Dillon Gabriel as Bo Nix 1.5
Dillon Gabriel as Bo Nix 1.5
This is the year.
This is the year. Dillon Gabriel has improved so much under this new offense. He's focused. He's having fun. I wouldn't be surprised if he's a dark horse for the Heisman.
Sorry, that was Bo Nix lore.
Forgive me, it’s been easy to get the two confused. The Ducks once again have the most experienced quarterback in college football who is once again operating an offense that’ll needle an opponent to death.
Or, from the text I sent to Shane Hoffmann Saturday after an Oregon touchdown drive that featured three plays — a pass for zero yards to Tez Johnson, a pass for negative two yards to Noah Whittington and a pass for 52 yards to Johnson.
“Paper cut. Paper cut. Sledgehammer.”
Feels a bit familiar, no?
Gabriel is no longer the Heisman frontrunner. Still, through a third of the Oregon Ducks regular season the former Oklahoma quarterback is doing the one thing many fans around Eugene expected out of him: He’s looking a heck of a lot like the guy he replaced.
Through four games, Gabriel has completed 82 percent of his passes, thrown for 1,192 yards, nine touchdowns and has only been intercepted once.
“Probably shouldn’t have done it,” Gabriel said of that one, a pick-six at the hands of Bryan Addison Saturday night.
It’s OK — the Ducks are 4-0. And after an uneasy start to the season, the offense has gained 977 yards and scored 83 points in its last two games, both on the road. And while the early parts of Gabriel’s stint here in Eugene were spent picking apart how he differed from Oregon’s starter of the last two seasons — He’s short! He’s left-handed! He’s not Tez Johnson’s brother! — the Ducks’ offense is beginning to look eerily similar.