Oregon QB has become scary good under new coach

After struggling throughout his career at Oregon, Dennis Dixon has become a legit Heisman candidate as a senior. John Froschauer/Icon SMI

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Five years ago this week, a highly touted but oft-tattered senior quarterback turned a USC-Oregon game at Autzen Stadium into his own Heisman audition tape. By shredding the defending Pac-10 champions for 448 yards and five touchdowns in a 44-33 victory, the SoCal native took a giant step toward eventually hoisting that grand, stiff-arm trophy.

Saturday's Ducks-Trojans clash in Eugene is ripe for another Carson Palmer moment. Only this time, it is likely to come from the quarterback in green.

Oregon senior Dennis Dixon is the nation's fourth-rated passer, having completed 69.3 percent of his throws for 1,728 yards, 16 touchdowns and just three interceptions. He's also run for 416 yards and seven scores.

Yet much like Palmer was at this point in his senior season, Dixon remains on the fringe of the Heisman discussion. While his statistics nearly mirror those of consensus front-runner and fellow spread-option practitioner Tim Tebow, Dixon, like Palmer before him, remains haunted by previous blemishes.

Just as the one-time wunderkind Palmer weathered four up-and-down years before finally excelling as a senior, Dixon, the most celebrated quarterback recruit of Ducks coach Mike Bellotti's tenure, lost his starting job for the final two games of a largely disastrous junior campaign (12 TDs, 14 INTs). Just as two early losses kept Palmer on the Heisman back-burner for much of that 2002 season, Oregon's last-second loss to Cal on Sept. 29 -- one in which Dixon threw two fourth-quarter interceptions (after going his first four-plus games without one) -- has thus far prevented the San Leandro, Calif., native from gaining serious traction.

What Dixon needs to erase those demons is a big performance in a big game, much like Palmer's against Oregon. Saturday's showdown between the fifth-ranked Ducks (6-1, 3-1 in the Pac-10) and the ninth-ranked Trojans (also 6-1, 3-1) could be just that game.

Beaten down by a roster's worth of injuries and embroiled in a heated quarterback controversy, USC, the Pac-10's five-time defending champion, is like a battered boxer with his back against the rope. Lowly Stanford and Arizona exposed the Trojans' scars. One more decisive blow could send the champ to the mat.

Oregon, with its incredible, machine-like offense (550.9 yards per game, No. 2 nationally), is a more-than-capable challenger -- but it might require a Heisman-caliber performance by Dixon for the Ducks to follow through.

"Dennis is as good a quarterback as there is in the country," says Ducks first-year offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Chip Kelly. Which brings us to yet another Palmer-Dixon parallel: Kelly, who Bellotti hired last February after Gary Crowton left for LSU, is Dixon's Norm Chow.

Just as the Trojans' renowned former offensive coordinator helped right Palmer's previously disappointing career, Kelly, an upbeat, 43-year-old bachelor (he is engaged) and unabashed football savant (he can supposedly rattle off the high school and college of every quarterback in the NFL) has been the X-factor behind Dixon's transformation from inconsistent to incredible -- and Oregon's emergence as the nation's most feared offense.

Kelly, formerly the offensive coordinator at I-AA New Hampshire (his alma mater), is an aficionado of Belotti's preferred spread-option offense. One of his hometown friends from Manchester, N.H. (the "spread capital of the world," as Kelly jokingly calls it) is Dan Mullen, Urban Meyer's offensive coordinator at Florida. Both became enamored with the spread-option sometime around 1999, when then-Clemson offensive coordinator Rich Rodriguez and quarterback Woody Dantzler first popularized the offense.

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