EUGENE — Winning is hard, and it should be that way. Winning without the best offensive playmaker, a veteran offensive lineman, the best player on the field going down midway through the third quarter and the best running back holding out for almost the entire second half is much more difficult.

Winning while all these things are happening, with more than a handful of dropped passes, while committing twelve penalties for 95 yards, a season-high, should be the combination of circumstances and self-inflicted mistakes that lead to a highly ranked team maintains an advantage. bad opponent being around long enough to jeopardize a game, if not cost it an outright defeat.

Yet No. 1 Oregon overcame it all, not so much a test of resilience or incredible display of courage as imposing its superiority on Maryland, which entered with a top 10 passing attack and left with its lowest output in 16 games, in a 39-game stretch . -18 Ducks win in front of 59,245 in Autzen Stadium.

“Every time you step out there, it’s tough,” quarterback Dillon Gabriel said. “There’s a chance you take. That’s the competitive side of it. You have to bring your ‘A’ game every week. I didn’t think we did that. That starts with the fact that I help each other with that. But by finding ways to win through adversity and then getting the defense to play really well and create huge turnovers, they have done their best and we have to help them so that we can play complementary football and come out a little bit cleaner to show.’

Sloppy, mainly thanks to penalties, but not uninspired.

One offensive lineman, Gernorris Wilson, caught a touchdown and another, Josh Conerly Jr., made a two-point conversion after that score. The defense had a touchdown with a fumble recovery in the first half and two interceptions in the fourth quarter, leading to Oregon’s final 10 points.

But penalties, especially in defense, made what could have been a more dominant performance more competitive.

“It was a poor performance by us,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said of the penalties, UO’s most since committing 13 fouls for 120 yards against USC on Nov. 11 last season. “We have to go back and look at the film and figure out how to eliminate. We didn’t play clean. I don’t know if we were distracted, if we weren’t focused.

“I felt like our guys had good energy and enthusiasm, but we put ourselves in some bad positions on defense, giving them opportunities for first downs and hurting ourselves with some pre-snap penalties on offense. It’s definitely something for us to attack and clean up.”

No. 1 Oregon (10-0, 7-0 Big Ten) at Wisconsin (5-4, 3-3)

• When: Saturday November 16th
• Time: 4:30 PM PT
• Where: Camp Randall Stadium, Madison, Wisc.
• TV channel: NBC
• Current: You can watch this match live for FREE with Fubo (free trial). If you don’t have cable and want to watch today’s game on the cheap, sign up for Peacock Premium ($7.99/month) and download it on NBC’s streaming service to watch this season’s Notre Dame, Big Ten and more top football games to view. You can also get this game on DirecTV Stream (free trial). You can also watch the event live on NBC Live if you already have login credentials from a cable or satellite provider.
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Without Tez Johnson and Marcus Harper II, Gabriel still threw for three touchdowns and wasn’t sacked all while breaking the NCAA career touchdown record.

Gabriel was 23 of 34 for 183 yards and three scores and had four carries for 28 yards, with most of his incompletions dropped by a receiving corps that was significantly short, but Gary Bryant Jr. got back on the field for the first time. this season.

“We have to be better in those ways, but we think it would be fun, we have to get better and keep dialing in,” Gabriel said. “Adversity is real. You have to find ways to win when things don’t always go your way. We definitely made it harder on ourselves, but Maryland played really well as well.

Oregon’s longest pass of the night went for just 26 yards, against a Maryland defense that ranked 128th against the pass. But there were also few deep shots taken — one against Evan Stewart resulted in a pass interference penalty — while UO was with two tight ends on the field for most of its 65 games.

However, Noah Whittington (13 carries for 77 yards) led a rushing attack that gained 180 yards, Maryland’s most allowed this season, with more yards per carry (5.8) than any team against the Terps in more than two years. Jordan James (seven carries for 29 yards) had just one carry in the second half and while Lanning was unsure of the severity of the unspecified problem, he said his lack of action was precautionary.

“We felt like this was a team, we were going to make some explosive passes, but that didn’t really happen tonight,” Lanning said. “We didn’t do great there, there were no points that could be improved, but we were able to fall back on our run game there in the second half.”

Jordan Burch was a one-man wrecking crew on defense, with three tackles, one sack, a forced fumble that led to a touchdown, and had a 36-yard run on a fake punt before going down with what was believed to be a minor ankle injury. injury.

Billy Edwards Jr. from Maryland was 22 of 44 for 206 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions and fumbled on a hit by Burch that Brandon Johnson returned for a touchdown. Terps wideouts Tai Felton (seven catches for 72 yards) and Kaden Prather (two catches for 16 yards) were kept relatively in check by Oregon’s secondary.

“We felt like they were some of the best (receivers) we’ve gone against this year,” Lanning said. “So in order to play aggressively, we would put our guys on islands at times, I thought the guys executed that. That said, I think our technology can definitely clean up.”

Yet that same secondary was responsible for five of the defense’s eight penalties, including three pass interference calls, where the passer was held and roughed up.

“We haven’t seen that since Week 1, Week 2,” safety Kobe Savage said. “It was the little things that I felt like doing. We had a face mask. You can help that, but it’s quite difficult to address that. The (pass interferences), they were little things with technique. Those are easy cleanups. We can easily solve that in practice. That will probably show up again later in the season, but I don’t think to that extent with so many penalties.”

Oregon continues to control its own destiny, both in terms of reaching the Big Ten Championship and earning a spot in the College Football Playoff. While other title contenders fall or appear far less skilled, balanced and talented, the Ducks still win by multiple scores even when not at their best.

And that’s hard to do.

— James Crepea covers the Oregon ducks and Big Ten. Listen to the Ducks confidential podcast or subscribe to the Ducks Roundup Newsletter.