One of the big questions, or it should have been a big question, overlooked going into the Washington game was how well the Ducks would do with their new running back duo.
Bucky Irving was a known commodity and it was assumed he would do well, but Jordan James is now the Robin to Irving’s Batman with Noah Whittington out for the season. The new duo debuted against Stanford, but that was against the worst team in the Pac-12. Not a lot could be read from it.
But Washington was a huge step up. Irving and James did so well that possibly they could have been relied upon even more, especially in those fourth down play that failed.
Overall, Irving had 22 carries for 127 yards and a touchdown, while James had about half that, 11 carries for 64 yards and a score. But it was that one James touchdown that showed he probably should have received the rock a little more and hopefully he does in the next game against Washington State.
In the box score it says, “ORE – James,Jordan 10 yd run (Lewis,Camden kick), 6 plays, 80 yards, TOP 02:50.” That doesn’t tell you the story. It was a straight run up the middle and once he break through the line, James carried about four Husky defenders five yards into the end zone. It was a run reminiscent of a Marshawn Lynch rush, something that even Washington fans can appreciate.
In those three fourth down calls that on two of them, Oregon should have taken the almost-sure three points, neither back, Irving or James, got the ball. Giving the ball to Bo Nix is a pretty good option as well as head coach Dan Lanning trusts his quarterback implicitly, but if you are going to take the risk, maybe showing faith in your big offensive line and bruiser type of a back could be the way to go on at least one of those calls.
Hindsight is always 20/20 and the Monday morning quarterback in all of us tends to come out. Those decisions didn’t go Oregon’s way and one can only hope Lanning learns from the mistakes one day.
On lesser teams, decisions like those could lose a team quickly and the season could fall off a cliff. Look at Colorado where after getting pounded in Eugene, that team hasn’t recovered.
According to Nix, who’s an actual quarterback and not one of the millions of Monday morning ones, he thinks the criticisms of Lanning are unwarranted.
“It’s unfair because in the past game should we have punted when we got it,” he said. “Probably not, so you can’t go back and second guess it and wish you had done something different. It’s part of coaching, it’s part of football. You can’t expect everything to go your way.
Lanning hasn’t lost his team. Quite the opposite. Those players will run through a brick wall for that guy and that is half the battle in football. He trusts the players and the players trust him. That will lead to a lot of victories and championships in the future.
Perhaps sooner than you think. After an instant classic such as that, one has to think Oregon and Washington is on a collision course to Vegas where a second helping of this rivalry this season would be as epic as the first.
But this time, the good guys will come out on top.