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Oregon Ducks vs UCLA Bruins Football Recap

Oregon 60, UCLA 13

Forget for a moment how mediocre the UCLA Bruins were on Thursday night in Eugene, Oregon. The team that beat them is quite accomplished. More importantly, it shows no signs of slowing down despite a number of bumps and bruises endured earlier in the month of October.

Indeed, the biggest story from the Oregon Ducks’ 47-point thumping of Rick Neuheisel’s Bruins was that the UO offense continued to him when there was reason to suspect it wouldn’t. Starting quarterback Darron Thomas got knocked out of Oregon’s most recent game at Washington State on Oct. 9, and backup Nate Costa had to fill in for him. Backup running back and return specialist Kenjon Barner was injured in the Wazzu game and could not play against UCLA. One certainly didn’t expect Oregon’s thermonuclear offense to grind to a halt, but one also didn’t figure that the Ducks would soar as they customarily do. Yet, it is undeniably true that coach Chip Kelly’s spread option offense took flight once more at Autzen Stadium.

The extent of the Ducks’ domination was as considerable as the final margin of victory suggested. On a night when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar made the trip to the Pacific Northwest to see his alma mater try to knock off the No. 1 team in the Associated Press poll, the big giant received a dose of disappointment that reduced him to stunned silence in his luxury-box suite.

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Oregon swamped UCLA from beginning to end. The Ducks’ first statement – which set the tone for the rest of the proceedings – came very early. On UO’s opening possession, the Ducks merely drove 90 yards for a touchdown in one minute and 56 seconds. Oregon scored on all five of its first-half possessions en route to a 32-3 lead at the intermission. The Ducks never held the ball for more than three minutes and 37 seconds in a single possession. They racked up 582 yards in balanced fashion, with 312 yards coming through the air and 270 arriving on the ground. Thomas completed a snappy 22-of-31 passes (a little more than two-thirds) for 308 yards and three touchdowns without a pick. Running back LaMichael James bolted for 123 yards on 20 carries for a tidy average of just over six yards a pop, with two touchdowns to boot. There was no phase of this game in which Oregon didn’t dominate.

The Bruins’ sad-sack status was validated when they were trailing 15-0 in the first half. While Oregon was regularly scoring within three minutes each time it got the ball, UCLA laboriously inched the ball downfield and, after seven minutes, faced a fourth-and-three at the Oregon 7. Neuheisel, realizing how potent Oregon’s offense was, simply had to go for the first down in the larger effort to try to get a touchdown, but instead, the UCLA boss kicked a field goal. While the Bruins’ seven-minute drives produced three points, UO’s three-minute drives (and those were the long ones for the Ducks, who pieced together multiple scoring drives of under 90 seconds) produced seven points. That pretty much told the story on a lopsided Thursday in the Willamette Valley.

By Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer