Oregon cruises past Montana for their second-straight lopsided win

Any football coach worth his or her salt will tell you: there’s no sense in worrying about the brand name of the opponent on the schedule. The only thing worth worrying about is ensuring your football team is fully prepared to play to its potential against the opponent that week – whoever that may be.

So while the University of Montana Grizzlies didn’t exactly represent one of the marquee opponents on the schedule of the University of Oregon in 2019, head coach Mario Cristobal needed to ensure his team built on the momentum of their huge win against Nevada, lest they be ripe for an upset of epic proportions.

Thankfully, no such upset was even remotely in the cards last Saturday, as the Ducks cruised to a lopsided 35-3 victory over the Grizzlies, thanks in large part to the 560 total yards of offense the Ducks had for the day.

Senior quarterback Justin Herbert followed up his 310 yards and 5 touchdown passes last week by throwing for 316 yards and 5 more touchdown passes in the win against Montana. Herbert is currently tied for third in the nation for most touchdown passes thrown this season (11), and leads all quarterbacks in the Pac-12 in said stat.

Oregon scored touchdowns on three of their first six drives in the first half, giving them a 21-0 lead at intermission. The Ducks opened the game with an 8-play, 75-yard drive that ended with Herbert finding a familiar target in the endzone – tight end Jacob Breeland – for a 5-yard touchdown pass. Breeland now has three touchdown catches in Oregon’s last two games.

The Ducks came out of halftime by intercepting an attempt from Montana quarterback Dalton Sneed (freshman cornerback Mykael Wright came up with the pick), and scored another touchdown on their first drive of the second half. They admittedly took their foot off the proverbial gas pedal for the rest of the game, but still added one more score for posterity.

While Herbert masterfully orchestrated the offense for the second week in a row, he got plenty of support from the Ducks’ rushing attack that tallied 247 yards of their own (on 38 carries). Sophomore running back Travis Dye finished with 101 yards rushing on only 17 carries, after recording a grand total of 12 carries in the two prior games combined. Freshman running back Sean Dollars had 69 yards on 3 carries, most of which came when he ripped off a 63 yard run of his own.

Defensively, the Ducks held Montana to only 242 yards of offense on the day, and a grand total of only 12 first downs all game.

With the games against out-of-conference Nevada and Montana behind them, the Ducks start off their games against Pac-12 opponents by traveling to Palo Alto to take on Stanford University on Saturday. They’ll undoubtedly be motivated for revenge against Stanford, after losing in last year’s overtime thriller in Eugene. There would be few better ways to repay that “debt” than by handing Stanford a loss of their own, in front of their own fans, to start off Pac-12 play in 2019.

Kickoff for that game is set for 7:00pm PST.