Jordan Mendoza, USA TODAY Sat, October 24, 2026 at 10:57 PM UTC · 3 min read About Our Ads Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Duck hunting season has commenced.
In one of the most stunning results of the 2026 season, preseason national championship favorite Oregon can all but kiss its College Football Playoff hopes goodbye.
Illinois supplied the crushing blow, stunning the Ducks 21-10 for its first win over Oregon since 1970.
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Oregon is now 4-3, already tying the most losses in a season during the Dan Lanning era. And October isn't even over.
Everything seemed aligned for Oregon. Dante Moore put his NFL career on hold for another shot at glory. Lanning once again assembled a loaded roster through high school recruiting and the transfer portal, backed by the seemingly limitless resources surrounding a program synonymous with Nike founder Phil Knight.
After back-to-back postseason disappointments, this was supposed to be the Oregon team that finally broke through and captured the program's elusive first national championship.
Instead, the Ducks ' season has unraveled before Halloween.
And that national championship trophy case will stay empty for at least another year.
It be easy to pin the blame on the loss of Moore. The 1-2 record with an offense averaging 14 points since his last game support the idea the injury to the quarterback derailed everything.
In reality, there were all sorts of issues that doomed the Ducks.
The current offensive struggles mask a bigger issue: This unit hasn't looked right from the start.
Moore has regressed, struggling with his decision-making and rarely resembling the surefire top-10 NFL draft pick many projected him to be had he entered the draft. The running game, a strength last season, has disappeared. Injuries and off-field issues have further depleted an experienced receiving corps.
The defense has held up as well as it could, but sloppy tackling has become too costly to overcome.
Mix it all together, and Oregon suddenly looks eerily similar to 2025 Penn State: a team that entered the season talking about a national championship, only to watch everything fall apart before it ever got close.
Will Lanning be fired? No. He's worth too much to Oregon, and his first four seasons in Eugene earned him plenty of goodwill.
But this is unquestionably the low point of his tenure.
If this was supposed to be Oregon's best team yet, and the result is somehow worse than getting boat-raced in the playoff, what exactly inspires confidence that next year will finally be different?
Knight has patiently waited for decades of investment in his beloved program to produce the ultimate payoff. He'll have to keep waiting.
And now the pressure in Eugene only intensifies.
By 2027, Oregon could be approaching a tipping point. The excuses are running thin. Lanning doesn't merely need a bounce-back season. He needs to prove this program can turn all its money, talent, facilities and ambition into something more tangible than hype and postseason disappointment.
An expanded playoff gives Oregon more margin for error, but simply making the field can no longer be the standard.
At some point, all those checks have to start cashing out in championships.
Oregon entered this season believing it finally had the roster capable of shouting from the mountaintop of college football.
Instead, another season ends with the Ducks looking up at everybody else.
And for a program that loves reminding everyone it never rains at Autzen Stadium, this qualifies as an absolute downpour.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Same old Oregon. All that money, all that talent, no national championship
Source: Sports
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