Good Luck Ducks, Week 8: Grrrr

Oregon looks to bounce back on the east coast.

It was a rough one last week as the Ducks saw a number of winning streaks snapped as they fell to the Indiana Hoosiers. I'm probably going to sound like a jerk when I say this, although it's not me who has to worry about giving credit where it's due: I thought Oregon played pretty poorly last week. It's not that I don't think Indiana has a talented team, but I thought that game was more about the Ducks losing focus after a week off than it was about the Hoosiers beating them. Fortunately, we live in a new era where one loss doesn't have to tank your whole season.

Next up on the docket is an appointment with the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. This is just Oregon's second season of having to cross over several time zones to play some of the conference schedule, so it's probably not something they're fully used to yet. Do schools with ridiculously large football budgets fly on commercial jets? Do they fly coach? There's, like, one hundred guys on these rosters. How do they fit them all on the plane? I know that not every player travels to road games, especially those that weren't planning to suit up.

It's a homecoming (already?!) game for Rutgers, who are also planning a light show before kickoff. Spoooooky. The Scarlet Knights have not beaten a ranked team in almost sixteen years, but they'll be led by a ground attack by Antwan Raymond, who has racked up 560 yards at the midpoint of the regular season. The Ducks run the ball quite a bit as well, but they tend to spread the ball around to a lot of different players.

Notes and miscellany: 

• Rutgers joined the Big Ten a little over a decade ago, but if I had to name all eighteen teams in the conference now, I'd probably struggle to fill out the complete list and could see them being left off. Well... maybe not if you asked me today!
• Opponent fun fact: The Scarlet Knights did inspire the naming of a robotic submersible that once crossed the Atlantic Ocean.
• Opponent history: This is the first ever football meeting between these schools. Oregon did beat Rutgers on the basketball court earlier this year in their first matchup in nearly 40 years.
• Game time is 3:30 PM PDT on the B1G Network in Piscataway. Go Ducks!