No. 3 Oregon Ducks Football Team To Face Banged-Up No. 12 UCLA
The undefeated Oregon Ducks welcome the UCLA Bruins in primetime college football action this Saturday. As the highest ranked opponent they’ve faced, UCLA represents Oregon’s biggest test so far in 2013.
Cruising after a 62-38 pounding of PAC-12 North rival Washington State, the Ducks are visited a Bruins team missing a few key components, namely tackles Simon Goines and Torian White, plus RB Jordon James has missed two games after being injured against Utah. In Oregon, they face a defense allowing the 12th fewest points (17.3) and an offense scoring the 2nd-most points per game (57.6).
With the top two teams facing unranked opponents, the Oregon Ducks need to stay impressive against UCLA to maintain their spot in the BCS Standings; conversely, can a strong showing against the Bruins could move the Ducks up a spot or two? Oregon is being given a comfortable 24-point spread by the football sportsbooks.
Oregon will need sophomore QB Marcus Mariota to keep up his performance under center and get sophomore RB Byron Marshall the football to add to his 9 rushing TDs on the year. That may be more difficult than they hope.
In facing UCLA’s outside LB Anthony Barr, Oregon LT Tyler Johnstone is reminded of former teammate Dion Jordan, last year’s third-overall NFL draft pick.
“I’ve seen him throw dudes to the ground,” Johnstone said to The Oregonian. “He’s really good at ripping with his hands.”
Johnstone sums the Bruins as “the most talented, most athletic defense we’ve faced all year,” when surveying Barr’s fellow LBs Myles Jack, Jordan Zumwalt and Eric Kendricks.
Defensively, the Ducks need to exploit the holes on the Bruins’ O-Line to get to sophomore QB Brett Hundley early and often.
With Stanford’s loss to Utah, Oregon and Oregon State remain the only undefeated PAC-12 football teams.
So, yeah. Got this voicemail Friday. Didn’t leave a name or number. But this dude was NOT a fan of the pink helmets: https://t.co/CiFTPfd7XB
— Rob Moseley (@DuckFootball) October 21, 2013
In other Oregon football news, apparently not everyone was a fan of the pink helmets the Ducks wore to raise money and cancer awareness in the Washington State win. Per his tweet, Rob Moseley, editor of GoDucks.com, received a nastygram last week in a voice mail that could be called silly and uninformed at it’s best and bafflingly ignorant and homophobic at its worst. Choice words from the recording include that the anonymous caller almost “barfed” when he learned the Ducks football players will be “feminize[d]” with the pink helmets and that Washington State would “razz” them because in the “the liberal capitol of the United States,” “none of you Oregon men probably have any gonads.”
What do you think of the Oregon Ducks football season? What do you think of the voice mail left by an angry Oregon Ducks fan? Did you like the Oregon Ducks’ pink helmets?
