Desperately seeking perspective on the Oregon death machine

Oregon 60, UCLA 13. Of all the absurd statistics that come with an incineration like this, the most absurd of all that it was basically an average effort for Oregon: The Ducks came into the night averaging 54.3 points on 567 yards per game, and came out of it with 60 points on 582 yards. Chip Kelly's warp-speed spread produced points on eight of Oregon's first nine possessions, all sustained drives covering at least 55 yards, and the one time it failed to score in that stretch was a turnover on downs to close a 70-yard march to the Bruin two-yard line. It was murder, yes, but for a truly murderous offense, it was also just another day at the office.

So it was only UCLA. Even the Bruins knew how ugly it was going to be on their way in. But this is the same team that completely handcuffed Texas on the road less than a month ago, forcing five turnovers and holding the Longhorns out of the end zone until well into garbage time of a blowout. The week before that, it snuffed out Houston's prolific spread passing attack, holding the Cougars to their worst offensive output in both yards and points since 2007. Here, it essentially did not stop Oregon once until the dying minutes, and had to punch in a late, meaningless touchdown to keep the final margin from doubling up the 27-point spread.

The big theme of the first half of this season is that there are no giants. The moment that Alabama was beginning to look invincible, the Tide were immediately slain by South Carolina. Ohio State had barely assumed the throne before it was bludgeoned to death by Wisconsin last weekend. South Carolina convincingly halts 'Bama's crazy regular season winning streak one, gets punk'd by Kentucky the next. Nebraska shreds on national television one week, is nearly shut out by Texas the next. Nobody lives forever.

That's a long way of saying that anointing Oregon the chosen one from among a hopelessly muddled field of frontrunners seems almost as much like a death sentence right now as an endorsement, especially with a trip to rested and apparently revived USC looming next weekend. But we saw again tonight that nobody hits the gas like the Ducks, and when the wheels start rolling, it gets real ugly, real fast. At some point, they've made everyone on the schedule look like New Mexico. Last year, that included USC in an historic rout in Eugene. If their trip to the L.A. Coliseum winds up looking anything like that one – i.e., like any of Oregon's first seven wins this year – it's going to be next to impossible to keep on lid on the assumptions.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

Source: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Desperately-seeking-perspective-on-the-Oregon-de?urn=ncaaf-279043

Doug Henry Broc Hepler Rob Herring George Holland Jeremy van Horebeek