The A-Bomb: Still a Mystery

The atmosphere at Autzen Stadium was electric (much to my pleasure, considering last week’s proclamation). The stripe-out worked brilliantly, it was dry and warm, the crowd was one of the largest to ever gather for a Ducks game.

Only thing was, the game was over at halftime.

Lanning and the rest of the team were fired up like a brick oven, and they derailed and pretty much blew the Buffaloes’ hype train to smithereens.

Shedeur Sanders’ Heisman campaign? Bye! Colorado starting with a winning record in the Pac-12? Nope! Lanning’s nice guy persona? See ya!

The national media will continue to ignore Oregon’s accomplishment , because to them anything involving Coach Prime is more profitable to talk about. Duck fans, however, were quite proud of their team, as they should be.

Question is, how big of an accomplishment was it? How proud should we actually be?

Colorado’s first win at TCU was impressive. Period. No questions asked.

Their second win? It was okay. Nebraska is and has been a feeble wisp of what they used to be. The Buffs clobbered them, so good for them.

The third game is actually where I began to question this hype train. At home, against a team outside of the Power 5 riddled with 3-star recruits, and Colorado needed a slew of brilliant crunch time plays to eke out an overtime win.

I wasn’t sold after that. I had a feeling Deion’s visit to Autzen might be a very unpleasant one for him.

So it was. So much so that he angrily replied that he “keeps receipts”, indicating he wants another shot at the Ducks.

Hopefully not anytime soon, because right now these teams could play ten times and the Ducks would win…ten of them. The disparity was embarrassing.

So here we are. Was this just Oregon beating up on a lousy team, or did a pretty good Colorado team run into a legitimate powerhouse?

Well, one of those questions will be answered this weekend as Prime & co. welcome another Top 10 team, USC, to Boulder.

Oregon, however, will likely have to wait a few more weeks to know more about themselves.

The Ducks play Stanford, who has crumbled into a stepping stone in football at this point, on Saturday. The following week, they get a bye.

On October 14th they head to Seattle looking for revenge against the resurgent Huskies.

That’s when we’ll have a lot of questions answered.

And good thing too, because the second half of the season sees Oregon squaring off against Washington State, Utah, USC, and Oregon State.

Let’s celebrate what we did. We taught Colorado some humility. We showed our firepower on national TV to a primetime audience.

We didn’t, however, show how we can fare against a national contender.

At least not yet.