Oregon makes case as best one-loss team ahead of first College Football Playoff rankings

With the first College Football Playoff rankings approaching on Tuesday night, it’s time to start comparing resumes. The No. 8 Oregon Ducks have a pretty strong one after their dominant 35-6 road win over No. 13 Utah.

Bo Nix was excellent, going 24 of 31 passing for 248 yards and two touchdowns. He looks like a Heisman trophy candidate and his team looks like the best one-loss team in the country.

Coming into Week 9, the Ducks were ranked eighth in the AP Poll, one spot behind one-loss Texas and ahead of the one-loss Alabama and Penn State. No. 6 Oklahoma joined that group with a shocking loss to Kansas, which not only opens up a spot in the Top 6 but also makes Texas’s loss to the Sooners look even worse.

Oregon is second behind LSU in total offense and will remain at the top after gaining 390 total yards this week. However, unlike LSU, the Ducks are good on defense too, ranking 25th. The Ducks only allowed Utah to gain 3.7 yards per play and had two sacks and six tackles for loss.

The offense did whatever it wanted. If Nix and Bucky Irving wanted to march down the field a few more times to score 50 they could have, but Lanning and offensive coordinator Will Stein clearly took their foot off the gas.

It’s important to remember that winning at Rice-Eccles Stadium is no easy task, even if Utah is without Cam Rising.

Under Stein, Oregon is gaining 7.5 yards per play which is third best in the country. Bucky Irving averaged 5.9 yards per carry Saturday and 9.0 yards a catch against Utah. He’s well over seven yards per carry on the season, and he’s simply a compliment to the most experienced quarterback in the entire country.

Nix set the record for most starts in college football history last week with his 54th and in a conference of great quarterbacks he might be playing the best. Heading into the game Nix had a QBR of 83.3, which was fourth in the Pac-12. He was also second behind Caleb Williams in expected points added, even ahead of Michael Penix Jr. who bested him two weeks ago.

He’s averaging 9.0 yards per attempt, but this week, he didn’t need to push the ball deep, so he was a safe distributor who Joel Klatt praised for his ability to recognize matchups and get the ball out on time.

Texas was the only one-loss team in front of the Ducks, but the Longhorns quarterback Quinn Ewers missed their win over BYU with a shoulder injury. That’s a much bigger question mark than Oregon has on its entire roster. Like Oregon, Texas’s only loss was a heart-breaker to a rival.

However, Steve Sarkisian’s Longhorns are 10th in total offense, 27th in total defense, 16th in yards per play, and 35th in yards per play allowed. Oklahoma has looked bad in each of its two games since beating Texas in the Red River Rivalry, and now, the Longhorns may not have a chance to avenge their loss in the Big 12 title game.

All of that is still a long way away and Oregon has a lot more work to do too, but when the first CFP rankings come out on Tuesday night, the Ducks deserve to be the highest ranked one-loss team in the land.