The University of Oregon Ducks will play their first game of the college football season against Boise State at Autzen Stadium in Eugene on Saturday. The Ducks enter the season ranked No. 2 in the Associated Press Preseason Top 25 poll – the highest ranking in their program’s history.
Hopes are running high for Ducks fans that this just may be the season when they win their first national championship. Quarterback Dante Moore returns to helm the offense with defensive depth that includes A’Mauri Washington, Matayo Uiagalelei and Teitum Tuioti. But the Ducks face a brutal schedule with November match-ups against powerhouses Ohio State, Michigan State, Michigan and Washington.
Tyson Alger, a sports writer who covers UO athletics for Lookout Eugene-Springfield, joins us for a preview. Alger also writes about the Portland Timbers on his substack, The I-5 Corridor.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The University of Oregon will play their first game of the college football season against Boise State in Eugene tomorrow. The Ducks enter the season ranked No. 2 in the AP Preseason poll – their highest start in school history. Tyson Alger covers UFO athletics for Lookout Eugene-Springfield. He joins us now with a preview. It’s great to have you back on the show.
Tyson Alger: Hey, thanks so much for having me.
Miller: Can you remind us, before we talk about expectations, hopes, challenges for this year, how did last season unfold for the Ducks?
Alger: It unfolded pretty dramatically. And it’s kind of been two years in a row of that, where Oregon has been an exceptionally good team. They’ve made the college football playoffs two years in a row. And both times, their season, whether it was two years ago with Ohio State in the Rose Bowl or last year with Indiana in the Peach Bowl, people thought they had a chance going in and then they were beaten convincingly to end the year. So, disappointing two years in a row, very good seasons that kind of ended with a sour taste in your mouth.
Miller: Even though … I mean, any program in the country would be thrilled to get that far, but then when you get that far, that’s where the sour taste comes from. You didn’t quite get to the finish line. Is that the basic idea?
Alger: Oh, absolutely, because at this point Oregon’s become a program where it’s not so foreign for them to get to that point. Basically, over the last 20 years or so, Oregon’s kind of been in the discussion. But they’re still on the outside looking in when it comes to actually winning that first elusive national title. And in the past, it was pretty excusable because teams like Georgia or Alabama, these traditional blue bloods of college football, were the ones winning it. But last year it was Indiana, this team that’s known as a basketball school, a team that, three years ago, was nowhere in the conversation.
So that maybe changes up a little bit of the expectation levels for Oregon, because it’s not so much of a cute chip-on-your-shoulder, underdog story. Oregon’s now at a point where it’s like, OK, you have the team, the coaches, the talent, the resources…
Miller: What’s your excuse? Why haven’t you brushed the championship?
Alger: Exactly.
Miller: All right, so let’s talk about this year. How many returning players are there from last year’s very, very good team?
Alger: Boy, the number is a lot higher than it’s been in past years, especially when it comes to star, notable returners. You have Dante Moore, the quarterback, coming back. This is his third season overall with the team. It’s his second year as a starter. This was a guy who, when he was in high school, was a five-star quarterback. Everybody in the country wanted him. He took an unconventional route after that. He played a season at UCLA. He transferred then to Oregon and sat on the bench for a year, that undefeated regular season that the Ducks had. And last year was kind of the … let’s see what he can do. And he was exceptional. He had 30 touchdowns to 10 interceptions. He only lost to Indiana throughout the season. There was definitely some things he could probably do a little bit better, but the talent was there, enough so that if he would have decided to leave, he probably could have been a first-round draft pick last year.
So that’s the big item. But what makes this Oregon team a little bit different is some of the guys coming back on the defensive side of the ball too. Oregon’s been known for its offense for 25 years at this point, but you have four guys on the defensive line who all could be playing in the NFL right now. That’s just not really part of the equation in most years when Oregon’s gearing up for a season like this.
Miller: What does their defense look like to opposing teams?
Alger: It looks big. It looks physical. In the past, if Oregon was going to win, you kind of had to get these diamond-in-the-rough type of guys where maybe a guy is too small, but he has four other traits that he’s very good at. Like with the guys Oregon has right now, you’re getting guys who are big, and fast, and can move, and agile. I remember when the Ducks played in the 2014 National Championship game, they were playing against Ohio State who was one of those blue bloods. And I remember just watching during warm-ups and seeing the size difference between Oregon’s roster and Ohio State’s roster, and you go, OK, there’s a gap there. That gap’s not there anymore. In fact, with the talent that Oregon’s been bringing in, Oregon’s kind of that Ohio State team now to many others in the country.
Miller: In recent years, the rules have changed to make it even easier for players to transfer between schools, and they can do it as much as they want now, as of a couple of years ago. So there’s this scrambly, two-week period in early January when players move around a lot. It’s become a major part of college football, especially college basketball too. What do the comings and goings look like for the Ducks this year?
Alger: It’s fascinating because … So this is Dan Lanning’s fifth year with the Ducks…
Miller: The coach.
Alger: Yeah. The coach. And for the first four years, especially when he first got there, they really utilized the transfer portal. It kind of seemed like it was wholesale changes. And there’s some other coaches around the country that maybe took a little bit more criticism for that, like Deion Sanders in Colorado, just because they were kind of flashier about it. But Oregon did have similar transfer numbers. I think the difference between an Oregon and a Colorado is the Ducks have still been very aggressive in high school recruiting, so they’ve been putting together these very good classes of young recruits that are coming through the system. So when you got to this year’s offseason you had a lot of guys coming back and then you had a lot of guys on the roster, too, who were kind of the old school way, like kind of the natural development.
