Benched Against Nebraska, Raiola Needed One Quarter to Beat Them

Oregon beat Nebraska 17-14 at Autzen Stadium on Saturday night, and the winning quarterback was the one the Ducks had left on the bench against his former team. Brock Thomas started with Dante Moore out and went 9-for-20 for 54 yards in three quarters. Dylan Raiola entered to start the fourth quarter trailing 14-6, led a field-goal drive and then a 20-play, 82-yard drive that ended with his 4-yard touchdown pass to Jamari Johnson with 28 seconds left, theScore reports.

How did a game with almost no offense end 17-14?

For three quarters it barely moved. The first quarter ended scoreless after six punts. Nebraska scored first just before halftime, when Anthony Colandrea found Kwazi Gilmer for a 17-yard touchdown with four seconds left in the half, Cornhuskers Wire reports. Oregon answered with two third-quarter field goals from Gage Hurych, helped by a Nebraska punt snap that put the punter’s knee on the ground and gave the Ducks the ball at the Nebraska 21. Nebraska then stretched the lead to 14-6 late in the third, Colandrea running in from six yards after Dwayne McDougle III had intercepted Thomas.

The fourth quarter belonged to the Oregon defense and to Raiola. Oregon scored 11 points in the quarter and Nebraska scored none. Colandrea finished 18-for-33 for 164 yards with a touchdown pass and a rushing touchdown, and Gilmer led Nebraska with six catches for 74 yards. It was Nebraska’s second loss in a row by three points after leading in the fourth quarter, theScore notes, following the same finish against Indiana a week earlier.

Why did Raiola not start against his former team?

Because of what happened a week earlier, in the same stadium. Moore missed his second straight game with the concussion he suffered against USC, which is the situation the site’s quarterback position explainer cannot prepare a staff for: the starter out, and both backups having just failed in public. Against UCLA, Raiola started, went 6-for-19 for 43 yards with two interceptions, and was pulled for Thomas, who brought Oregon back to within two points of the Bruins. That sequence is set out in the site’s coverage of the Oregon-UCLA game, where Bear Alexander’s punch on Nico Iamaleava also went unflagged.

Dan Lanning chose Thomas to start against Nebraska, a first career start for the senior, and Thomas gave him very little: 9-for-20, 54 yards, one interception, and 91 yards of total offense in three quarters, on a night when Oregon was also missing receivers. Raiola had spent the better part of two seasons as Nebraska’s starter after arriving there as a five-star recruit, the kind of prospect whose name tends to surface early in any look at the best NFL draft picks a few years later. On Saturday he watched three quarters of the game against that team from the sideline. Sports Illustrated reported before the finish that he had called facing his former team “weird” during the week.

What did the crowd have to do with the change?

The crowd made its view plain before the staff made the change. Oregon was booed off at halftime, down 7-0. In the third quarter, when Thomas threw into double coverage on third down and the field-goal unit came on, the student section chanted “We want Dylan!”, Ducks Wire’s in-stadium live blog recorded. Raiola warmed up during the quarter break, on the edge of the sideline, while Thomas talked with the injured Moore.

When Raiola jogged out to start the fourth quarter, the same live blog describes massive cheers. Coaches do not pick quarterbacks by chant, and Lanning had a football reason available: Thomas had produced 54 passing yards in three quarters. The chant is still part of the record of the night, because it shows how far the staff’s chosen order and the building’s chosen order had drifted apart by the time the change came.

How did the winning drive work?

Slowly, which was the point. Raiola’s first drive lasted 17 plays and 69 yards and took nearly eight minutes, ending in a Hurych field goal that made it 14-9. Oregon’s defense then forced a quick three-and-out, and Raiola got the ball back with 5:31 left, at his own 18-yard line by the drive distance theScore and Ducks Wire both give.

The second drive went 82 yards in 20 plays. Oregon ran the clock as much as it moved the ball, with running back Brandon Smith ripping off two 13-yard runs on the earlier drive to settle the offense. With 28 seconds left, Raiola found tight end Jamari Johnson in the back of the end zone from four yards, and then found Hudson Lewis for the 2-point conversion that pushed the margin to three and meant a Nebraska field goal could only tie. Nebraska’s last possession ran out of time before it reached field-goal range. Raiola’s final line was 11-for-18 for 59 yards and the touchdown. The yardage is modest, and a running quarterback it is not; the site’s list of the most rushing yards by a quarterback is built on a different kind of game. What the drive needed was completions that kept the clock moving and no mistake, and that is what it got.

What does this do to Oregon’s quarterback order?

It reopens a job that Lanning had closed twice in eight days. The order this month has gone Moore, then Raiola, then Thomas, then Raiola again, all of it inside three games, and the two fourth-quarter changes have now produced opposite results: Thomas nearly rescued the UCLA game and Raiola finished the Nebraska game. TheScore records Saturday as Raiola’s second win of the season when coming off the bench.

No report checked for this article carries a postgame Lanning quote naming the starter for the trip to Illinois next Saturday, and this article does not guess at one. Moore’s availability sits over the whole question: he has missed two games since the USC injury, and if he is cleared, the staff’s problem changes shape again. If he is not, Lanning has to explain either returning to a quarterback he benched for the Nebraska game, or staying with one he benched during the UCLA game. Performances like Saturday’s also travel beyond one depth chart; a five-star recruit winning a game against the school he left is the sort of night that follows a player into Heisman Trophy conversations in a later season, even if this one has gone too unevenly for that.

What did Nebraska lose, besides the game?

Position, twice over. The Cornhuskers led 14-6 with a quarter to play, on the road, against a rival having its worst offensive night of the season, and they had intercepted the starting quarterback. Colandrea had outplayed both Oregon passers for three quarters. The defense then gave up two long drives, 17 plays and 20 plays, and the offense’s last chance ended without a kick. Ducks Wire’s player-of-the-game piece credits the Oregon defense for keeping the game close enough to steal: Teitum Tuioti had five tackles and two sacks, Bear Alexander had seven tackles, and Ify Obidegwu intercepted Colandrea in the first half.

Nebraska now has a bye week before hosting Washington on Halloween, Cornhuskers Wire reports. Oregon, 4-2, goes to Illinois next Saturday with a win it spent three quarters looking incapable of scoring.