Saturday Preview: Oregon vs. Stanford

Not being a huge college football fan, I usually pick around one game each week to pay real attention to. This week, the honor goes to a Pac-12 (or 10, or 14, or however many they have in that conference now) matchup with national championship implications. Saturday night on ABC (MUSBURGERRRR!), No. 7 Oregon (8-1) travels to Stanford to take on the No. 4 Cardinals (9-0). At first glance, this game might appear to be a fight between two avian varieties. Wrong. The Stanford mascot is a rather ornery-looking tree that hates when you don’t recycle and looks good on Corso. I’m not sure who to lean towards in the mascot battle, though the tree must confuse opponents.

Oregon:

BK King, Louisiana, Battleship, Glycerine: Got it?

Let’s start with the Ducks. Their offense is predicated on speed and a read-option spread offense. The Ducks average nearly 300 yards/gm on the ground and have some of the silliest play-calling cards you’ll ever see. I imagine, as it’s drawn up in the playbook, the Corso play involves the ball-carrier wearing a mascot head and jaunting sneakily into the end zone. One problem for Oregon is that all-world RB LaMichael James may not yet be 100 percent back after missing two games due to injury a few weeks ago.

Another Festivus Miracle!

The other problem is consistency. The Ducks can often look ugly or very bad on offense, other times looking fantastic and unstoppable (think two-face from Seinfeld). The reason for the inconsistency is the quarterback play of Darron Thomas. Not much of a passer, Thomas has a tendency to make some ghastly throws. Though his stats aren’t totally reflective of this (besides the LSU game), there are times Thomas can make Tim Tebow look like Aaron Rodgers (just imagine how bad some of Thomas’ throws must be to make that analogy). Oregon’s defense is greatly improved from last year (26th in the nation in points against); however, they did give up 40 to an LSU team that scored 6 whole points in regulation this past week and could struggle again this week against Stanford.

Stanford:

Eat up Albert.

Stanford has been pretty overpowering this year. Andrew Luck, the unanimously predicted number one pick, and the Cardinals are third is points per game (48.2) and 11th in points against (16.6). Though Luck has gotten most of the credit, and deservedly so, Stanford features a very balanced, physical offensive attack. Their rushing attack is very underrated and is led by junior Stepfan Taylor (he’s no Toby Gerhart). I think that the Ducks will have a difficult time trying to stop Stanford and all their weapons.

On the flip side, the defense for the Cardinals has put up great numbers. Those numbers may not be completely indicative of what the Stanford defense is. Against USC, the only real powerful offense Stanford has faced, they allowed 34 points in regulation and another 14 in overtime. Oregon and their speedy offense may exhaust the Stanford defense, making them look like Albert Haynesworth after climbing a flight of stairs. Oregon will easily be Stanford’s toughest test on defense, but I think they’ll be able to stop the Ducks more than the Ducks stop them.

Prediction:

Stanford wins by 6 points in a shootout: 44-38.