Grace under pressure: as he entered the tunnel after the game he patted an equipment manager on the shoulder and gave the crowd a “Hang Loose” sign. Marcus Mariota is the best quarterback in college football, and it isn’t even close (James Snook-USA TODAY Sports photo.)
Turns out Aaron Fentress was right. The Ducks do have serious flaws, but as long as they have Marcus Mariota, they may continue to find ways to escape them.
Oregon is 2-0 right now. Mariota won the other two. Tonight he outlasted the Washington State Cougars with a brilliant performance under relentless pressure. Working behind a patchwork offensive line that featured a true freshman and a walk-on at the tackles, WSU sacked him 7 times, but Oregon’s all-time leader at quarterback kept finding ways to beat it. In the third quarter he dashed out of the pocket and scrambled for 28 yards on 4th and 10. One play later he hit a wide-open Pharaoh Brown for an 8-yard touchdown and a 28-21 lead.
In the 4th quarter with the score tied 31-31 he faced 2nd and 16 after a sack. Mariota rolled right away from pressure and hit Byron Marshall right between the numbers near the left sideline for 18 yards and a first down. Later in the same drive he faced 3rd and 5, finding Marshall again for 16 yards and another first down.
Two plays later he tossed the winning touchdown, his fifth of the night, 6 yards to Keanon Lowe.
Mariota iced the game on Oregon’s last drive with a gutsy 27-yard completion to Brown on 3rd and 1, a terrific play call by Scott Frost, who got the offense going in the second half with quick throws, designed rollouts and quick-hitting runs.
But it was Mariota’s icy-calm improvisations that kept getting the Ducks out of jams.
In the first half the Ducks could get little going with the offensive line giving up five sacks and negating big plays with untimely penalties, but Mariota kept them in the game with big plays, connecting with redshirt freshman Devon Allen for an 80-yard score, Keanon Lowe for 57 and a TD, Allen for 13 and his fifth score of the season, tieing him with freshman Royce Freeman for the team lead.
Oregon’s Heisman Trophy candidate was flawless, 21-25 passing for 329 yards and five touchdowns. Even with the sacks, he ran 13 times for 58 yards, including crucial big plays on keepers, the longest for 41 yards. One of his best plays was an incompletion. In the second quarter three Cougars had him wrapped up for a sack, but Mariota somehow had the arm strength to throw it away and save the yardage. He hit Allen for the 13-yard TD on the next play.
His exceptional cool and consistency gave the Ducks a win they couldn’t have earned any other way.
Don Pellum’s defense was porous all night. They got no pressure on Connor Halliday, hurt themselves with shoddy tackling and lost one-on-one battles with receivers. Oregon rushed three throughout and Halliday had time to pick apart the secondary. They didn’t get a sack until Tony Washington bullrushed through the tackle on 4th and 13 on the Cougs last offensive play.
The play before, on 3rd and 13, Dior Mathis got away with a glaring pass interference penalty, one that would have set the Cougars up near the 20. Victimized by illegal screens by the wide receivers, pushing off and ticky-tack calls all night, it seemed like justice.
It added up to just the kind of lucky escape a national championship contender might need once a season.
But unless the Ducks get healthy and make some serious adjustments, those dreams won’t remain viable very long. They have an extraordinarily well-timed bye week before hosting Arizona on Thursday night October 2nd. The Wildcats Anu Solomon had 520 yards passing tonight in their wild come-from-behind victory over Cal, won on a Hail Mary on the last snap of the game. They scored 36 points in the 4th quarter to win 49-45.