Good Luck Ducks, Week 2: Boise Battle

Oregon hosts a team from Idaho for the second straight week. 

 

Well, if you liked Idaho last week, get ready for plenty more of that tonight! Might Oregon plays host to Boise State tonight, though fortunately it will be on the home turf of Autzen Green instead of the questionably blue Smurf Turf. This week's game is expected to be a much tougher go than last week, where the Ducks were favored by something like 47 points but only really managed to put the game away in the final few minutes.

About last week: that was, uh, something, right? I have to confess that I was only able to watch a portion of the first half because I had tickets to a big Timbers match, and thanks to cable tv broadcast shenanigans, the game was blacked out on the Big Ten Network making it so I was unable to record the rest of it to watch at home later. Because of this, I'm not sure it's fair of me to assess how concerned I am about the team right now. I mean, they won, right?

I think these questions are why, more and more, I'm starting to having some issues with my personal college football fandom. It's the only thing I follow where a win isn't just a win. Margin of victory matters. Impressions matter. Opinions matter. It's all very silly. Can you imagine watching a baseball game, any game... even an important one... and not being satisfied with a win, no matter what the score? Hell, even the NFL makes more sense when it comes to this. I just watched the Eagles win last night in a back-and-forth, closely fought contest where they ended up winning by less than a touchdown. Do I think, after one game, that they're destined to go all the way? Not exactly. But! They won the game, so it feels good right now. I have watched too many college football games where my team won and I felt irritated (or worse) afterwards.

Let's do a vibe check, then. How concerned am I after the ten point win against the Idaho Vandals? Honestly, on a scale of one-to-ten, I'm proabably only at a two. It might have been a three or a four if there were some more key injuries, but I'm not really worried about it at all. The Boise State game was always going to be a bit of a challenge, and I am fairly certain that Dan Lanning and many other coaches are hesitant to open up the playbook in Week 1 against an opponent from a lower division, even if the game does get tight. I'm optimistic that the Ducks will show up in better form tonight.

Notes and such:

• No blackout issues are expected this week, as the game will be nationally streamed on Peacock. They have a bunch of games scheduled later this season on major broadcast networks like FOX, so I'm hopeful this won't end up being a repeated issue. It's just annoying that for the first time in my life I actually wanted to watch the Big Ten Network, they replaced all of the programming (even the postgame show!) with a weird looping documentary about the University of Oregon.
• Do they have any history at all? Oh yeah. The Broncos have won all three meetings between the schools, including the 2009 season opener that kicked off the Chip Kelly era with a famous postgame punch. That game would be the last time any visiting opponent would win a nonconference game in Eugene. The Ducks most recently lost the 2017 Las Vegas Bowl after Willie Taggart fled the ship he sunk like the rat he is.
• Dillon Gabriel (?) Heisman Watch: By all accounts, Gabriel wasn't the problem last week and his stats would seem to back that up. Of course, some of the most ridiculous quarterback stat lines have come in desperation, so it's at least comforting that Gabriel was able to put this in the win column.
• Game time is 7:00 PM PDT on Peacock in Eugene. Go Ducks!