- Guaranteed or Rest of Season FREE!Oregon +3 3.3% play
Roles are reversed here. All the pressure is on Utah trying to win their first Pac 12 Championship and their first trip to the Rose Bowl. I think this game should be a pk, but because Utah demolished Oregon 2 weeks ago we have Utah a 3 point favorite on a neutral site. Oregon played their worst game of the season in a challenging environment at altitude at Utah with a ton of crowd noise. This game will be played in a dome in Las Vegas where I predict Oregon would have and advantage due to their overall talent edge, and speed vs. Utah. Oregon can make the necessary adjustments based on their last match up against Utah. I'm not sure what changes Kyle Whittingham can make here? There were also several things that happened in that game that really made it spiral out of control for the Ducks that were unusual.
Oregon made mistakes on their second and fourth drives that took them out of the red zone. If that changed maybe they get 10-14 points there, and then they are down by 1 score at the half, but instead they gave up a punt return TD to Covery and they’re down by 4TD's at the half. This really took them out of their offensive strength, which is running the ball, and advantage they should have on a young Utah defense if they can commit to it and stay with it throughout the game. Overall, they were 0-3 in the red zone, and on the season they have only not scored in the red zone a total of 9 times. Anthony Brown did not help as he was all over the place, but I expect Joe Moorehead to put Brown in better situations, and he just came off his best game against Oregon State, which should give him some confidence back heading into this game.
Utah’s offense was outstanding, but they went 11-14 on third down, which won’t duplicate with adjustments that Oregon can make. Oregon has not been a great third down defense, but they will not give up 80% here, and they have been great at stopping the run all year. From an EPA and YPC perspective with strength of schedule factored in, Oregon is the better rushing offense and defense.
