Oregon football's keys to the game: What the Ducks can do to beat Hawaii

After a thrilling, come-from-behind victory against Texas Tech last weekend, the No. 13 Oregon football team will get a chance to catch its breath back at home in Autzen Stadium Saturday against Hawaii.

The game will kickoff around 5 p.m. (Pac-12 Networks), as the Ducks (2-0) take on the Rainbow Warriors (1-2) in their final nonconference tune-up before Pac-12 play.

Hawaii opened its season a week early and has an extra game on the Ducks, opening with a 35-28 road loss to Vanderbilt. The Rainbow Warriors then lost at home to Stanford, 37-24, before beating Albany 31-20 last week.

Here are three keys to an Oregon victory Saturday.

Tighten the screws on penalties

More than anything, Saturday’s game against Hawaii should be an opportunity for the Ducks to put the mistakes of last weekend's game behind them.

Oregon committed 14 penalties in the nail-biting, 38-30 win, and gave the Red Raiders six free first downs via penalty on defense.

That was step one when the Ducks reviewed film on Monday.

“Something we address first thing we put up in the front of our players is a penalty and then acknowledging how that drive finished when we add a penalty within that drive," Oregon head coach Dan Lanning said. "So false start, punt. False start, punt. False start, punt. Pass interference, touchdown. Pass interference, touchdown. So really just recognizing that we eliminate some really careless errors and figure out ways to drill those things in practice. It’s going to make us a completely different team.”

Oregon’s game against the Red Raiders was in stark contrast to a relatively clean performance against Portland State in Week 1, when the Ducks committed just two penalties, and had none in the first half.

On paper, the Ducks should be able to handle the Rainbow Warriors with relative ease, meaning tightening the screws on a couple of slip-ups last week could rebuild some confidence heading into the conference season next Saturday against Colorado at home.

Get the ground game into a rhythm

After an explosive outing against the Vikings in Week 1, the Oregon tailbacks had just 67 rushing yards on 22 carries against Texas Tech last week. Quarterback Bo Nix unlocked the run game a bit in the second half, with a game-high 44 yards, but the Duck running backs will be looking for a get-right game against a relatively weak run defense this week – giving up about 107 rushing yards per game.

“I thought our efficiency in some runs was really good and our efficiency in other runs was really bad,” Lanning said. “And I thought they had a great plan for a lot of our primary runs. You know, we’ve had a lot of success in the past with our counter plays. I thought they had some good schematic answers for that. Because for us we want to be set up for our play action shots and be able to, you know, move the ball in the field, we’re going to run the ball, and at times we didn’t do that as effective as we want to be able to do that on Saturday.”

The penalties played a part in that as well, with the Ducks often playing behind the chains, as well as the two-score deficit entering the fourth quarter.

In the fourth quarter, star tailback Bucky Irving had just one carry, and finished the game with 38 yards on 11 carries. Jordan James had four carries for eight yards and Noah Whittington had seven carries for 21 yards.

“Bucky’s a phenomenal player and he can touch the ball a bunch,” Lanning said. “We’re gonna play all of our backs. We have three really good backs … We’re going to use all the guys who can play for us at a really high level.”

Limit chunk plays on defense

While the Ducks went relatively unchallenged against Portland State defensively, the Red Raiders exposed an issue throughout the game in both their pass and run game.

On top of five 15-yard penalties on defense, Texas Tech had 14 plays go for 15 yards or more. Five of those went for more than 30 yards.

The defense has addressed those plays, along with the penalties, all week after a Monday film review.

“Just trying not to panic when one of those chunk plays happens,” safety Evan Williams said. “It’s obviously something you don’t want to give up, so sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the last play. You have to just let it go, that’s the motto of a good defense … this week we’ve done a good job of upping the tempo, that can make small things turn into big things. We’ve turned the tempo up and kept the communication high and kept our discipline in all facets of the ball.”

Hawaii is eighth nationally in college football when it comes to creating explosive plays, with 17 plays generating over 20 yards over three games. Oregon’s defense has given up nine such plays in two games.

“They air it out,” Lanning said. “They find ways. Their quarterback has probably the strongest arm as far as getting the ball down the field that we’ve seen so far this year, and they connect on deep shots … and it’s a very different scheme that what you see in other weeks as far as route distribution, how they read patterns and run the routes based off of your leverages, how shallow routes can convert to long deep routes or deep routes can come back.”

The Rainbow Warriors almost exclusively gets it done through the air, led by quarterback Brayden Schager. The junior has completed 62.5% of his passes through three games for 972 yards and 10 touchdowns with five interceptions.

On the receiving end, Pofele Ashlock has a team-high 19 catches for 315 yards and three scores, and Steven McBride has caught 17 passes for 210 yards and five touchdowns.

Alec Dietz covers University of Oregon football, women's basketball and baseball for The Register-Guard. You may reach him at adietz@registerguard.com, and you can follow him on Twitter @AlecDietz.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Oregon Ducks football keys to a win vs. Hawaii Rainbow Warriors