Oregon walked out of Stillwater with more questions than answers after Saturday’s loss at Oklahoma State, and the No. 21 Ducks now have a growing list of problems to sort through.
The biggest one starts up front. Before the season, Dan Lanning talked as if Oregon had eight linemen who could start, with the staff sorting out the best five.
Two games in, that idea looks shaky. The Ducks struggled to create room for Dierre Hill Jr. and Jordon Davison, managed only 90 rushing yards on 30 carries, and are now averaging 104.5 rushing yards per game at 3.8 yards per carry.
That’s a steep drop from last season’s 198.6-yard average on the ground, a stretch that included nine Big Ten games and three College Football Playoff games. Oregon also gave up five sacks.
The issues weren’t limited to the offensive line. With Jamari Johnson sidelined, Oregon dressed freshman offensive lineman Tommy Tofi in a No. 80 jersey to function as what amounted to the nation’s largest blocking tight end.
It was a notable wrinkle, but it also underscored the Ducks’ thin depth at the position. Redshirt freshman Andrew Olesh made his first catch of the season, and freshman Kendre Harrison saw action too, but neither gave Oregon much as a run blocker.
On a key fourth-down snap in the fourth quarter, Dante Moore rolled right, Olesh got driven back toward him after engaging the edge defender, and the play ended with a bad throw.
Defensively, Oregon never got comfortable. The Ducks produced no sacks against Drew Mestemaker after opening the season with three against Boise State, and they managed just one tackle for loss. That’s a bad sign for a front that features four future NFL draft picks and was expected to live in the backfield.
The red zone problems from last week carried over, too. Oregon’s only real stop inside the 20 came on Devon Jackson’s pick-six.
Outside of that, Oklahoma State scored on six of seven red-zone trips. Boise State had gone four-for-four the week before.
That means opponents have scored on 10 of 11 red-zone possessions against Oregon, a 90.9% rate. Last season, opponents scored on 88.9% of their red-zone chances, which ranked the Ducks 118th nationally in red-zone defense scoring percentage.
Mestemaker had plenty of time to work, and he made Oregon pay. He completed 26 of 43 passes for 317 yards and two touchdowns, with both interceptions coming on tipped balls.
Without much pressure on the quarterback, the Ducks needed more from their secondary and didn’t get it. Wyatt Young was a major problem, catching five passes for 152 yards and a touchdown.
The offense didn’t help matters either. Oregon’s struggles kept its defense on the field for 36 minutes and 54 seconds, while Oklahoma State’s defense was out there for 23:06. The Ducks gave up 554 total yards, which helped explain why Lanning chose to go for it on fourth down twice in the second half.
Jackson was one of the few bright spots. Teammates and coaches call him the team’s fastest player, and he showed why early.
He saved a touchdown by chasing down Mestemaker on a 75-yard run to the Oregon 3-yard line in the first quarter, then flipped the game with a 96-yard interception return for a touchdown in the second quarter to put Oregon ahead 7-3. He finished with seven tackles, second on the team behind Jerry Mixon’s nine.
There were a couple of positives on special teams and at receiver. Punter Bailey Ettridge is making a strong early case as an All-American, backing up last week’s 48-yard average on three punts against Boise State by averaging 52.6 yards on five punts against Oklahoma State. His longest went 67 yards.
At wideout, freshman Messiah Hampton started to find a role, catching three passes for 31 yards with a long of 20. That was more production than Jeremiah McClellan, who had one catch for 20 yards after exploding for 150 yards and a touchdown on six receptions in last week’s win over Boise State.
And that leads to one more lingering question: where is Gatlin Bair? The freshman speedster, who ran 100 meters in 10.15 seconds in high school, still hasn’t made much of a mark. Oregon could probably use a shot of that kind of speed soon.
In Other News...
Dan Lanning Pushes Back On Oregon's Simplest Loss Narrative
The final offensive series will get replayed plenty after Oregons 39-31 loss to Oklahoma State, especially the fumble by Dierre Hill Jr. that stalled the Ducks at the worst possible time. But Dan Lanning was quick to push back on the idea that the game can be reduced to one play, pointing instead to a broader offensive effort that never found enough consistency to pull the Ducks through.
Hill still gave Oregon useful production with 74 rushing yards on 15 carries and two catches for 8 yards, but the bigger picture was harder to ignore. Lanning pointed to problems up front and an uneven passing day from Dante Moore as part of a larger offensive struggle, which is why the postgame conversation in Eugene is less about a single turnover and more about how many things needed to go right for the Ducks that simply did not. [Read more 🡒]
Oregon Film Raised Two Lineup Questions Fans Should Watch Closely
The latest game film offered a useful window into how Oregon managed a roster that was not entirely settled before kickoff. Several players carried questionable or probable tags, and that uncertainty showed up in the way the Ducks handled snap counts, especially along the offensive line and in the defensive backfield. There was a substitution at left guard after the first quarter, while the secondary continued to cycle through different looks as the staff worked through matchups and performance-driven changes.
The bigger takeaway for Oregon fans is that the Ducks were not just filling in gaps, they were also sorting out how best to deploy players in real time. Defensive backs stayed in strict positional assignments, even as rotations stayed active and some players shifted to different spots. The heat added another layer to those decisions, making personnel management part of the game plan as much as scheme, and leaving a couple of lineup questions worth watching closely going forward. [Read more 🡒]
Arkansas Is About To See How Big This Week 3 Test Really Is
Week 2 gave college football plenty of movement at the top, and Oregon was part of the churn even without a statement win of its own. Texas rallied past Ohio State, Michigan took down Oklahoma and the Ducks came out of their loss to Oklahoma State with plenty of questions still attached, especially as the early AP Top 25 picture starts to settle around what teams have actually done on the field.
That makes the next test even more meaningful for Arkansas, which is about to learn just how much this Week 3 matchup can reshape the conversation around both programs. With the projected poll already sorting contenders from pretenders based on recent results, Oregons standing and the stakes around its next opponent are all tied together now, and the coming week should show whether last Saturday was a bump in the road or something more concerning. [Read more 🡒]