Good Luck Ducks, Week 10: Under the Microscope

Oregon heads to the bright lights of the big city to take on Southern California. 

Taking a moment away from the ridiculousness of sports here, Southern California has been on fire lately. And not the good kind of fire. No emojis here. I can't even imagine how difficult it would be to care about a game of college football at USC right now with all of the things that actually matter that are happening right now. It's scary stuff.

In less important news, Oregon heads into tonight's road game with a shiny new #7 ranking. Their high wire act continued for the second straight week, as they gave up a go ahead touchdown to their recent nemesis Washington State before managing to scramble down the field in less than a minute to kick a game winning (freshman!) field goal. It was stunning, and nerve-wracking, and all of the other descriptive words. With four games left on the conference schedule, the idea of competing for a playoff spot still seems a bit premature, but the microscope is starting to examine this team.

The Trojans pose a similar threat as last week's Cougars did in that they have a massive passing attack (supposedly a version of the "Air Raid" that Mike Leach favors) with an even more talented receiving corps. Of course, talent has never been an issue at USC. The question will be whether or not Oregon can prove themselves yet again that they're at the top of the class in the Pac-12 (and possibly the country.) It sounds like another nail-biter, but it should be fun to watch nevertheless.

• The Last Game: The Ducks continued their dominant running attack, but gave up a crushing late drive that could have given them their first conference loss. A quick strike put them into field goal position where freshman kicker Camden Lewis walked off with a huge win to break a four season losing streak to the Cougs.
• Know Your Opponent: USC wants to put the pedal to the metal, which make sense against the Ducks prickly defense.
• The Unis!: White with yellow pants and yellow helmet. Is it weird that I'm starting to prefer the usually boring road look?
• Mario Cristobal's "Crystal Ball: prediction: "This is the most important game of the year, because it’s our next game." Most likely.

• Luke Skyywalker's Crystal Balls say: Well, I can't really vouch for this website or this nine year old link, but let's just say that Luke has some interesting ideas about using Trojans. When I say S, you say E, when I say X, you say sex!

Game time is 5:00 PM PDT on FOX. GUS JOHNSON, Joel Klatt and Jenny Taft are on the call. Go Ducks... er, in Gus's case... GO DUCKS!