Tez Johnson first dreamed of playing at Oregon as a 5-year-old growing up in Alabama, when his stepfather showed him the Ducks on TV.
He was taken by the colors. The speed. The success.
So, even though the Troy transfer — who played high school football with Bo Nix and lived under the same roof, has played only 11 games with the Ducks — you can be sure he knows this about Oregon football.
“Nobody here likes U-Dub,” he said.
Next up: Washington.
Again.
Or, as Dan Lanning called the matchup: “Unfinished business.”
The two Pacific Northwest powers who spent a season dancing around each other, met once in a mighty collision that knocked the Ducks down but not out, will get the long-awaited rematch in the Pac-12 title game.
The Ducks overpowered No. 16 Oregon State 31-7 on Friday night, closing the curtains on one venerable conference rivalry while turning their attention to another.
“U-Dub and Oregon State,” Johnson said, “are the main two teams that we want to beat.”
One down, one major act of revenge to go.
Johnson hauled in 11 catches for 137 yards from Nix, whom he calls a brother, while Troy Franklin added 128 receiving yards.
What Johnson used to watch on a screen has come to life in blazing technicolor, with the Ducks now heading to Vegas to bet it all on green and yellow.
Just don’t expect a lot of celebrating from the Ducks. Not yet.
“I expected us to be here,” Lanning said. “I don’t know what everybody else thought, but I expected us to be in this position because I know what our team’s capable of.”
Lanning’s team is a win away from potentially securing a spot in the College Football Playoff. They have won their last six games — against ranked Utah, USC and Oregon State teams — by an average of 26 points.
The best team in the country? They’re playing like it and you won’t find any statistical evidence to disprove the point.
It’s just that one loss, a 36-33 heavyweight bout on a gray Seattle afternoon, that mars the résumé.
Does a win in the rematch over the Huskies automatically propel them into the top four and a national semifinal? You’ll hear that question a lot this week. But it has to count for something that the playoff committee has consistently slotted the Ducks as the best one-loss team in the country since the rankings first came out last month.
To get in they would have to potentially leap a one-loss Big Ten champion, still undefeated Florida State, and still fend off surging one-loss teams like Texas and, potentially, Alabama.
It doesn’t help that the Longhorns just obliterated the one other team that nearly beat the Ducks, Texas Tech, by a tidy 50 points.
So, yeah, let the discourse begin.
But after watching the Ducks for 12 weeks, they have passed not only the eye test, but repeatedly handled every on-field test, as well.
If they do go out as the Pac-12′s final champion, they are CFP-worthy.
Any system that does not have room for a team as thorough and dominant as the Ducks is not a system worth believing in. But hey, that can all be for next week.
On Friday night, the Ducks celebrated senior night, turned the lights out on their in-state rivalry, Pac-12 football in the Willamette Valley and, potentially, on Jonathan Smith’s Oregon State tenure.
From a nine-minute, 14-play opening drive, the Ducks were in command. At one point in the first half, the play count tally was Oregon 34, Oregon State 8.
When the Beavers finally put together a drive of their own and cut the score to 14-7 with 54 seconds remaining until halftime, the Ducks went 78 yards in 40 seconds, culminating in wide receiver Troy Franklin’s 25th career touchdown, a school record.
The Beavers’ typically stout defense, which had a week earlier forced Michael Penix Jr.’s least efficient performance since arriving in Seattle, was just like every other opponent in the Pac-12 when facing Nix: Powerless.
Nix, who tightens his grip on the Heisman Trophy with every outing, completed 33 of 40 passes for 367 yards, completing 83% of his passes and making it seem routine.
That’s what the Ducks do. On a weekly basis, they take their opponent’s greatest strength and scoff at it. The Beavers’ vaunted running game? Totaled 53 yards.
Last time against Washington, the Ducks were very, very close.
Three yards away, in fact. And while football doesn’t reward almost, you can’t help but wonder how we would be talking about the Ducks if they had picked up that fourth down at midfield.
They would be the ones with the targets on their backs going into next week’s title game. The Huskies would be the ones using terms like “unfinished business.”
Instead, the Ducks go to Las Vegas next week with momentum and something to prove.
“Earlier in the season, when we lost to them, I couldn’t talk to nobody,” Johnson said, “because it’s personal.”
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