So there are still a couple of transfer pieces on this Oregon team. There’s one offensive lineman, a receiver, another important piece in the secondary in Koi Perich from Minnesota. But compared to past seasons, this is more of the same team from last year than we’ve ever really seen with the Ducks.
Miller: Might that be a benefit that they already know the system, that they know the staff, that they know Autzen Stadium, they know their teammates?
Alger: A hundred percent. I’m a realist, and I understand that in college football this is all part of the game now. But there’s still a little bit of old-school sports writer in me who wants to believe in team chemistry and camaraderie, and maybe if you have like one good off-the-field excursion on a weekend and the guys really bond together, they can come back the next weekend and play for each other.
Miller: That seems so quaint when we’re talking about, I was gonna say pre-professional, like a quasi-professional version of scholastic sports now.
Alger: But what you will see is obviously that’s hard to accelerate, especially if some guys are only here for … there’s some players that get here in January and then they’re done in December. You’re here for a year, if that. So the Ducks do try to force that a little bit. You’ll see on their social media stuff – and this is also stuff that they put out, so you got to take it with a grain of salt – they have beach trips where they take the linebackers out to the coast, and they’re doing kind of like the cinematic practice on the beach. And it might be a little syrupy, but they know that that’s kind of a part of it. And especially when there are five or six teams in the country that are real legitimate national title contenders, all of them are about the same talent level. So then you kind of get into what are the X factors and the separating parts?
Talking about continuity, too, the Ducks do have two new coordinators this year, which [in] any other year would be a pretty big thing for them, especially when you’re switching out both of them. Oregon decided to promote two guys from within-house to take those positions to lead offense and defense, which is kind of fascinating because Oregon’s profile is in a much higher place than the last time that Dan Lanning had the opportunity to hire these. So there was some questions as to whether or not he’d take advantage of that and go outside, and maybe bring in a big name here or there. But I think the consideration with the continuity that they have with this roster, and especially with Dante Moore coming back and all those defensive guys, they wanted guys leading those units that were familiar with them and those guys were comfortable with.
Miller: Dan Lanning has been seen as a kind of wonder kid: a young, flashy, successful coach. Also a “fun machine” in recent years. What kind of pressure is on him now though, after two very successful playoff runs that did not lead to a championship?
Alger: It’s fascinating because he’s still technically a young coach. He’s just 40 years old. This is his fifth season of head coaching anything. He’s 48-8 in those four years so far. That’s the best winning percentage in Oregon football history. One of the big knocks on him before he came to Oregon was like, “This guy’s not from here, just like the last Oregon coaches. Is he going to stick around?” Well, he’s won all those games, and now he’s coached here longer than anybody since Mike Bellotti who was Oregon’s coach throughout the ‘90s and the early 2000s.
All those question marks are gone. Eugene has completely embraced this guy. But because of the success, and because of people being realistic about what Oregon is, the resources that it has and what it’s cost them to get to this point, they do look at it and go, like, “OK. What else can you win?” There’s one game that he can win that’s going to change things at Oregon, because at this point, they’ve won their Rose Bowls, they’ve won their Orange Bowls, they’ve won a Big 10 championship in their first year. All of these were massive accomplishments that even 10 years ago would have been the exclamation point at the end of the season for a program like this.
Miller: Now all you have to do is go undefeated and win the national championship. No big deal.
Alger: Right! And look at last year, any other era in college football, if you go and play Texas Tech in the Rose Bowl or in the Orange Bowl, and you beat them 44-0 like Oregon did, you’re probably building in a statue for the coach right after that game. But because of the system now, you don’t end on that game. You go to the next round. And then it’s why can’t you win the big one? It’s just fascinating how the era and the legacies can change just based upon the current rules.
Miller: You’ve pointed out, a lot of other folks have as well, before we say goodbye, that the Ducks have a challenging schedule, especially in November. They also have a good test tomorrow it seems. What’s the Boise State game shaping up to look like?
Alger: I’m very excited about this game. There are some years where the Ducks open up with a Division II or an FCS opponent. No disrespect to Portland State, who the Ducks get in a couple weeks from now, but those just aren’t … You spend nine months kind of waiting to see this team, and then you don’t quite see them on a challenging playing field. The Ducks are significantly more talented than Boise. I think the prediction is like a three or four touchdown line for this one, and I think that should be accurate if both teams play at their best.
But if you look back two years ago, the Ducks played Boise in a similar game like this. I think it was week two or week three, and it ended up being a game that was decided in the fourth quarter. Boise made the playoffs that year too.
So the hardest thing in college football right now, with all of the transfers and everything moving around as you talked about, it’s so much harder to predict other teams. That’s kind of part of the fun of college football right now, is because you can say the schedule looks hard, but you really might not know until we start playing the games.
Miller: Tyson, thanks very much.
Alger: Absolutely, thank you.
Miller: Tyson Alger covers U of O athletics for Lookout Eugene-Springfield. He joined us to talk about the Oregon Ducks football season. It starts tomorrow.
“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.
If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.
