Return to Title Game, and To Cowboys' Stadium, Brings Seniors' Careers Full Circle
By Rob Moseley
Editor, GoDucks.com
Louisiana State’s football roster for its opening game of the 2011 season against Oregon, played at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, listed safety Rockey Duplessis at 6 feet tall and 209 pounds.
To UO linebacker Derrick Malone Jr., who made his collegiate debut that day, Duplessis is remembered simply as “No. 40; he was about 6-foot, 280.” Malone was on kickoff return, where he and Avery Patterson were assigned to double-team Duplessis. But, as Malone recalled Monday, “Avery disappeared and I was by myself. Dude just ran me over. And that was my first play of college football.”
Things will come full circle for Malone next week, when the fifth-year senior leads Oregon’s defense back onto the same field – since renamed AT&T Stadium – for the College Football Playoff National Championship against Ohio State. The title game kicks off Monday on ESPN at 5:30 p.m. PT.
The Ducks can avenge a Rose Bowl loss to the Buckeyes after the 2009 season, a loss in their last national championship game appearance, to cap the 2010 season, and their loss in Arlington to open 2011. “We’re not new to anything we’re stepping into,” Malone said. “We’ve got some business to take care of.”
Malone was one of six current Ducks who made his UO debut that day in Arlington. Center Hroniss Grasu started in the middle of the offensive line, and Jake Fisher was a reserve at guard despite being a true freshman. Defensive backs Ifo Ekpre-Olomu, Erick Dargan and Troy Hill also played in the loss to LSU.
On one of his first two or three reps, Hill recalled, he was beaten for a 36-yard gain on a double move by Odell Beckham, who is now tearing up the NFL with the New York Giants. A holding penalty negated the gain, but Hill had received his welcome to college. “I was ready to jump that slant, so excited,” Hill said. “He went up on me. I’m like, ‘Oh, there he goes!’”
The players could joke about those experiences now, more than three years later. They recognize how much they’ve grown, through those experiences and also since them.
Fisher practiced at right guard all of preseason camp in 2011. Then, he played primarily the left side against the Tigers. “Going into the game against LSU, I had no idea what I was doing,” Fisher said. “I kind of relied on the older guys to tell me what to do. It’s going to be fun to go back and play a game I put the time and effort into.”
Among Fisher’s true freshman classmates who also made the trip to Texas was quarterback Marcus Mariota. A third-stringer who didn’t get into the game and ended up redshirting, Mariota soaked in the experience of playing in the home stadium of the team he grew up cheering for, the Dallas Cowboys.
Now, Mariota leads Oregon back to Arlington as the Heisman Trophy winning quarterback for the national championship contenders. “To be able to play in that stadium will be a lot of fun,” Mariota said.
Fifth-year seniors like Grasu, Malone, Hill and Dargan not only played against LSU to open the 2011 campaign, they were eligible to travel a few months earlier to the BCS Championship game. Oregon lost that day to Auburn, on a game-winning field goal as time expired.
On the current roster, 13 players made the trip to Glendale, Ariz., for Oregon’s previous national championship game experience. Of that group, 11 were among the 16 current players who were on the travel squad for the LSU game in 2011 (receiver Keanon Lowe and running back Kenny Bassett were on the BCS trip but didn’t travel to the LSU game).
“We’re just used to playing in big games,” Hill said. “Every game at Oregon is honestly a big game, because you’re always competing for something. That’s what it really prepared us for, was playing in big games and understanding the atmosphere and things like that. I’m sure this Rose Bowl prepared everybody for that, so we should be used to it and just come out and play now.”
The atmosphere – in a domed stadium, with what figures to be a heavy Ohio State presence in the stands – has been discussed in Oregon’s team meetings. “It’s different,” UO coach Mark Helfrich said. “We’ve used that to fuel our preparations. We can’t change that, but we can maybe re-center our focus, or dial it in a little bit differently. Preparing to prepare is what we’re all about.”
Carrying over that preparation into the game will be important, too, Grasu said, something he learned from the loss to Auburn four years ago.
“The only thing I can remember is how well we practiced all week long,” Grasu said. “We had the best practice, every single day. We kept getting better, kept getting better, but then when we went out there it’s like we forgot what we did in practice. We kind of let the game get bigger than it really has to be. The only thing I could tell the guys this year is, treat it like a normal game, just like we did the Rose Bowl.”
Grasu learned that lesson through experience, but what about the many young players Oregon has relied on in 2014? The Rose Bowl was a valuable preview, veterans said. Also, this is a mature group of newcomers, they say, not likely to be fazed by the big stage.
Running back Royce Freeman was an example cited by Grasu. In the Rose Bowl, Florida State’s defense tried to get into the freshman’s head, until he delivered a clear, concise message in the second quarter. “I was just like, OK, I’m not afraid of you,” Freeman said. “I feel like they were trying to intimidate me, and it’s something I just wasn’t intimidated by. … Towards the end of the game we kind of broke their will, so they kind of shut up in general.”
Come Monday against the Buckeyes, the whole UO team hopes to play with that kind of level-headed focus. “It’s crazy to think that four years ago I started (my career in Arlington), and I’ll be able to end my career there,” Fisher said. “It’s pretty sweet.”
In the process, several veterans would be able to make right the sting of some early defeats, such as the big gain Hill allowed Beckham. “That was when I was young,” Hill said Monday. “I’m ready this time.”
