Run, Ducks, run

Surprise (to some)! Oregon has a ground game

By John Donovan, CNNSI.com

PHOENIX -- Colorado runs the ball. Oregon throws the ball. Those are practically college football facts of life. Everybody knows.

Onterrio Smith laughs and shakes his head. Sometimes, his look says, people are just soooo simple minded.

"Ah, we live with it," he said, smiling, as he and the rest of the Oregon players did the Sunday morning meet-the-press thing at the Fiesta Bowl media day. Smith's team plays Colorado on New Year's Day in a game that could have national title implications. "I believe there are people out there that don't want to know."

Here's what a lot of football fans outside of the Pac-10 and the state of Oregon either don't know or don't want to know. The Ducks (10-1) are more than All-America quarterback Joey Harrington chucking the ball all over the place. The Ducks can run.

The Ducks run real well, in fact.

Maybe they're no Colorado, which churns out 228-plus running yards a game, eighth-best in the nation. But 196.5 a game -- with a gun like Harrington at quarterback -- is none too shabby. That's 25th in the country. The Ducks make their runs count, too. They average a whopping 5.2 yards a carry -- ninth in the nation -- to Colorado's 4.8.

More than that: Only one team in the country has a pair of runners that ranks ahead of Smith (1,007 yards) and Maurice Morris (960) in total yards. Nebraska's Dahrran Diedrick and Eric Crouch combined for 2,414 yards.

It is may be the biggest secret uncovered here by folks turning their attention to Oregon for the first time.

Who would've figured? The Ducks can run.

"Both of those tailbacks, Smith and Morris, could play for any team in the country and be as effective as they are for Oregon," said Tom McMahon, one of Colorado's two defensive coordinators. "You'd like a team that just throws the ball or just runs the ball. They do both well ... and that presents more of a challenge for us."

Said Colorado safety Robbie Robinson: "[They're] probably the best tandem we've seen all year." Running the ball will be critical for Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl, as it has been all season. Colorado's the type of team that can strangle an opponent simply by running a lot. The Buffaloes held the ball for an average of four minutes, 10 seconds longer than their opponent.

In contrast, Oregon's average opponent actually held the ball longer than the Ducks. The only way to change that is to use Smith or Morris to keep possession.

"They took more pressure off me than anything I've ever experienced," said Harrington, a likely first-round pick this spring in the NFL Draft. "They just put me in the position where I don't have to make the big play every time."

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