On Monday night the Oregon Ducks (13-1) and Ohio State Buckeyes (13-1) will play for the College Football Playoff National Championship at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. While the Buckeyes are coming off back-to-back impressive victories against Wisconsin and Alabama, the Ducks enter Monday night’s game with a world of confidence after blowing out defending champion Florida State by 39 points.
The Ducks have arguably been the hottest team in the country over the past two months defeating their opponents by an average of 27 points per game. But they will face their toughest test of the season on Monday night against Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes.
Led by Heisman winning quarterback Marcus Mariotta, the Ducks are favored between six and seven points but after watching what Ohio State did to No. 1 Alabama, those odds mean nothing.
Here are the Oregon keys to victory on Monday night…
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The Ducks must force turnovers
In their game against Florida State, the Seminoles gained 528 yards in total offense but it was their five turnovers that made the difference in the ballgame. This season, the Ducks forced 30 turnovers which was good for No. 10 in the nation and they had the nation’s largest turnover margin.
No offense does a better job than capitalizing off turnovers. This season, the Buckeyes offense turned the ball over 22 times which should give the Ducks defense a chance to make some big plays against Cardale Jones and the Ohio State offense.
Keep up the tempo
Three words… don’t slow down. Oregon will always be known for it’s up-tempo offense and it really seems to get going after first downs, big plays and turnovers. That being said, in order for the Ducks to force their tempo down Ohio State’s throat, they will need to produce some big plays from both the running and passing game while the defense must get a turnover or two. Ohio State will do its best to slow down the Oregon offense by forcing incompletions and stuffing the running game.
According to Ducks offensive coordinator Scott Frost, he believed that his offense had a great tempo advantage against Florida State but it will be much more difficult against Ohio State which he credits to better conditioning.
Regardless, Ohio State can do a multitude of things in practice to simulate the Oregon offense but there’s nothing close to facing the real thing.
Contain Cardale Jones and prevent the deep ball
Just when Alabama thought it had a stop on defense, Jones would tuck the ball and run 20 yards down field. And when he wasn’t running, he was looking deep to his big-play receivers.
The Oregon Ducks have a monumental task of containing Jones in the pocket and not allowing him to break off big runs while at the same time preventing him from throwing long touchdown passes to Devin Smith and Evan Spencer.
The Buckeyes will stretch the field far better than Florida State did and Jones has the arm-strength to make just about any throw.
One important thing to note is that Jones did start slow against Alabama so if he starts slow again on Monday, the Oregon offense must come away with early points to put the pressure right back on Jones and the Ohio State offense.