Ducks. Red Raiders. Week 2 Will Shape the Season For Oregon Football.

By 750 THE GAME STAFF

Spring football is underway, and with it come the hopes of another promising fall for Oregon Ducks football.

Bo Nix returns at quarterback, Dan Lanning is poised to make a jump with the defense, and Oregon looks to finish strong in 2023 after faltering toward the tail end of last season with losses to Washington and Oregon State.

What challenges face the Ducks on their 2023 schedule?

Look no further than a challenging road test in Week Two.

That’s when Oregon visits former Ducks quarterback Tyler Shough and the Texas Tech Red Raiders in what will be a true test of an Oregon pass defense that struggled in 2022.

Judah Newby and Steven Vaughan discussed that early season matchup on Friday’s Bald Faced Truth radio show on 750 The Game.

“Year two under Lanning, you want strides, you want to come out on the front foot, you’ll have one game underneath you already (vs Portland State in Week 1), and now it’s a Week Two September game at Texas Tech – you can’t lose that one,” Newby said. “You should beat Texas Tech.”

The Red Raiders finished 8-5 last season, ending the year with four straight wins and a victory over Ole Miss in the TaxAct Texas Bowl. Shough totaled 3 touchdowns in the win and ran for a career-high 111 yards on the ground. The former Ducks quarterback who transferred after the 2020 season is the incumbent starter in Lubbock next year, his third with the program.

“That’s a fascinating storyline, and a key storyline in Week Two,” Newby said. “I was at that (Oregon vs Stanford) game in 2020. Shough was feeling it. He was doing things with his legs. He was making spin moves on read-keepers inside the five for touchdowns, and it was like, OK, this guy is it. But by game four, which was the Civil War game with Oregon State, it turned so quickly for him from a positive to a negative light. It kind of fell out of the bottom.

“I think it’s kind of cool to see him playing good ball at Texas Tech.”

Listen to the full segment below, in the second hour of Friday’s show.

John Canzano delivers The Bald Faced Truth afternoons 3-6 p.m. exclusively in Portland on 750 The Game.

@750TheGame