Oregon Football fans have to be stoked with the Ducks' efforts in Week 8. After watching the national media hype up their former head coach, Chip Kelly, for his UCLA squad's undefeated efforts through the first six weeks of the 2022 NCAA season, going so far as to give the Bruins an edge over the Ducks in Week 8, Oregon had a lot to prove.

And yet, first-year head coach Dan Lanning wasn't ready to simply throw up the red flag before the opening kickoff. No, Lanning and his squad scoured the tape, watched what the Bruins did well, and identified a deficiency in their game plan that helped to turn the tables, recapture the momentum, and place Oregon back in the proverbial driver's seat of the Pac-12: UCLA's kicking unit.

That's right, up 17-10, Lanning called for his kicker, Andrew Boyle, to dribble an otherwise usual kick 10 yards down the field in order to “steal” a possession away from the Bruins before the expected rain changed the tenor of the game. This play, reminiscent of a similar kick over a decade ago that Kelly called against Jim Hargaugh's Standford Cardinals, was a play of note during the Ducks' practice throughout the week, so much so that Lanning had to ask the team's beat reporters not to mention it in their reports otherwise “I'll never let you come to practice again,” as was detailed in his post-game conversations passed along by Paolo Uggetti of ESPN.

“I told you don't tell anybody or I'll never let you come to practice again, right?” Lanning said postgame with a smile. “We saw it after the first kickoff, and we felt like, OK, that's the look we want, we think we got a chance for it. It looked like there was some weather coming in. We felt like if there was a chance to steal a possession, it would be before the weather really hit.”

With the on-side kick successful, Oregon found themselves with the ball at the 46-yard line and marched their way down the field via a steady diet of Noah Whittington rushes on the way to a touchdown on 2nd and 1 from the two to go up 24-10. Throw one more touchdown versus a UCLA field goal to close out the quarter, and the Ducks' bullied their way to 31 points at the half; a score that proved insurmountable for UCLA to overcome.

“At halftime, we sat there and talked about how the most physical team is going to win this game,” Lanning said. “You look at the brand of football we played going into the half and coming out in the third quarter, we said we're going to run the ball and be physical.”

Bo Nix loves himself some aggressive Oregon Football.

Turning in another impressive performance, completing 78 percent of his 28 passes for 283 yards and five touchdowns through the air, and 51 more yards on the ground, Nix looked smooth inside and out of the pocket and proved why Oregon fans were so excited to see the ex-Auburn performer don a helmet with wings on the side.

“When you keep an explosive offense like that off the field it slows them down, makes them cold,” Nix said. “We didn't really look back after that.”

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Nix's assessment is 100 percent correct and will likely be the defining decision of the game for the Ducks. Lanning and company knew that Kelly's crew could score the ball with relative ease and that quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson – DTR, as his friends call him – is in the middle of a star-making campaign, so they made a concerted effort to keep them on the sidelines, as their aforementioned on-side kick and four(!) fourth down conversion attempts clearly showed. In a game where the ball was only punted once by both teams combined, that proved to be the deciding factor in the game.

“I think you can kind of give credit to a lot of our success offensively to Coach Lanning's aggression, right now,” Nix said postgame. “He's a super aggressive head coach, which is a little different, because he's defensive-minded.”

Though it's impossible to know now how the AP Poll will shakeout after an incredibly interesting weekend of college football, with UCLA and USC both dropping their respective contests in Week 8, it's clear the Ducks will enter Week 9 as the head and shoulders best team in the Pac-12, owning a perfect in-conference record and a “good” loss to Georgia in Week 1. With just one more game left against a ranked opponent down the stretch – unless, of course, a team like Washington or Oregon State is able to go on a run – things are looking up for Oregon Football.