Five Takeaways From Oregon's Loss to Oklahoma in the Alamo Bowl

Oregon lost 47-32 to Oklahoma on Wednesday, beginning an offseason of change.

Author:
Nick Battey
Publish date:
Dec 30, 2021 7:00 PM EST

The Oregon Ducks lost to the Oklahoma Sooners 47-32 in the 2021 Valero Alamo Bowl to end their season at 10-4. Despite the tough ending to the season, this game made me feel optimistic about the future of the program and where the team is headed. Here are five takeaways about the Oregon Ducks in this game and the future.

1. Oregon’s got special talent at WR for the future

Oregon had an elite wide receiver recruiting class in 2021, and they finally showed what all the hype was about in this Alamo Bowl. Dont’e Thornton and Troy Franklin both had touchdown receptions and made some great catches and great moves to get open in the first place. The second half of this game made many fans extremely encouraged to look at the future of this position. Kris Hutson will also be a leader for the room in future years and will have a great base for whoever the wide receiver coach and quarterback is next season.

2. Joe Moorhead runs a different offense without Mario Cristobal

Everyone knows about Mario Cristobal’s physicality mantra and challenge to win the line of scrimmage every game. That is always a vital part of every game that you need to win, but at points, it seemed like Cristobal took it so seriously it was a detriment to the offensive game plan. For the first time this season, we were able to see what Joe Moorhead’s vision of the offense looked like, and there were way more deep shots taken to open the offense up, and they were pretty successful with Anthony Brown as the quarterback — something we hadn’t seen much of to that point in the season. It is just an interesting tidbit to think of as Oregon moves to a new era of what might be different if Moorhead had full reigns of the offense for a whole season.

3. The defense was too banged up to stop Oklahoma

Oregon’s defense was a skeleton squad for the entire game, from opt-outs to injuries to COVID cases or transfers, the team was absolutely decimated. Even Noah Sewell and Daymon David left the game with injuries, further compressing the issue. Even though the numbers were brutal, I frankly won’t take anything away from this defense moving forward. This was a mostly second- and third-string defense with even a few offensive players moving over to play. The defense will be entirely different next year, and this game won’t mean anything going into next season.

4. This Oregon team fought until the very end

The first half, more specifically the second quarter, was just like both of the Utah games earlier in the season, with no fun and little fight from the team. But the major difference was the second half, where this Oregon team fought until the very end, and at times played very well. This team and the coaching staff deserve a lot of credit for playing all sixty minutes in this game instead of counting down the minutes, which seemed to be what happened in the Utah games.

5. Travis Dye is by far this team’s best offensive weapon

One last word needs to go out to Travis Dye. There were many skeptics when CJ Verdell went down all the way back in week five with a season-ending injury that Dye would not be able to carry the backfield. They were wrong. Dye was incredible as the leading back and was an incredible weapon for Oregon as both a runner and receiver. Dye has an important decision to make for the NFL draft coming up. If he decides to come back in 2022, the Ducks offense will be in an amazing spot going into the spring.

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