Oregon thumping Michigan left little doubt Ducks belong as college football’s No. 1

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Oregon’s Rob Mullens and Michigan’s Warde Manuel, now colleagues in the Big Ten, found themselves sharing an Uber after a meeting of the league’s athletic directors. The conversation turned to Manuel’s role as chairman of the College Football Playoff committee, a job Mullens had in 2018 and 2019.

The chairman’s job is to go on TV and condense the sentiments of everyone in the room into a coherent message. When controversy ensues, as it inevitably will, the chairman is the one who takes the heat.

“You’re representing 13, but you become the focal point of angry fans,” Mullens said with a chuckle.

Picking the teams who will play in the inaugural 12-team CFP is going to be a pressurized process with plenty of room for debate and second-guessing. When the committee releases its initial rankings Tuesday night, there should be one obvious and easy call: Oregon at No. 1.

The Ducks rolled Michigan 38-17 on Saturday to improve to 9-0. This isn’t a great Michigan team, as its 5-4 record suggests, but Oregon still made a statement by walking into the Big House and thumping the reigning national champions.

Oregon received all but one first-place vote in last week’s AP Top 25, and the gap between the Ducks and everyone else has only widened since then. No. 2 Georgia struggled to pull away from Florida due to three interceptions from quarterback Carson Beck. No. 3 Penn State lost another top-five matchup against No. 4 Ohio State, a team Oregon beat three weeks ago.

The Ducks don’t have many weaknesses, as Michigan saw firsthand Saturday. Oregon is good on both lines of scrimmage and won the battle up front. The Ducks have a tough running back in Jordan James and weapons on the outside in Evan Stewart and Traeshon Holden, though an injury to wide receiver Tez Johnson was cause for concern.

The player who brings it all together is Dillon Gabriel, the most unflappable quarterback in college football. Gabriel threw for 294 yards, completed 22 of 34 passes and also ran for a 23-yard touchdown. Some of Oregon’s biggest plays happened because he was able to feel pressure and evade it while keeping his eyes downfield. Michigan didn’t sack him once, which means Oregon effectively neutralized the strongest part of Michigan’s team.

“I think everybody in the nation needs to recognize what kind of quarterback we’ve got,” coach Dan Lanning said. “He’s a really, really special player.”

Michigan couldn’t keep up, and that wasn’t a surprise to anyone who has watched the Wolverines this season. Michigan is basically the same team it was in Week 2, when the Wolverines lost by 19 to Texas. Davis Warren has been solid in his return to the starting quarterback role, but aside from cutting down on turnovers, the Wolverines haven’t shown much improvement from the start of the season until now.

The running game has regressed, as Kalel Mullings was held to fewer than 20 yards on the ground for the second game in a row. The defense hasn’t gotten markedly better, and now that the injuries are adding up, it’s not realistic to expect the light will come on in the final month of the season.

Oregon finished with 470 total yards to Michigan’s 270. (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)

When Warren regained the starting quarterback job, the message was that Michigan didn’t need him to be Superman. Except, well, it kind of does. Or at least it did on Saturday if the Wolverines were going to have any shot at upsetting Oregon. Warren played turnover-free football and threw two touchdowns, but it wasn’t nearly enough to keep up with the high-powered Ducks.

“The No. 1 thing that’s asked of us is to win the football game,” Warren said. “That’s just what it comes down to. As an offense, we’ve got to start faster.”

Two plays from Saturday’s game showed why Michigan, in addition to being limited at a few key positions, is losing the strategic battle, too. One was Gabriel’s 23-yard touchdown run on a quarterback draw. Gabriel said the Ducks noticed on film that Michigan likes to play lots of games with its defensive line, with players switching rush lanes after the snap. If players aren’t in the right gaps quickly enough, it can leave a hole in the defense. Gabriel spotted one of those holes and glided into the end zone.

“The touchdown run was something we’d been setting up,” Gabriel said. “(It was) just an advantage, a check we wanted to get to. Guys up front handled the games really well. We talked about that QB draw, expecting games.”

The other play was Michigan’s fourth-and-5 call in the red zone when the Wolverines had a chance to pull within a touchdown in the fourth quarter. The person throwing the ball on a gotta-have-it play wasn’t Warren, who made some nice red-zone throws in the game. It wasn’t Orji, who at least plays quarterback and practices throwing the ball. It wasn’t even Donovan Edwards, who is 4-for-4 in his career as a passer. Instead Michigan had Semaj Morgan, a wide receiver, throwing to Orji in the end zone.

The reason to call that play is to gain an element of surprise. But Oregon spent time studying Michigan’s trick plays after the Wolverines used several of them last week against Michigan State, and edge rusher Matayo Uiagalelei did his job by covering Orji when he leaked out of the backfield.

“We spent a lot of time on that, an inordinate amount of time,” Lanning said. “I think that’s an unbelievable play by Matayo that’s going to go a little bit unsung. We talk about farming your land. Do your job, don’t worry about farming somebody else’s land. He did a great job of farming his land on that play.”

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Great teams are prepared for everything. Mediocre teams make mistakes like lining up over the snapper on a punt, which Michigan did to give Oregon a free first down after the defense came up with a stop.

For three years, Michigan was the team that did everything right. The Wolverines are a shadow of their former selves, and it’s taken away much of the aura of playing in Michigan Stadium. The Ducks handled the environment with ease, exactly as a No. 1 team is supposed to do, and left little doubt about where they belong in the initial CFP rankings.

“It was going to take our best,” Lanning said, “but our best is good enough.”

(Top photo of Dan Lanning and Dillon Gabriel: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)