Good Luck Ducks, Week 8: Freaky Friday

Oregon faces Cal on a Friday night. 

After nearly two weeks to think about what they've done, the Ducks will attempt to pick up the pieces tonight in Berkeley as they take on the California Golden Bears. The snowball effect reared its ugly head upon the Oregon season a couple of weekends ago when the Ducks were crushed by Washington 70-21, thus ending their long winning streak against the rivals to the north. 70 to 21? Is that even a real score? True freshman Justin Herbert got the start last week under center for the first time in his young career, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly what he did. Last week's loss was that horrifying. With absolutely no semblance of a defense and a string of turnovers at the worst possible points in play, a green QB is the least of Oregon's problems.

For the fourth straight time, Oregon will attempt to turn the page and put one in the win column. This week's opponent has a powerful offense, but with Jared Goff off to ride the pines for the Rams, it's been considered by most to be a rebuilding year for the Cal Bears. Oregon State, for example, picked up their first conference win since 2014 by stopping Cal in OT, so you would expect this game to rate fairly low on the difficulty scale. Of course, the Ducks haven't been able to get out of their own way since the season officially changed over to fall. With an extra near-week to prepare, it will be interesting to see what kind of Ducks team shows up. I don't expect a lot of defense, but a renewed focus on offense and a commitment to hanging on to the football at least would be a nice start.


Oregon won ugly in Berkeley in 2010, which certainly wouldn't be a bad result tonight. Remember Versus?
Game time is 7:30 PDT with national coverage on ESPN. Go Ducks!