’t get many more opportunities.

Stewart finished the game with only 5 total targets, collecting 3 of them for 15 yards. Tez Johnson was clearly the No. 1 target, but even so, running backs and tight ends on the field were getting more chances in the passing game than him.

The season is long, and the new face in that star-studded wide-out room will have plenty of time to build that connection. With better competition coming right around the corner, he may need to speed up the process.

Shaky Pass Protection

The Ducks tried to start fast today with a deep shot to Evan Stewart. Gabriel dropped back and saw a chance to get it to the striding Stewart but was rushed into making the throw before being set. The pressure caused an overthrow, and that wasn’t a one-off. The Vandals creatively caused a ruckus in the pocket for Dillon in his first game as a Duck. A sack-fumble in the red zone killed one of Oregon’s better drives. He was sacked 3 times today, while Nix was sacked 5 times total all of last season.

"The sack-fumble is, of course, on my end," Gabriel said. "The other one on third, you would just like that one back. It can't happen, but we got to be better."

The pressure caused Oregon’s offense to shy away from the deep threat and made for a game with many short and compact routes. Idaho made the Ducks uncomfortable, something that doesn’t happen often in Autzen.

Drive Killers

Down seven on 3rd and goal, Gabriel keeps it, looking for an open target. With nobody to throw to, he takes off and forces his way into the endzone. Except for one thing—a yellow marker on the field yet again. Oregon totaled 8 penalties compared to Idaho’s 3 penalties.

When the penalties didn’t get to them, it was turnovers that made it tough for Oregon to pull ahead. Two failed fourth-down conversions and a fumble in Idaho territory essentially kept Idaho’s chances alive.

“There are things that we did that put ourselves in situations where we didn’t finish drives, and that’s the reality,” Lanning said. “We are always going to celebrate a victory, but there are some opportunities for us to get better for sure.”