Oregon Football will play in their fifth straight game under the lights on Friday night but the night game string will soon come to an end.
On Monday, it was announced by the Pac-12 Conference, that the Ducks game at Washington next week will kick off at 12:30 pm Pacific Time on ABC. While the evening/night games have not had a bad turnout and the team has won four of five games this season led by their defense. In fact, the defensive effort is making waves nationally with Oregon in several top ten categories following their 17-7 win over Cal this past weekend.
The Pac-12 Conference standings are in Oregon’s favor after five weeks. The Ducks beat Stanford on the farm and own the tiebreaker over the Cardinal. The Washington Huskies currently have two conference losses including a loss at home to California. It is typical to see parity in the conference, but I am not used to seeing things falling any one team this early in the season.
Oregon Football has been a juggernaut over the last few weeks with the Offense finding a way to win, but not earning a ‘statement win’ over anyone. They topped Cal over the weekend by just 10 points and the Golden Bears had a chance or two in the final ten minutes to get back into the game. The Oregon Defense did not let it happen.
Fans have been accustomed to Oregon having an offense that has been the control, but now it seems with Andy Avalos as Defensive Coordinator the narrative may be changing more toward the defensive side of the ball, which may not be a bad thing. Oregon was able to break through against the best defense in the Pac-12 while keeping four straight teams to single-digit scoring with their defense.
We will see if they can keep the defensive momentum this week along with cleaning up the offense. Oregon and Colorado kick off at 7 pm Friday night on Fox Sports 1.