Home-and-Home: Checking in on Oregon and Washington ahead of Big Ten play

Our semi-regular conversation with Christian Caple of On Montlake.

Home-and-Home is a regular conversation between Christian Caple of On Montlake and Tyson Alger of The I-5 Corridor. With more than two decades of combined experience covering football in the Northwest, join On Montlake and The I-5 Corridor for their unique views on the Ducks, Huskies and Pac-12 football.

CAPLE: Sounds like you had quite the Saturday, Tyson, and not only because your work day ended with a patty melt at a dive bar. While Washington State handed Washington its first loss of the 2024 season (and the Jedd Fisch era), Oregon seemed to right itself with a 49-14 plastering of rival Oregon State.

The Ducks are 3-0, albeit not a particularly satisfying 3-0. The Huskies are 2-1, and the foremost narrative surrounding the program concerns a single play call, which is never good. Washington begins Big Ten play with Northwestern this weekend. Oregon has a bye — err, Oregon is idle, or off, for all those persnickety college football editors out there.

Last year, everybody was eyeing a Week 7 matchup between a pair of unbeaten rivals, and that top-10 showdown did not disappoint. This year, the Huskies and Ducks won’t meet until Thanksgiving weekend, and both face a series of challenges between now and then. 

Do you feel any differently about the Ducks than you did during training camp?

ALGER: Oregon fans will be the first to tell you: You gotta convert those fourth-down plays in rivalry games.

I viewed Oregon as a legitimate playoff contender with the ability to win a national title. And while the Ducks didn’t look the part for two of their three games, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team give its fan base a bigger sigh of relief than it did in that win over OSU.

The offensive line looked terrible for the first two weeks. It played great against the Beavers. The Ducks stopped shooting themselves in the foot with penalties, Dillon Gabriel was surgical (83% completion rate), Jordan James was bruising (7.2 YPC, 2 TDs) and the defense flexed in a second-half shutout. The Ducks didn’t need to go for any fourth downs in this one — nor did they punt.

Now that I’ve seen the Ducks function as advertised, I do think the ceiling is still there. But I also think we’re seeing it takes time to replace some of the chemistry you lose when a Bo Nix, Troy Franklin and Jackson Powers-Johnson leave an offense for the NFL.  

How are pitchfork sales up on Montlake? At least it’s not a conference loss, right? 

CAPLE: Good point — the Huskies are still undefeated in Big Ten play.

Look, I don’t love critiquing individual play calls. Every coach has spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours analyzing film, studying tendencies and weighing the strengths and weaknesses of their own players and their opponent’s. They consider all that data in every call they make, and hash out as many of those decisions as possible before the game, during the calm and quiet of mid-week preparation. Who are we, as mere observers, to believe we could possibly know better?

Well, we can’t. However … it simply isn’t possible that every play call is the correct one, yes? Fisch seemed to acknowledge as much immediately after the failed speed-option play on fourth down, saying “I made a bad call” not long after sitting down for his postgame press conference. He wasn’t so contrite on Monday, though, instead defending the call by saying it would have worked had UW blocked it properly.

Even if he’s right, I don’t love the defiance. Many a coach has thrown himself beneath the bus, even if through gritted teeth, in the name of modeling accountability. How hard would it have been to just repeat what he said Saturday? 

My own critique was more broad-based than a single failed fourth down. Only one team seemed to be playing for the Apple Cup, and it wasn’t Washington. I wonder how much of that filtered down from the top. I found Fisch’s quarterback usage odd, too, but my readers are probably sick of hearing about that.

In the big picture, it’s one loss, and it’s one loss in a season that isn’t likely to end in a conference championship or CFP bid. Even if it winds up being the difference between going 5-7 and going to the Independence Bowl … meh. I bet if UW cleans up the penalties, executes in the red zone and wins comfortably against Northwestern, most fans will begin to move on. But it does feel like Fisch dug himself something of a hole, and made it a bit worse with his Monday remarks, to whatever degree anybody cares about such things.

Gabriel’s numbers sure look good. What has the eye test told you about Oregon’s newest old quarterback?

ALGER: The guy can definitely play.

Yeah, yeah, I know, really great analysis there. But we’ve both watched enough football in our careers to know when a team has a player at the position that lets them compete, and Gabriel certainly fits that bill. He’s confident out there. He’s got an ownership of the offense. 

My goodness is he accurate.

I know the numbers point to that — he’s currently completing 84 percent of his passes on the season — but if you watch some of the throws he’s made, he can really stuff it through a window. He’s not nearly as much of a threat in the read-option as Nix was, but his 54-yard touchdown run against OSU shows he’s no slouch there. With his size, I do think his success is pretty dependent on Oregon’s offensive line holding up. But in terms of having a guy who can get it to Oregon’s skill guys on time and accurately, he’s awfully good. 

The guy’s a smooth quote, too.

“I always tell the O-line: ‘You give me the time, I’ll do the crime,’” Gabriel said. 

Not quite as succinct as Nix’s, “Dropped back, threw it to the other team,” answer from Sunday, but gets the job done. 

Hey here’s a question: What happens if Washington State doesn’t lose again? Does On Montlake have a Pullman office? Is this the dawning of the Pac-12’s new dominant era? 

