Some sports stories have a bitter resonance, like this one. Dyer was down. Zach Ertz was out. Darren Carrington didn't inhale. As a fan base and a program, the Ducks have to find a way to throw off the old excuses and mush a grapefruit in the face of the past.
Thursday evening Dan Lanning released the second of the three required injury reports for the College Football Playoff semifinal, the Peach Bowl from Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, with one addition. Running back Noah Whittington, Oregon's leading rusher this season with 829 yards and six touchdowns, is now listed as questionable.
It gives rise to a sinking fatalism. The Ducks' best chance against the Hoosiers was a balanced attack and some ball control, keeping Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza off the field, slowing Indiana's devastating mix of pressure and simulated pressure, controlling the tempo and moving the chains.
For that you need a running game, and Whittington has been the Quack Attack's best runner. It hurt earlier in the week when the first report said freshman bulldozer Jordon Davison would miss the game with a broken clavicle and Jayden Limar and Makhi Hughes had entered the transfer portal. This news is just too much. It stretches "next man up" to the breaking point.
It brings up cinemascopes from the past. Fans think of the Michael Jordan Flu Game, where a feverish Jordan shot out of his mind, game five of the 1997 NBA finals against Utah, Jordan throwing up all night before scoring 38 points to win in Chicago.
Whittington could have a game like that. Or it'd be a great sports story if Jay Harris and the Oregon offensive line bowed their heads for a pregame prayer in the end zone and then played the game of their lives in Atlanta, determined to keep their heads when all others are losing theirs.
Oregon's other possibility remains Dierre Hill, the 5-11, 205-pound freshman from Althoff Catholic High School in Centralia, Illinois, a speedster with one pass blocking rep all season.
It could go like that, or it could be another cruel joke from the universe, another game of almost and lost opportunities. It's hard to really hate the Hoosiers because they have a compelling story too, the irascible coach with the close-cropped hair and the quarterback who is just so darned sincere.
It seems like this is their moment, unless the Ducks find a way to claim it. For all the world it looks like another year of heartbreak, another ending in a minor key. Big games are always one kind of story or another. Right now this one feels like the holographic image of Carrie Fisher shooting out of the dusty droid, "Help me, Jay Harris, you're my only hope."
It adds another layer of drama that if Lanning and his battered roster find a way to push themselves off the canvas and deck the Hoosiers, they'd face Mario Cristobal and Miami for the championship. It's another surreal turn of the screw that the game tonight comes live from Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, where Dan Lanning's head coaching career began with a 49-3 loss to the Georgia Bulldogs, his old team.
Either way, it's going to be a doozy of a cinematic recap.