7 major takeaways from No. 8 Oregon’s demolishing 35-6 win over No. 13 Utah

If there were any doubts about how good this Oregon Ducks team can be going into Saturday, there shouldn’t be anymore.

After a non-conference slate that featured very few major tests, and a loss in their biggest game so far this year up in Seattle, Dan Lanning and the Ducks faced a major test in Week 9, traveling to a hostile Salt Lace City environment to take on the No. 13 Utah Utes, a team that almost never loses at home.

It’s hard to picture things going any better for the Ducks.

They jumped out to an early lead, and leaned on a suffocating defense to keep the Utes out of the endzone for the entire game, going on to a dominant 35-6 win. It gave us a clear front-runner in the Pac-12 Conference, a clear-cut candidate for the Heisman Trophy, and a ton of answered questions about who this Oregon team really is.

Here are some of our biggest takeaways from the game:

Bo Nix Does it Again

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Rather than me taking over and talking about Bo Nix once again, I’m going to let Dan Lanning take the wheel. He said it better than I ever could on Saturday night.

“I’m going to say it again, Bo Nix is the best quarterback in the nation just to be really clear,” Lanning said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. And again, it’s not just the plays he makes on the field, I think a lot of people talk about chasing stats and all these things, this guy just plays consistent. He gets us in the right calls, he comes to the sideline and helps us through adjustments. He tells us what he sees. He’s an unbelievable person. When you have a good team like we have, and we have a quarterback like we have, that’s a special recipe for success.”

Nix was elite once again on Saturday, going 24-for-31 for 248 yards and 2 touchdowns, while adding one rushing TD on the ground. At one point in the game, Nix was 14-for-15 passing with 142 yards and 2 touchdowns, with the only incompletion coming from a blatant Troy Franklin drop that ruined what should have been a 45-yard touchdown in the first quarter.

It’s hard to be much better than that, though Nix wouldn’t agree with that statement.

“I would say that I’ve got a lot to improve on,” Nix said after the game. “I don’t think it was necessarily one of my most complete games. I felt like there’s still some out there, I felt like I could still take advantage of. But all that matters is we won the game.”

Coming into the game, Nix was among the second tier of Heisman candidates, trailing guys like Michael Penix Jr., J.J. McCarthy, and Jayden Daniels. After yet another incredibly solid performance — Nix hasn’t had a game with fewer than 245 yards and 2 TD all season — it’s becoming clear that Nix is one of, if not the best QB in the nation.

With a signature win now under his belt in the 2023 season, don’t be surprised to see him listed at the top of some Heisman boards going forward.

Dominant Defense

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Oregon’s defense might have been better than their offense on Saturday, and that’s really saying something.

Of course, the Utes aren’t known for having an offense that is among the best in the nation, but what the Ducks did, holding Utah out of the endzone for the entire game, should not go without notice.

Oregon held Utah to just 241 total yards, including 99 total rushing yards. They intercepted Bryson Barnes twice, forced five punts, and held the Utes to a 3rd down conversion rate of 33% (5-for-15). While Oregon only had 2 sacks on the day, they got after Barnes early and often and forced several inaccurate throws. It won’t go down as the defining performance of the season because there is notable skepticism about the Utes’ offense, but it was as impressive as a game as we’ve seen from Tosh Lupoi’s unit all season.

Improved Execution

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There has been a lot of criticism from Oregon fans over the past couple of weeks when it comes to play-calling and execution from the Ducks’ offense, particularly in down-and-distance and redzone situations.

Both of those things were incredibly clean on Saturday.

The Ducks converted 5-of-10 third downs in the game, with three of those conversions going for 19 yards, and one going for 20 yards. The Ducks rarely got into a position where they needed to convert in a late-down situation, but when they did, they usually found chunk plays.

Meanwhile, the redzone offense was much improved for Oregon as well. The Ducks made five trips into the redzone and scored a touchdown on all five trips.

Both of those areas of the game have been under some scrutiny over the past few weeks, but Will Stein and the offense delivered vs. Utah’s great defense.

Secondary Physicality

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While the Oregon defense looks better than it has in several years, what struck me the most watching them on Saturday was how physical the secondary players have become. The tackling has improved across the board, and it’s been the safeties and cornerbacks who have stepped up the most in that regard.

Cornerback Jahlil Florence led Oregon with 9 tackles on Saturday; safety Evan Williams added 7, and cornerback Khyree Jackson added 5 more. It’s pretty rare that defensive backs end up as your top three leading tacklers, especially when playing against a run-heavy squad like Utah.

Whether it’s cornerback blitzes or Williams flying across the field to try and take an opposing player’s head off, it left me with this impression on Saturday:

If you know, you know.

This secondary is mean, and they’re fun to watch. That’s a great development in Eugene, especially when you have guys like Brandon Dorlus, Jordan Burch, Jeffrey Bassa, and Jestin Jacobs holding down the front 7.

Getting Over the Road Hump

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Coming into Saturday, Oregon had zero wins in their last six games on the road against top-25 opponents. Their last victory over a ranked team on the road came against No. 3 Ohio State back in September of 2021.

It was fair to say that the Ducks had a problem with getting the job done on the road.

It feels like they finally got over the hump vs. Utah.

So far in his young career, this will go down as Dan Lanning’s signature win as a head coach. He has wins over No. 12 BYU, No. 9 UCLA, and No. 10 Utah from 2022, and wins over No. 19 Colorado and No. 13 Utah in 2023. Though there will bigger games to come, the Ducks proved against the Utes that they have what it takes to play a complete game and beat a good team on the road.

Eliminating the Crowd

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While the stats and on-play performances will deservedly be the main focus for this game, I think one of the most important aspects of Oregon’s win came because they were able to jump out to an early lead, and completely take the crowd out of the game.

I highlighted the necessity for this all last week, predicting that the Ducks would take the ball rather than kick off to start the game, working to score as quick as possible and force Utah to play from behind, something they aren’t built to do.

That’s exactly what happened, and exactly what the Ducks aimed to do.

“We don’t generally take the ball. But we felt like this was a game we talked about bringing the fight, right,” Lanning said. “We knew this was gonna be about a 15-rounder, and we wanted to set the tone early. We felt good about our openers, we felt good about our team and we said, Let’s go be aggressive. And you know, that’s the way the game started. And I think that just really set the tone for the rest of the game for us.”

Utah is an elite team at home. Coming into Saturday, they had won 18 straight games at Rice-Eccles Stadium, and 29 of their last 30 games at home. A big reason behind that is the crowd noise that makes it such a hostile environment. The Ducks negated that crowd noise early on Saturday, and never let it become a factor.

Upset Losses Elsewhere

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The Ducks are in a position where they control their own destiny. If they win out and claim the Pac-12 title, then they should have a spot in the College Football Playoff — should being the operative word.

That “should” got a little bit more emphatic on Saturday, with No. 6 Oklahoma losing to unranked Kansas, knocking them out of the top 10. On top of that, the view of Washington weakened once again on Saturday night as they got pushed to the brink by Stanford, arguably the worst team in the Pac-12. They ended up getting a victory, but not by their own accord.

The Ducks will likely move up to No. 6 or No. 7 in the nation on Sunday, and they still have a clear path to the conference title and CFP. That path just got a little bit easier to see on Saturday.

Story originally appeared on Ducks Wire