On Saturday, the Oregon football program essentially punched its ticket to the 2025-26 college football playoff with a road demolition of the Washington Huskies, 26-14, in a game that was not nearly as close as the final score suggested. The Ducks have now finished the season at 11-1 and, although they won't be participating in the Big 10 Championship next weekend, still are for all intents and purposes a playoff lock moving forward.
After the game against the Huskies, Oregon wide receiver Malik Benson issued a warning to the rest of the college football world.
“Getting some rest is gonna be good for my guys. But it's gonna be scary once we get all of our guys back,” said Benson, finding the silver lining in the Ducks not making it to their conference championship game, per Rob Mosely of GoDucks.com on X, formerly Twitter.
Instead, that game will be played by Ohio State and Indiana next weekend.
Oregon football has been a strong team all year, and will now look to make it further than they did in last year's college football playoff, which ended in disaster. On New Year's Day of 2025, the Ducks were absolutely blasted by the eventual champion Ohio State Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl last year, despite having beaten Ohio State at home earlier in the season.
This time around, Dan Lanning and company will want to make sure they are much better prepared when they step on the field for the playoff, against whoever that may be.
At this point, several things still have to be sorted out before fans get a good idea of where the Ducks will be seeded for their upcoming playoff run, but if they can continue to produce performances like the one they had on Saturday against Washington, they'll be a scary opponent for any team to face.
