**Editor’s Note: Each week during football season we will feature an essay from the opponent’s student newspaper on how Oregon will lose. This week’s edition is from Andrew Erickson, @AndrewRErickson, assistant sports editor, at UCLA’s The Daily Bruin.**
Okay, so it hasn’t been the best stretch for UCLA against Oregon.
In 2011, the Bruins looked weak in what turned out to be the curtain call for both quarterback Kevin Prince and coach Rick Neuheisel. The Ducks looked disinterested, yet they still won by 18.
In 2010, UCLA provided the majority of Oregon’s SportsCenter B-roll highlights on their way to the national title game in a 60-13 laugher. UCLA students, many aspiring to Hollywood greatness, have produced a number of terrible films in our school’s 94-year history, but that might’ve just taken the cake.
The Bruins did beat your unbeatable Ducks as recently as 2007, but a pretty darn good quarterback by the name of Dennis Dixon was out of the lineup recovering from a torn ACL. I just watched the YouTube video of how it happened while researching for this piece, and now I won’t be able to sleep for a week. Great.
From purely a football standpoint, a victory for the Bruins is tough to even imagine. Oregon outgains UCLA by an average of 143 yards per game. They also have the Bruins beat in turnover margin, scoring defense, penalties per game and first downs.
And interceptions thrown. Oh boy, does Oregon top UCLA in the interception battle. As I’ve found, it’s pretty tough to establish a ratio while dividing by zero.
I will point out, however, that the Bruins do have the Ducks beat in the ever-so-crucial category of net punting and are neck-and-neck in blocked punts with one, so we’ll see how that plays out this Saturday.
But what will put the Bruins over the top in this game is continuing their impressive trend of third down conversions. By doing that, UCLA would keep Oregon’s offense off the field for as long as possible and allow Brett Hundley to find a rhythm, something the Bruins lacked for most of the Stanford game last weekend.
On defense, a corps of linebackers that features senior standout Anthony Barr and freshman phenom Myles Jack on the outside will need to do its absolute best to keep Marcus Mariota in the pocket. Or maybe just keep him from doing what he did to Virginia. We all saw that, and now the middle of the Cavaliers’ defense can’t be seen in public.
The Bruins will also realize at kickoff that they’re finally on the back end of one of the toughest back-to-backs in all of college football, and there’s a chance that the relief of almost being finished will allow them to play loose and confident.
If those strategies don’t work on the football field, then the Bruins will win creatively, employing any absurd tactic to try to throw the Ducks off their game.
They could, for example, hack De’Anthony Thomas’ Twitter account and turn caps lock off.
They could switch out Oregon’s game uniforms for uniforms so tacky the Ducks refuse to take the field. I’m talking real imaginative, like chrome and neon yellow. Oh, wait.
Or — shout-out to Jim Mora for the idea on this one—they could organize an impromptu NFL Supplemental Draft today in order to ensure that Mariota doesn’t play.
And if all that fails, how about a do-over five weeks from now?