Oregon spent the week focused on self-reflection before taking a 12-game road winning streak to Stillwater for Saturday’s return game with Oklahoma State.
Last year’s meeting with the Cowboys was a hide-tanning lesson delivered by Oregon after then-head coach Mike Gundy lit the fuse with critical comments about the Ducks’ pricey roster. Oregon’s reply? The Ducks averaged 10.2 yards per play and smashed Oklahoma State 69-3.
But that level of dominance appeared to be a great distance away in Oregon’s nail-biting 34-27 win over Boise State last week. The Ducks, who dropped from No. 2 to No. 6 in the Top 25, trailed by 10 points in the first half.
Oklahoma State lost at Tulsa last week in the debut of new head coach Eric Morris. Morris has coached against Oregon’s Dan Lanning before. He was offensive coordinator at Washington State in 2022.
“I’ve got a ton of respect for Coach Morris and what we’re about to face here at Oklahoma State. I know this will be his first home game there. I’m sure it’ll be an unbelievable atmosphere,” Lanning said.
The Ducks (1-0) are double-digit favorites against Oklahoma State (0-1) in Oregon’s first trip to Stillwater in program history.
Last season’s 66-point win was the largest margin of victory against a Power 4 team in Oregon football history.
Oregon’s 12-game road winning streak started in October 2023 and is the longest active streak in the country. The Ducks are 18-2 on the road under Lanning.
The Ducks are led by quarterback Dante Moore, who is being touted as the possible No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft. Moore passed for a career high 378 yards against Boise State, including three completions of 50-plus yards. Among the long gainers was a 62-yard touchdown.
Moore has shown early deep-ball accuracy and the Ducks prefer to dictate the pace. But the new environment has Oregon thinking about the importance of an effective rushing attack.
Lanning is wary of the heat being a factor in the game, and is expecting Oklahoma State to test a secondary that had a rough outing against Boise State.
“We’re playing this game at 9 a.m. our time. I think the heat will be something that we’re going to have to adapt to relatively quick,” Lanning said. “It hasn’t been really hot up here (in Eugene) and it’s obviously going to be hot on the turf there. So just traveling, how you hydrate, making sure that you’re fresh when you get down there.
“Strength in numbers has to show up in a game like that.”
Morris made his debut as Cowboys head coach last Saturday in a 24-10 loss at Tulsa. A loss to Tulsa last season at home led to the firing of Gundy, who guided the program for more than 20 seasons.
Morris said left tackle Jacob Sexton is out for the season with a leg injury. The Cowboys are very much rebuilding. Morris, who has coached Patrick Mahomes and Cam Ward, is building his offense around quarterback Drew Mestemaker. They were together at North Texas last season with Morris as his head coach and ranked No. 2 with 318 passing yards per game.
“Now we have a point that we know exactly [the] identified problems, and now we start building this thing from the inside out and one step at a time,” Morris said. “And there’s a lot of different things that go into that, right? So off we go.”