No game is 100%. Go to sleep on any opponent and it can either get painfully close or embarrassingly sluggish. Lazy performances can become a habit.
Still, it's a fun exercise to think of each game of the season as a survivor pool. Which game should fans be most confident about, and which of them looks the most likely to be a four-quarter, nail-biting, couch-pillow-throwing dogfight?
This series assigns a confidence-level rating to each, going game by game, based on what's known about the opponent coming out of spring practice. The rating not only reflects the strength of the opponent but also the stage of the season.
Duck fans saw last year how even a good team has issues to work out at the beginning of the year.
Game Two for Oregon in 2025 comes September 6 against Oklahoma State of the Big 12 in Autzen Stadium. The Cowboys finished 0-9 in league play after a 3-0 start against South Dakota State, Arkansas and Tulsa.
Things fell apart in 2024. They lost close games to Utah and BYU but by the end of the year the Cowboys had run out of bullets, trampled by Colorado 52-0.
Senior quarterback Alan Bowman threw 12 interceptions on the season and preseason Heisman hopeful running back Ollie Gordon slumped to 880 yards before dropping to the 6th round of the NFL draft, picked up Miami.
Bowman graduated and backups Garret Rangel and Maealiuaki Smith entered the portal, so the Big 12's version of OSU enters 2025 with three quarterbacks who have never taken a snap, redshirt freshman Hauss Hejny, redshirt freshman Zane Flores and redshirt freshman Banks Bowen, whose father is a Cowboy assistant coach.
Bowen transferred from Tusla after spring practice, a 6-3, 208 two-star from Lawrence, Kansas.
Kind of funny by game two of his first season as Oregon quarterback Dante Moore will be the experienced veteran in the game.
A three-star prospect, Jett Niu of Lehi, Utah, flipped to Oklahoma on Signing Day last December.
Gundy and his squad are looking for a bounce-back after a disastrous season, but the quarterback situation doesn't bode well. He fired his offensive coordinator, Kasey Dunn, and defensive coordinator, Bryan Nardo in December, attempting to overhaul the culture.
They open with Tennessee-Martin at home on Thursday night August 28, so they should have a soft opening, but traveling to face a Top Ten team in Week Two is daunting. They follow that with a home game against Tulsa, a team they've beaten ten times in the last ten tries.
They won 10 games under Gundy in 2023 and finished 12-2 in 2021, but those days seem long gone. Gone too are their best three pass receivers, Brennan Presley, De’Zhaun Stribling and Rashod Owens.
Presley and Owens caught on with NFL teams, while Stribling transferred to Ole Miss.
New defensive coordinator Todd Grantham is pretty much starting from scratch.
Survivor Pool Confidence level: 92%
It's the second game of the year so some of the glitches and kinks will be worked out. The Ducks have a vastly superior and more stable roster. It's another game where the true opponent is their own standard and themselves.