Thirteen seconds. That’s all it took. The Willie Taggart era was ushered in with a 100-yard, 13-second kick-off return. You could refer to the return as some sort of tonic; but the 100-yard opening kickoff return was followed by a 12-yard wide open reception for Southern Utah; hardly the harbinger of a looming national championship contender.
Hoping that the excitement and buzz he had generated might equate to a better performance, Willie Taggart would be sorely disappointed with a first half that left many scratching their heads. What ended in a record-setting performance began as a pedestrian effort; it would not end that way.
That which plagued Oregon a season ago did not magically disappear with a new coach. The secondary struggled to maintain coverage and make plays. While the Ducks made their hay with a sudden burst kickoff return, the defense could not contain Southern Utah early and allowed an easy march with the Thunderbirds tying the Ducks 7-7 with 11:39 remaining in the first quarter. The 2016 Oregon football team seemed to have been reborn in frightening fashion before our eyes to start the 2017 season.
After a season defined by defensive prolapse, the Ducks had hoped to open 2017 with a bit more defensive verve. Offensively, Oregon did not have an issue in 2016; but it was not the offense which cost Mark Helfrich and staff their jobs; and not the offense which brought an entirely new staff to Eugene.
Defense cost Helfrich a job. Defense changed the course of Oregon football history. The subsequent march of the Oregon offense to a 14-7 lead would not be any sort of salve to the festering wounds of a 2016 season which ended in abject misery. Defense would be the only resolution.
The plague which destroyed 2016 -linebacker play – would haunt the Ducks early. Troy Dye was the only linebacker who looked capable of playing at the collegiate level in the first half. Everyone else looked lost and the defense suffered as an inferior Southern Utah team marched up and down the field as if they were the 2015 Ohio State Buckeyes.
Were it not for one of the worst overthrows in several years, Oregon might have been staring down the throat of a second touchdown allowed early. Instead, Ugo Amadi intercepted the poorly thrown pass to give Oregon a chance to blow the game open early. With the ball inside the three-yard line, Royce Freeman proved his mettle with a nice catch and run to get the Ducks out of the shadow of their opponents end zone.
The Ducks turned up the heat following a third touchdown which gave Oregon a 21-7 lead. With confidence, Jim Leavitt turned up the pressure giving the Ducks a chance to create some separation with 4:48 left in the first quarter. But this iteration of the Oregon football team would turn the ball over just inside the one-yard line less than two minutes later.
As the Ducks swarmed a Thunderbird running back with 4:48 left in the first quarter, it felt like a shift; not just in the game; but for the Oregon program. The team had done its part in run defense; but the passing defense looked much like the nightmare that defined the 2016 season. Fortunately, the ineptitude of the Thunderbirds allowed Oregon to extend their lead to 28-7 with 10:03 left in the first half following a three-yard touchdown run from Royce Freeman.
Simply bigger and stronger, for the most part, Oregon had no difficulty scoring points. But the ghosts of 2016 would rear their ugly heads with under three minutes to play in the first half as Southern Utah burned Oregon defensive back Arrion Springs for a 64-yard touchdown to cut the lead down to 42-14 with 2:25 left in the first half. A muff by Tony Brooks-James would give the sparse Southern Utah crowd reason for hope.
With possession of the ball at the Oregon 24-yard line the Thunderbirds wasted little time getting the ball inside the Oregon five yard line with just 1:45 left in the first half. From there, Southern Utah would cut further into the lead with a short touchdown run making it 42-21 with less than a minute left in the first half.
Suddenly the Ducks of old, who struggled to contain anyone over the course of the last two seasons, seemed to have returned. Much like a season ago, the pass defense defended little allowing 198 yards through the air in the first half alone. It was not unexpected for Oregon to score a lot of points against Southern Utah; the real test of the difference would lay in whether the defense could change their stripes from a season in which they could seemingly stop no one. Through the first half, that seemed to have been answered with an unequivocal – no, the Oregon defense had not really changed all that much.
After an early score to extend the lead to 49-21, Oregon found itself struggling to defend the pass yet again. With a pass interference call negating a Thomas Graham interception, Arrion Springs showed very good leverage on fourth-and-short to give the Ducks the ball back with 9:17 left in the third quarter. A fifty-yard pass and catch from Justin Herbert to Charles Nelson put the Ducks in the shadow of the end zone – and Nelson converted the opportunity with a three-yard reverse to extend Oregon’s lead to 56-21 midway through the third quarter.
The Duck defense, despite some mistakes, turned up the heat in the third quarter allowing just 11 passing yards and 38 on the ground as they extended their lead to 70-21 just over a minute into the fourth quarter following Kani Benoit’s one-yard touchdown run.
The Oregon offense would use a time consuming 90-yard march with Taylor Alie leading the charge to extend the lead to 77-21 with just under seven minutes to play. The 77 points would be an Autzen Stadium record; and the most scored in over 100 years for Oregon.
What seemed for a short time to be a scathing statement on the lack of Duck progress from a season ago had become the blowout it seemed should have always been. There would be no great revelation with this game; the Ducks simply outclassed a Big Sky opponent. But Taggart and his new staff won’t have that luxury next week. Though not what they might have been a season ago, Nebraska brings its sea of red to Eugene next week. Make no mistake, that test will have more difficult questions and similarly muddled answers and results.