CAPLE: Well, Washington would sure feel a lot better about the Apple Cup. Or maybe just a little better. Both programs are now in the uncomfortable position of hoping the other wins as many games as possible this season — at least, they should be. There’s a chance WSU is better than every team remaining on its schedule, though games at Boise State, Fresno State and Oregon State will be challenging.

Really, college football fans everywhere should want WSU to run the table, just to force the CFP committee to either leave out an unbeaten team, or include an unbeaten team from a two-team conference that couldn’t be killed. It would be even better if the Cougars got to host a CFP game in Pullman, preferably against a school from the south. 

What was the vibe at Reser on Saturday? 

ALGER: I think everyone had a pretty good time up until the second half.

There were hints of tradition: the bands played together, the student section showed it knew how to rhyme with “duck,” there was a badass flyover and some other scenes you only get from a rivalry game — such as Phil Knight cutting through Oregon State AD Scott Barnes’ pregame media conference in the press box.

But once the Ducks kicked into gear in the second half, I don’t think the Oregon State crowd was having the same experience. In his postgame, OSU coach Trent Bray didn’t want to commit to the future past next year’s scheduled game in Eugene.

“That’s a ways down the road,” he said. “I’m not concerned with that right now.”

I don’t really blame him. He’s got a game this week. 

Yes, Washington State showed on Saturday that upsets in this new era can still happen. But I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn in saying that the caliber of this year’s Huskies squad is far from what it could be. Committing to this game in the future is committing to a game where you’re going to be at a talent disadvantage. And yes, the Pac-12 is back from the dead. But a playoff bid for one of the six — possibly going on eight — teams in the conference likely doesn’t include a nonconference loss in Week 3. 

How are you feeling now that Big Ten play is here? I’ve found I still can’t shake my OG Pac-12 allegiances. My Saturday score-checking habits still include looking up and down the West Coast. Seeing things like this just doesn’t feel right. 

This has Oklahoma City Thunder selling Gary Payton jersey vibes to it. 

CAPLE: I’m right there with you. I decided to wait until Big Ten play to start making weekly picks again, because 18 teams was just too many to run down in the nonconference. Part of me, though, wants to just keep picking games from the old Pac-12. I may have told you at some point about the Pac-12 fantasy football league I’ve played in for the past several years. Well, it’s still going, because you don’t actually need the teams to play each other to make fantasy football work.

That said, I’m still very interested to see how Washington will navigate its first Big Ten schedule. It starts innocently enough, with Northwestern traveling to Seattle as a two-score underdog. But it gets real Big Ten-ish in a hurry. UW travels to New Jersey to play Rutgers on a Friday night, then returns home to host Michigan before traveling to Iowa City the following weekend. A bye — err, idle week — breaks up that and a subsequent trip to Bloomington, and, in between home games against USC and UCLA, the Huskies travel to State College for Penn State’s “White Out” game.

In other words, that drive from Tacoma to Eugene on Thanksgiving weekend is going to feel downright leisurely.

Mostly, I’m just eager to learn more about this team. I don’t think the Apple Cup loss taught us much that we didn’t know. The Huskies totaled 452 yards of offense and averaged 6.8 yards per play. They also committed 16 penalties and stalled out deep in WSU territory a bunch. And as mentioned earlier, I didn’t think Fisch coached very well. But I didn’t see anything to suggest UW can’t or won’t play better than it did on Saturday. There are still questions about how the offensive line will fare against Big Ten competition, and so forth. It will be fun to see this team on the same field as Michigan and Penn State, just to get a sense for how they match up athletically.

Speaking of, though … am I crazy for thinking nonconference play has knocked the Big Ten down a peg or two? Michigan is already making a quarterback change. Iowa kicked one against Iowa State. Penn State and Oregon are each unbeaten, but both have struggled at least once when heavily favored. Ohio State is a machine, USC looks rejuvenated and Nebraska, Rutgers, Illinois and maybe even Indiana might punch up the depth. But a handful of those preseason favorites appear mortal.

ALGER: In this new era of super conferences where we’ve been promised to see only the best on best, the Ducks’ Big Ten schedule currently includes one opponent ranked inside the top 15.

UCLA? Unranked.

Michigan State? Unranked.

Purdue? Unranked.

Washington? Unranked.

Things can change, but this is in part why I still believe Oregon’s ceiling is pretty high. Outside of Ohio State, Texas — and the Cougs — everyone’s looked a little shaky, no? 

It sure puts a lot of pressure on the Ducks to show up for the Ohio State game. The rest of their schedule — and performances thus far — aren’t doing them a whole lot of favors. 

Railoa’s emergence at Nebraska has been fun to watch. The Ducks were in on his recruitment for a hot second and his high school coach told me he had “the ability to be pretty unreal,” but I took it with a grain of salt because, well, high school coaches could hype me up.

Anyway, he seems to be right. And I might have to tune into No. 22 Nebraska’s game against No. 24 Illinois on Friday night. 

Ducks are on a bye Saturday. Eleven years into this and I still get bye week anxiety. It’s like having a nice day in the spring. There’s so much pressure to pick the right thing to do. I’ll probably just get overwhelmed and not leave the house. Don’t hate that, either. 

CAPLE: Seems pretty simple to me. Charlotte plays at Indiana at 9 a.m., UW-Northwestern kicks at 4 p.m., and Oregon State-Purdue starts at 5:30. What else do you need?

— Christian Caple, On Montlake

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor