Thursday Night College Football: #3 Oregon at #5 Stanford

Finally we have a Thursday night college football matchup worthy of must-see-TV.  #3 Oregon at #5 Stanford at 9 PM Eastern should be a great nightcap to a Thursday night that features two games with top 10 teams pitted against each other.  We’ll get to #10 Oklahoma at #6 Baylor a little later but for right now let’s examine the Pac-12 matchup of the season so far.

 

Oregon has not lost a step with Chip Kelly leaving for the NFL, as Marcus Mariota may be the best quarterback in college football.  He has the size (6-4, 211), the arm strength, and the speed to dominate the college level, and has had his way this year with 20 TD to 0 INT while completing 64% of his passes for a 10.14 yards per attempt.  Add in his 511 rushing yards and 9 rushing TDs and Mariota is downright scary.  But we all know how good Oregon’s offense is, as they rank 2^nd in points (to Baylor) and 2^nd in rushing yards, but what you may not know is that the Oregon defense is also 8^th overall in points against.

 

Oregon hasn’t exactly played great competition, but they did blow out Virginia and Tennessee by a combined score of 118-24 and have handled both ranked opponents they’ve played, winning 45-24 at #16 Washington and taking care of #12 UCLA at home last week by a score of 42-14. 

Likewise, Stanford has also handled the three ranked opponents on their schedule so far, taking out #15 Washington 31-28 at home, then two weeks later taking down #9 UCLA at home and winning at #25 Oregon State last week by a score of 20-12.  Stanford relies on a strong offensive line and steady quarterback play by Kevin Hogan.  Stanford loves to run the ball and has seen 10 different players with a carry in 2013, leading to a run pass ratio of 1.72 with 317 rush attempts to 184 pass attempts. 

The Spread:  This game opened up with Oregon -8.5, then jumped to -7 before the money poured in on Oregon and the line settled at -10. 

The Pick: It sure would be nice to get that line down to -9.5, but I still like Oregon in this contest.  While the game is at Stanford, and the Stanford defense, combined with a power running game should keep this game close early, I think Oregon will eventually pull away and Stanford does not have the fire power to make a late comeback.  With all of that said, however, Stanford did go into Oregon last year and pull off a 17-14 upset in OT.  I just do not see a repeat coming with a more mature Marcus Mariota, as well as a Stanford team that is just not as good as last year’s squad.  Last year’s game featured two now NFL players on Stanford taking over the game, as Stepfan Taylor ran for 161 yards on 33 carries and TE Zach Ertz caught 11 passes for 106 yards.

You also have to consider that Oregon is in a dogfight for the #2 overall BCS spot and a ticket to play Alabama for the National Championship.   Florida State has taken their rightful place as the #2 team in the BCS after yet another shellacking, this time against rival Miami.  While undefeated Ohio State is one spot behind Oregon and is also blowing out teams left and right in the pathetic Big 10 as they try to state their case to the BCS.  Oregon is going to need a resounding victory on the road to make voters take notice, and I think they’ll do just that on Thursday night.