5 Things To Watch: Montana State

EUGENE, Ore. — The fourth season of Oregon football under head coach Dan Lanning is ready to kick off.

The Ducks will take a No. 7 preseason ranking into the new campaign, which begins Saturday at home. The Ducks will host Montana State in Autzen Stadium at 1 p.m.

The UO football team is coming off a Big Ten championship season in its first year as new members of the conference, having reached the College Football Playoff after going 13-0 to start the year. The Bobcats also entered the postseason with an unblemished record last fall, finishing 15-1 and taking a No. 2 preseason ranking in the FCS into Saturday's match-up.

The two teams have met just once before, a 27-14 victory for the Ducks at home back in 1947. Oregon enters Saturday with a 14-game winning streak in season openers played at home, and a 34-game nonconference home winning streak that is the longest in the nation.

Saturday's game will be televised on Big Ten Network, with Jeff Levering on play by play, analysis from Jake Butt and sideline reporting by Brooke Fletcher.

Some storylines to watch once the game kicks off …

1. After the Ducks saw a program-record 10 players selected in this year's NFL Draft, it's a new-look roster that will take the field Saturday. One-third of the roster is new, including 13 transfers and also freshmen who arrived as part of an elite recruiting class.

Given the relative lack of experience for this year's group, the Ducks hope to get game time Saturday for as much of the roster as possible. They proved in preseason camp, Lanning said, that they're worthy.

"The truth is, there's gonna be a lot of guys out there playing for us that haven't played a lot," Lanning said. "But you know what? What gives you confidence in those moments is that they've had a lot of experience in practice. And that experience — that we've done a good job of making it feel like a game — it's gonna carry over."

2. Oregon's quarterback Saturday won't be a newcomer, but he will be a new starter for the program. After backing up Dillon Gabriel last year, Dante Moore and Austin Novosad have been competing this preseason for the right to succeed Gabriel as the starter.

Of the two, Moore has starting experience from his freshman season with UCLA in 2023. He's spent the time since learning, growing and preparing himself mentally to eventually resume a starting position.

"I think he's grown since the minute he's been here," Lanning said. "He continues to operate like a pro. I wouldn't say there was anything this week that he all of a sudden turned on that hasn't been in operation ever since this offseason and even into last season. I think he's operated like that since he's been here."

3. A goal for the Ducks is to start this season playing at a consistently higher level than a year ago. Though Oregon won its first 13 games of 2024, early wins over Idaho and Boise State featured some harrowing moments.

Some of that stemmed, the coaching staff has said, from having too big a playbook to start the season. This preseason, they've tried to provide a more focused package for the team to practice and then implement on game day.

"I think as an entire staff we've challenged ourselves," Lanning said. "Just because we ran it in fall camp doesn't mean it's a play we have to carry into game one. We carried a little bit more of our menu in last year and this is a lot more condensed going into this season, of what we want to execute at a high level based on our opponent."

4. Last season Montana State rushed for 4,719 yards with 53 touchdowns, averaging 6.53 yards per carry — all of which led the FCS level.

Oregon's run defense was elite in the regular season but slipped in the postseason. The Ducks will get a tough initial test on that front Saturday, when they face the Bobcats and mobile quarterback Justin Lamson — who faced Oregon while at Stanford in 2023.

"I think they present a lot of different pictures that are tough," Lanning said. "Their guys play with some physicality. They have some guys up front who have been good players for them on the offensive line, but they're really good at creating hats in the run-game. They've always been dangerous when it comes to quarterback run as well. That's something Justin has shown in his past is his ability to run, so that's something we certainly have to prepare for."

5. Though the Ducks survived some tough battles in their first two games of 2024, they did so in victorious fashion and continued to improve over the rest of the regular season.

That will be the goal again in 2025, though of course Oregon wants to take as strong a first step as possible in Saturday's opener.

"I think regardless of result or whoever we are on Saturday, I hope it's not remotely close to who we become," Lanning said. "You always talk about becoming the best version of yourselves. And I think we're a long ways away from what we could become, but I think this would be a good starting point to assess exactly where we're at. "