I, for one, did not enjoy seeing the Washington Huskies come up short on the road. And they came up short in a rather big way. The Huskies fell behind early as the Ducks claimed a 28-6 lead and there was really no coming back from that.
Washington could not go score-for-score when taking on the best team in the country. Despite showing some promise at times, UW’s offense wasn’t able to sustain success throughout this game as the Ducks’ defense figured out the Huskies’ tendencies and had the talent to exploit vulnerabilities up front.
A lot of this 49-21 loss is the result of talent being heavily accumulated on one side of this matchup. A lot of this 49-21 loss had to do with the fact that Oregon just simply didn’t make many mistakes in this game. And when Washington did have an error of some persuasion, the Ducks took advantage.
I said it a bit in the preseason that I thought Dan Lanning had assembled an SEC-like team out on the West Coast as he built this Oregon roster. I think that’s confirmed here. His team heavily resembles some of those championship Alabama and Georgia rosters that were steamrolling folks a few years ago.
So, it shouldn’t shock anyone that they’re now heading on to the Big Ten championship game. Meanwhile, Washington will go on to a bowl game. I’ve got some thoughts here on this mess of a contest.
3 thoughts on Washington Huskies’ 28-point road defeat by the Oregon Ducks
Let’s go over them, shall we?
No. 1: Oregon’s pass rush absolutely obliterated UW’s offensive line
This was a major problem. I don’t know how Jedd Fisch and the Huskies are going to fix this and I’m glad Demond Williams Jr. is mobile, but he wasn’t mobile enough to avoid everything that Oregon threw at him in their pass rush. 10 sacks. That’s a problem. And I suspect it’s going to be a point of emphasis in the transfer portal, but I really don’t know. I hope it’s something that gets fixed in a hurry.
No. 2: The Huskies couldn’t run the ball at all, but that’s not shocking
Hey, look, No. 1 and No. 2 are tangentially related. Oregon had no problems pushing Washington’s offensive line around Saturday evening. That led to an astonishing 16 tackles for loss for the Ducks defense.
Washington simply could not get any push up front and that was a huge contributing factor in this loss. If UW is going to build its offense by running the ball first, then we’ve got to see the Huskies able to consistently run the ball. It wasn’t shocking that Oregon was able to take advantage of the issues up front, they’ve got the defensive talent to do that. But it was frustrating.
No. 3: There’s a sizable gap between these programs right now that didn’t exist a season ago
This is frustrating and there’s no quick fix to this, I suspect. Losing all that Washington lost (from the coaching staff to the players that left via the transfer portal to the folks who made it onto the NFL) made this a true rebuild situation.
And while I appreciate that Jedd Fisch is great at rebuilds, we need to be honest about the state of this program and where the Ducks are. Expectations need to be managed and we need to give Fisch some time to truly get this thing going in the right direction. Hopefully we see this team take a step forward next season.
The bowl practices and the young key contributors on this roster should help accomplish just that, but we’ll see how it all plays out. It’s certainly plausible that it takes into year three before we see a huge leap forward. That’s when Arizona really improved under Fisch. Granted, Washington is better now than Arizona was when Fisch was hired there, but still. It might take a little time.