What Happened the Last Time OSU and Oregon Met on the Gridiron?

Entering this weekend’s matchup in Eugene, the Cowboys and Ducks have met just one time on a football field: the 2008 Holiday Bowl.

It was a back-and-forth affair that Oregon ended up winning 42-31. The game featured two top 10 offenses, as the Cowboys were led by the quartet of Zac Robinson, Dez Bryant, Kendall Hunter and Brandon Pettigrew.

I went back and watched that game on Wednesday. Here are a few takeaways.

OSU in 2008

This was the year things really got rolling for Mike Gundy’s Cowboys.

After going 7-6 in 2007, OSU entered this bowl game at 9-3. Those three losses were to top-three teams — No. 1 Texas, No. 2 Texas Tech and No. 3 Oklahoma. The Cowboys also beat a top-three team that season when they went on the road and toppled Missouri 28-23 — one of the games of the Mike Gundy era.

That quartet I mentioned above were the catalysts for OSU’s success this season.

Bryant caught 87 passes for 1,480 yards and 19 touchdowns on his way to All-America status.

Pettigrew was OSU’s second-leading receiver, finishing the year with 42 catches for 472 yards.

Hunter ran for 1,555 yards and 16 touchdowns on 241 carries — 6.5 yards per attempt.

Then Robinson was the perfect dual-threat quarterback for that time period. He threw for 3,064 yards and 25 touchdowns in 2008 while running for another 562 yards and eight scores.

This marked the first time OSU had won nine games in a season since 2003. Before that, you have to go all the way back to Barry Sanders’ Heisman-winning season of 1988.

The Game

The Cowboys raced out to a 17-7 lead after the first quarter.

Dan Bailey hit from 45 yards out to get the scoring started on OSU’s opening drive before Bryant had a 33-yard catch and run on the Cowboys’ next possession to make it 10-0.

Oregon bounced back when running back Jeremiah Johnson went 76 yards to the house on the next play from scrimmage before the Pokes responded with a 3-yard run from Hunter to make it 17-7.

Oregon quarterback Jeremiah Masoli, who we’ll get to, scored three rushing touchdowns in the third quarter alone. Hunter also found paydirt again in the quarter, but OSU went into the fourth trailing 28-24.

OSU retook the lead early in the fourth quarter, as Robinson scored on a QB sneak to make it 31-28. But Oregon responded with a 20-yard touchdown pass and then Legarrette Blount put an exclamation point on the win by hurdling a Cowboy defender on his way to a 29-yard touchdown run.

Jeremiah Masoli Was a Problem

The 2008 Ducks roster featured future NFL guys like Legarrette Blount, Max Unger and Patrick Chung, but the guy who was killing the Pokes that day in San Diego was quarterback Jeremiah Masoli.

Masoli was built like a stocky running back but conducted the Oregon offense. Although he didn’t make it to the NFL, Masoli is still playing in the Canadian Football League, which listed him at 5-foot-10, 228 pounds this season.

That low center of gravity made Masoli a tough tackle, especially when he got rolling downhill. He finished with 258 passing yards, 106 rushing yards and four total touchdowns. On one of his three rushing touchdowns, Masoli trucked an OSU defensive back on his way to pay dirt.

Note: Remember Zac Robinson and Andrew Lewis gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated going into 2009? That was a regional cover for the outlet’s college football preview. Masoli and Oregon center Jordan Holmes were on another version.

Dez Bryant Was a Warrior

Dez Bryant set a Holiday Bowl record with 13 receptions despite almost literally dragging his left leg behind him for a little more than half of the game.

With about four minutes to play in the second quarter, Bryant caught a slant route. It was a wet day in San Diego, where players struggled for grip. Bryant’s right leg slipped as he tried to cut, but his left one stayed in place. The fall was made all the more awkward by an Oregon defender tackling Bryant right as that cut started to happen.

Bryant missed the rest of the half, but surprisingly reemerged for the second. He wasn’t nearly the same, but he was still out there catching passes despite basically not being able to run.

Bryant stayed down again early in the fourth quarter, and you thought that would surely be the end of his day. But then he came back in when OSU got around the goal line, where he was used as a decoy on two straight downs while Robinson sneaked in a touchdown.

OSU’s alien of a wide receiver caught 13 passes for 167 yards and a touchdown with one leg against a 10-win team. He was a freak.

An Odd Thing I Thought Was Interesting

This was the last game Oregon played before Chip Kelly took over as the Ducks’ head coach. He’d go on to go 46-7 in Eugene before bumping up to the NFL for a few seasons.

Kelly was the Ducks’ offensive coordinator in this game.

I find this little tidbit interesting because two years prior, the Cowboys played Alabama in the Independence Bowl — the Crimson Tide’s final game before the Nick Saban era.

It’s sort of wild that OSU played these two gargantuan programs the game before a legendary coach took over.