Earlier in the week, Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham said that he believed Oregon would be the best team the Sun Devils would face in the 2023 season.
The Ducks and Heisman favorite fifth-year quarterback Bo Nix proved him right on Saturday afternoon with a 49-13 rout over the Sun Devils.
There were no solutions available for the Maroon and Gold defense and the players came to terms with that fact after the game.
“I got nothing but respect for the guy and he obviously was controlling the game from the first snap to [his] last snap,” graduate student defensive tackle Dashaun Mallory said.
Oregon’s offense has operated all season at an elite level. The veteran quarterback, who has seen some of the best defenses in college football dating back to his days at Auburn four years ago, has been a big reason why.
“He’s pretty much another coach out there,” redshirt junior quarterback Trenton Bourguet said about his counterpart.
Dillingham knew this would be the case and the challenge for his team’s defense. He practically made Nix the quarterback he has become.
“[Nix is], in my opinion, the Heisman Trophy winner, obviously I’m a little bit biased,” he said.
Dillingham’s blueprint has allowed his former signal caller and the players around him to flourish and the coach was proud of that despite his own team being the victim of that success.
“I firmly believe you leave a place better than you found it,” he said.
He did just that.
The Ducks are surging toward the College Football Playoff and a Pac-12 Championship appearance. Their offense has looked the best since Chip Kelly’s days in Eugene.
The win on Saturday was another example of said offense firing on all cylinders.
“There’s nothing to take away… take away the run, now you play man-coverage and you have to cover three wideouts that are going to play on Sundays with a quarterback who could win the Heisman,” Dillingham said. “Take away the pass, they lead the country in yards per carry.”
Nix tied a school record for passing touchdowns in a game with six. All of them came in the first half.
He totaled 404 passing yards and eviscerated a Sun Devil defense that was the victim of yet another elite offense and quarterback in the Pac-12.
Dillingham mentioned that Nix’s deep passing against ASU was maybe the best performance in that regard from the quarterback in his entire collegiate career.
Arizona State’s defense has performed admirably all season under defensive coordinator Brian Ward, but this was a different level.
“I told the guys in the locker room… that team right there, that team was better than us, point blank,” Dillingham said.
The quarterback carousel at Arizona State couldn’t be more different than the success Oregon has had at the position the last two seasons.
The side-to-side nature of the Ducks’ offense opened up holes for big, downfield passing plays. The prime example was Nix’s 45-yard bomb off his backfoot to junior wide receiver Troy Franklin for a touchdown.
That was not a throw Nix was capable of making at Auburn.
The performance from Dillingham’s former protege could be a positive for ASU, even though it came at the Sun Devils’s expense.
Nix was seen as a broken player after his career at Auburn. He was a run-first quarterback who didn’t seem to have elite processing ability in the passing game. Dillingham very obviously changed that.
“The process is consistency,” the ASU coach said. “And guess what? We’ll slowly get better.”
Oregon and Nix have completed that process. Dillingham’s hope and vision is that the Sun Devils can follow suit.
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