Oregon +1.5 3.3% play

Both of these teams are pretty even statistically speaking, and both want to run the ball first. When I look at this game I feel the wrong team is favored and it’s due to recency bias.  You have UCLA who just won back to back road games and the most recent at Washington, and Oregon barely got by CAL, and lost to Stanford.  Both these teams are very good running the ball and good at stopping the run.  Oregon has done it and won against tougher competition, lets look at that.

Oregon has faced two run defenses similar to UCLA from a run defense perspective.  Ohio State and Fresno State, and they rushed for 6 TD’s including 269 vs. Ohio State.  Ohio State 24^th in epa run defense against an average epa run offense ranking 76^th.  UCLA ranks 30^th in epa run defense vs. an average epa run offense of 76.  Oregon against their two opponents who are good at running the ball like UCLA, Cal and Ohio St.  They won both games and only gave up 1 rushing TD.  You may want to laugh at Cal, but they rank 7^th in epa rushing offense, and I know it’s come against an average opponent epa run defense of 97^th, but UCLA’s 21^st ranked epa rushing offense came against an average opponent epa run defense ranking 83^rd.  To put that in perspective Oregon ranks 13^th, vs an opponent average epa run defense of 69.6.

UCLA has faced only one team even close to run defense as Oregon, and it was Fresno State.  That defense held UCLA to 117 yards, and UCLA lost the game.  UCLA has only faced one offense close to Oregon’s rushing attack, and that’s Arizona State with a mobile QB as well.  They lost that game at home 42-23, and Jayden Daniels had 45 yards rushing and I expect Anthony Brown can help his team the same.  Oregon in my opinion despite last year should control the game in the trenches.  I don’t trust UCLA’s QB to play a clean game, and Oregon is top 20 in limiting and forcing turnovers when we look at % of drives ending in a TO, where UCLA ranks 56^th, and 57^th.  Oregon with a lot of value here and is very much still in the playoff discussion and has more talent.  This just seems to be the type of game that HC Cristobal gets his players to step up for with Gameday in attendance on the day.

Where to find Freddy?