The No. 9 Oregon football team goes on the road for the first time this season when the Ducks play at rival Oregon State on Saturday in Reser Stadium at 12:30 p.m. The Ducks bring a 2-0 record into the game, with wins over Idaho and Boise State at home to open the season. The Beavers also are 2-0, having opened the season with a win at home over Idaho State before going on the road to shut out San Diego State last week. Oregon leads the all-time series between the two, 68-49-10, including 31-24-3 in Corvallis. But the two teams have split the last four matchups in the series, and OSU has won three of the last four at home. Saturday's game will be televised by FOX, with Jason Benetti handling play by play, Brock Huard providing analysis and Allison Williams reporting from the sidelines. Some storylines to watch once the game kicks off …
1. Each of the last two weeks Oregon has won a game on Saturday, then dropped in the Associated Press top 25 the following Monday. The Ducks themselves know they could be playing better, and they'll look for cleaner, more consistent execution on both sides of the ball this week.
"If you walked away with anything big from the game," UO coach Dan Lanning said earlier this week when looking back at the win over Boise State, "I think what I noticed for us offensively is when we had a negative play or a penalty, those drives didn't lead to scores. So that's where it really starts.
"Defensively, when we give up an explosive play, a lot of those drives did lead to scores. So if you can look at it really simple, those are the things that we have to attack and improve on."
Of course, there are myriad small details that tend to go into those breakdowns. The Ducks tried to attack those details in practice this week, for the sake of a better success rate play to play beginning Saturday.
2. After playing the same offensive line unit throughout the season-opening win over Idaho, the Ducks rotated consistently throughout the Boise State game. Nishad Strother entered the lineup at guard, and both Charlie Pickard and Iapani Laloulu got reps at center.
The Duck have a couple potential contributors who have been limited due to injuries in Matthew Bedford and Dave Iuli, who hopefully are close to entering the competition for reps. Until then?
"We'll continue to work to figure out what's the best group, knowing that it might not just be one group that plays along the offensive line for us," Lanning said. "Until people get healthy, it may continue to look different. We're gonna have to keep challenging ourselves to figure out what that looks like."
3. Oregon State has a new head coach in Trent Bray. But as far as the team's style of play, the Ducks expect to see the same tough brand of physical football the Beavers have played in recent years.
"I think they still have a lot of the similar identity to what they've been as a team there in the past," Lanning said. "They're willing to get big and run the ball."
OSU lost running back Damien Martinez to the transfer portal over the offseason, but Jam Griffin and Anthony Hankerson have combined for 475 rushing yards with six touchdowns through two games. And the portal brought to Corvallis quarterback Gevani McCoy — a guy the Ducks were already studying over the offseason, because he came to OSU from Idaho.
"He's really elusive, he's really athletic, he throws the ball well," Lanning said. "He's a good player."
4. With the Ducks battling some inconsistencies on offense and defense last week, special teams came through in a big way against Boise State.
Oregon got an 85-yard punt return for a touchdown from Tez Johnson plus a 100-yard kickoff return by Noah Whittington — who no doubt was coached up on carrying the ball across the goal line this week, after Jayden Limar had to pick up a fumble for the kickoff return to result in a UO touchdown last week.
The Ducks are the only power conference team in the country to have touchdowns via both punt return and kickoff return so far this season. More of the same will always be welcome.
"I always want to focus on special teams," Lanning said. "I'd love to be able to win games because of special teams."
5. In some ways, this will be a strange year in the history of the Oregon-OSU rivalry. No longer are they meeting as conference foes, after the Ducks' departure for the Big Ten.
But if anything, that could make for an even more frenzied atmosphere in Corvallis. And the Ducks are certainly ready for heightened emotions.
"This is a fun game for the state of Oregon," Lanning said. "It's certainly a fun game for our players. I think they know exactly what it means — it means a little bit more. So is it another game? Yeah, it's another game. Is it important for us? It's very important for us. Our guys want to go out there and have success."
