SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Oregon defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti, who will retire after the Alamo Bowl, will be remembered for many things in his Oregon career, and not all of the memories will be positive.
One of his biggest criticisms this season has been his defense’s struggles versus the run, especially late in the season. In the 26-20 loss to Stanford, the Ducks gave up 274 yards and two touchdowns on the ground. In the 42-16 loss to Arizona, 304 yards and four touchdowns. Against Oregon State, who isn’t known for being a running team, 231 rushing yards and two rushing touchdowns.
Aliotti talked about all of those games in Friday’s press conference, and he agreed that his team played poorly against the Wildcats.
“I didn’t have them ready,” Aliotti said, “We didn’t play great. It’s probably one of the worst games that we’ve played that I can remember.”
However, Aliotti defended Oregon’s defensive performances against the run versus Stanford and Oregon State.
“Stanford, I don’t think we played that bad against the run, contrary to what everybody else might think,” Aliotti said. “But they ran the ball 66 times. They didn’t have to throw it.”
The defensive coordinator also said that some of the struggles on the defensive side of the ball against the Cardinal could be explained by the other side.
“Tough to answer this way, but we didn’t play very well on offense,” Aliotti said. “So, the fact that we didn’t play very well on offense, they didn’t have to throw the ball.”
Aliotti added that giving up nearly 300 yards is “the nature of the beast” when a team runs the ball 66 times like Stanford did. Arizona, for instance, ran it 65 times against Oregon and only averaged 4.7 yards per carry, far from an elite figure in college football (UAB averages exactly 4.7 yards per carry this season, ranking 40th in the FBS). Stanford averaged even less yards per carry (4.2) against the Ducks.
Oregon State arguably had a better rushing performance than both Stanford and Arizona in its 36-35 loss to the Ducks. The Beavers’ 231-yard performance included negative-28 yards (mostly on sacks) from quarterback Sean Mannion, and they still rushed for 5.9 yards per carry.
Aliotti also said that because Oregon State is a pass-first team, making them run the ball wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“Didn’t want them to run for that many yards but they throw the ball, so we wanted to make sure they didn’t throw the ball all over the place,” Aliotti said. “Maybe to some degree, the fact that they ran the ball helped us win.”
Mannion threw for 314 yards in the Civil War (he averaged 358 yards per game in 2013) with two touchdowns and one interception.
The Ducks will face another solid run game in Texas during the Alamo Bowl. The Longhorns average 197.6 rushing yards per game (35th in the FBS), 4.47 yards per carry (T-53rd) and have scored 24 rushing touchdowns (T-50th). However, they lost leading rusher Jonathan Gray for the season against West Virginia and they’ll be without contributing rushers Daje Johnson and Jalen Overstreet due to academic ineligibility.
Aliotti expects Texas to be another tough test, like Stanford, Arizona or Oregon State. He’s confident, though, that his defense can step up against the run, and he points to Oregon’s performances in past big games as proof.
“I have no idea what the (Alamo Bowl) outcome’s going to be or how it’s going to turn out,” Aliotti said, “but in every game that we’ve played where there was a big time run team that we weren’t going to stop the run, and they were going to run all over the place, and they were going to score a lot of points — Colorado, Kansas State (2012 Fiesta Bowl), Auburn (2010 national championship) — we stopped the run.”
Follow Victor Flores on Twitter @vflores415