PASADENA, Calif. — The imposing 6-foot-6, 285-pound frame of Jordan Burch slumped on the very last seat of the Oregon bench. The Ducks’ senior defensive end took lengthy deep breaths, his shimmering silver helmet still strapped on, his palms pressed against one another, as he stared out at the scene he will never forget.
Some players digest the end of something magical differently. Some just sob. Some jog into the locker room as swiftly as they can disappear from public view.
Some, like Burch on the end of that bench, just stare.
They stare through the haze of embraces from thankful teammates, like when center Iapani Laloulu leaned in and told Branch he loved him. Ohio State running back TreVeyon Henderson, who rushed for 93 yards and two touchdowns, found Burch and told him to keep his head up. This all unfolded in a matter of a minute as scarlet and grey confetti began to fly into the early evening sky inside the Rose Bowl, a final fitting exclamation to a night of Ohio State dominance and Oregon strife.
GO DEEPER
Ohio State looks like Playoff’s best team after ousting Oregon: Rose Bowl takeaways
The Ducks, who flocked together as one for 13 straight games, who asserted themselves as the No. 1 overall seed in the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff, who won the Big Ten Conference in Year 1, who were the most logical pick to win it all, finally, weren’t just grounded — they didn’t even take flight in the biggest game of the year in the 41-21 quarterfinal loss.
“They clicked tonight and we didn’t,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said.
For decades, the Ducks have knocked at the door of becoming a desired member of the college football elite.
But to join the party, you have to hoist a trophy. And not just a spiffy bowl game trophy. The trophy. The last one possible to be hoisted in the air, the one that asserts you as the best team in college football that particular season. The Ducks have been agonizingly close, too.
The Ducks lost a BCS title game by a mere three points nearly 14 years ago to Auburn. The Ducks were part of the first-ever College Football Playoff national championship game in 2015 and were drubbed 42-20 at the hands of the same program that derailed this season’s dream of potential perfection Wednesday at the footstep of those show-off San Gabriel Mountains.
Oregon entered halftime trailing Ohio State 34-8 before losing in the Rose Bowl. (Kirby Lee / Imagn Images)
It’s a specific sort of sports torture: to be good enough to be in the mix and be in the mix often, but to be unable to find a way to be the last team on a podium tattooed with smiles and happy tears and T-shirts pulled over those sweaty shoulder pads.
So if it wasn’t going to be this year for Oregon, with one of the most well-rounded rosters in program history, when will that breakthrough arrive?
With more Playoff teams than ever in the mix, and with the season expanding to as many as 16 or 17 games, there will be more chances for programs like Oregon. The Ducks aren’t going anywhere. They shouldn’t slide backward significantly.
Lanning in Year 3 had the Ducks as the last unbeaten team standing come the afternoon of Jan. 1. He’s an elite recruiter, who helped convince back-to-back quarterbacks out of the transfer portal to join this Ducks march toward becoming part of the college football establishment. Those quarterbacks became Heisman Trophy finalists in their one year in Eugene.
In three years in charge, Oregon is 35-6 under Lanning.
Any logical fan of the sport knows he’s just getting started. But now entrenched in a much more taxing conference in the Big Ten after a lifetime in the Pac-12, nothing is going to be as easy as it was before. Case in point: the Ducks had two of their best games of the year against the other two top teams in the conference when they beat Ohio State at home 32-31 on Oct. 12 and when they eked by Penn State in a 45-37 dazzling display of offense and not much defense in the Big Ten title game.
As fate would have it, the architect of the Ducks’ downfall in the quarterfinal was none other than the architect who helped construct the Ducks’ rise in the sport. Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, Oregon’s head coach from 2009 to 2012, schemed an attack that overwhelmed the Oregon defense so thoroughly that a mere five minutes into the first quarter, it felt like it was going to be all Buckeyes.
“They were just firing on all cylinders,” Oregon linebacker Jeffrey Bassa said, “and credit to them.”
And it was all Buckeyes. All day. At one point, Ohio State was up 34-0 on the previously unbeaten No. 1-seeded Ducks.
“They definitely schemed us up in the right different packages and they knew what we were giving them,” said Oregon defensive back Kobe Savage. “That was our biggest problem.”
Lanning didn’t skirt the blame. On multiple occasions, he accepted it and said the entirety of the game plan by the coaching staff wasn’t up to par. Oregon’s defense was so discombobulated in the first half that it gave up 390 yards of total offense, which is more than it gave up in 11 total games this year. Offensively, Ohio State made the Ducks look average at best, routinely getting to quarterback Dillon Gabriel and eradicating any chance of establishing a run game.
GO DEEPER
‘He knows this is it’: Why Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel enters Rose Bowl as ‘best version of himself’
The Ducks finished with minus-23 rushing yards in a CFP quarterfinal. Everything Oregon’s been good at was rendered moot.
“You plan to create explosives (plays), be really good at situational football and move the chains that way,” Gabriel said.
The box score will show hollow numbers as the Ducks attempted to crawl back, at one point pulling within 34-15 with nine minutes left in the third quarter. That was going to be as interesting as this iteration of the Rose Bowl would be. Ohio State, a team that’s been there before, who shoulders the annual weight of national title-or-bust, made certain of that.
“Obviously that’s a team I think that has the ability to go win it all,” Lanning said.
The same has been said about his Ducks.
The clock continues to tick to see just how long it will be before it’s an achieved reality.
(Top photo of Da’Jaun Riggs: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
