Oregon Football: 3 takeaways from clutch win over Cal in Week 6

Oregon football outlasted the Cal Golden Bears at home on Saturday night. Here are three takeaways from the Ducks’ big win.

The Ducks overcome a sloppy first half full of mental mistakes to defeat the California Golden Bears. For the Ducks, they are in the driver’s seat in the Pac-12 North with a showdown looming against the Washington Huskies in two weeks.

The Ducks needed this win to stay in the conversation for both the Pac-12 Championship Game and the College Football Playoff. For the Bears, they’ve dropped their second straight conference game, all but knocking them out of the Pac-12 race.

The Bears missed starting quarterback Chase Garbers in this game. Backup Devin Modster played valiantly, but was streaky. Cal also had issues with Oregon’s team speed on both offense and defense. Cal couldn’t run past the Oregon defenders or catch the Ducks skilled position players. Oregon’s offensive line kept quarterback Justin Herbert clean for most of the game, and gave their running backs lanes to run all night long.

There were opportunities for the Ducks to score points and possibly build an insurmountable lead in the first half, but missed a field goal and threw an interception in the red zone in the first half. They also had several drive killing penalties in the first half as well. Those mistakes had the Ducks looking at a touchdown deficit at half time.

However, the Ducks were able to wear down a game Cal defense by not allow their offense to move the ball.

Here are three more takeaways from Saturday’s game.