What does Oregon’s win in Happy Valley mean?
Since 2022 the Penn State Nittany Lions have been one of the 6 best and most consistent teams in college football. In that time span they are 21-4 at home and 11-4 at home in Big Ten Play. Those 4 losses have exclusively come at the hands of Ohio State, Michigan, and now Oregon.
Here is the
Year Week: Score à Eventual Playoff Result
- 2022 Week 9: 44-31 to Ohio State à Lost Playoff Semi-Final to Eventual National Champion Georgia 42-41
- 2023 Week 11: 24-15 to Michigan à Won National Championship
- 2024 Week 9: 20-13 to Ohio State à Won National Championship
- 2025 Week 5: 30-24 (O.T) to Oregon à TBD
That very short list of teams that were able to walk into Happy Valley and leave with a Win suggests that the only teams capable of beating Penn State in Beaver Stadium are the Top National title Contenders. We will see about 2025 as Oregon has a lot of work to do this season and it is only the first day of October, but today I wanted to take a look at these 4 teams to compare them as the previous 3 were obviously all National Championship caliber. How does Oregon stack up to these teams?
Talent
Bud Elliot’s Blue-Chip Ratio is the first test to determining if a team is championship caliber.
The reason it’s the first test is because it is simple, and it can be determined in July. All 4 of these teams passed the Blue-Chip ratio before the respective season was kicked off with over 50% of their roster containing 4 or 5 star recruits.
But how do the rosters stack up against each other and were does Oregon fit in.
Here is each:
Team – 247 Team Talent Composite Score – National Rank – Average Player Rating – National Rank – Blue Chip Ratio
- 2022 Ohio State – 983.26 – 3rd Nationally – 92.82 Average – 3rd on a Per Player Basis – 80% Blue Chip Ratio
- 2023 Michigan – 850.43 – 14th Nationally – 90.51 Average – 9th on a Per Player Basis – 54% Blue Chip Ratio
- 2024 Ohio State – 998.62 – 3rd Nationally – 93.29 Average – 3rd on a Per Player Basis – 90% Blue Chip Ratio
- 2025 Oregon – 941.22 0 5th Nationally – 91.07 Average – 8th on a Per Player Basis – 67% Blue Chip Ratio
From a pure talent perspective Oregon is exactly in the mix with these teams. Clearly behind both Ohio State teams but clearly ahead of the Michigan team.
Every one of the metrics for measuring talent ordered the teams as 24 OSU, 22 OSU, 25 Oregon, 23 Michigan. Here is a graph of the 247 total team talent composite for the visually inclined.
Quarterback Play
To go along with a talented roster each team also had/has Very good to Excellent Quarterback play
Year Team – Player – QBR – QBR Ranking – NFL Draft Selection
- 2022 Ohio State – CJ Stroud – 177.7 – 1st – 1ST Round 2nd Overall
- 2023 Michigan – J.J McCarthy – 167.4 – 9th – 1st Round 10th Overall
- 2024 Ohio State – Will Howard – 175.3 – 3rd – 6th Round 185th Overall
- 2025 Oregon – Dante Moore – 183.5 – 8th – TBD
Currently Dante Moore is a projected 1st round QB. A lot can change between now and whenever Moore decides to go to the NFL but for the purpose of comparing these teams it appears that to beat Penn State in Beaver Stadium you need at the very least an NFL QB and more likely you need a 1st round QB. Again, there is more than half the regular season left for Moore but using current projections Oregon’s signal caller is right smack dab in the middle of these 4 when it comes to NFL pedigree.
You may have noticed that Dante has the best QBR of the four quarterbacks, yet his ranking only places him eighth this year. In the past, a 183.5 QBR would have made him the top statistical quarterback. To take you behind the scenes, I kept running into this issue with other advanced stats for Oregon as well—such as yards per play gained and allowed, points per drive for and against, net success rate, and so on.
The reason is simple: Oregon’s season isn’t finished. The other teams I’m comparing them to played at least 13 games, including at least one College Football Playoff matchup. Oregon, along with the rest of college football this year, has only played four or five games—most of them against Group of Five or FCS opponents. As a result, the stats are inflated by garbage-time production against weaker competition, which makes up a much larger share of the data at this point in 2025 compared to what we see in completed seasons. For example, I highly doubt Maryland will end the year with the 13th-best yards-per-play defenseonce they stop playing the kind of opponents they’ve faced so far.
Luckily all 4 of these teams are Big Ten teams, meaning Hythloday has charted there success and explosiveness rates outside of garbage time.
Functional Team Strength
Please note that a higher proportion of Oregon’s 2025 stats come from games against lower-quality opponents compared to the teams faced by 2022 Ohio State, 2023 Michigan, or 2024 Ohio State. Still, at this point in the season, these are the best numbers available. Because garbage-time plays against weaker opponents are excluded, the share of Oregon’s snaps against Penn State in these stats is larger than what you’d see in the raw box-score data you might find online. So, instead of comparing apples to oranges, it’s more like comparing nectarines to plums.
Funnily enough the most complete team per Hythloday’s charting stats was 2022 Ohio State, the one team that without a doubt did not win a national championship. Now Ohio State was also the only one of these 4 teams that did have to play 2022 Georgia and probably has a reasonable claim for saying they were a field goal away.
All 4 teams were/have been excellent in certain areas.
Using Hythloday’s benchmarks for championship caliber in each rate here is how many championship caliber statistics each team had out of 8:
- 2022 Ohio State – 4
- 2023 Michigan – 4
- 2024 Ohio State – 1
- 2025 Oregon* – 4
Again after 5 games Oregon is fully comparable to these other 3 teams and it is last years Ohio State team that is the outlier.
In an attempt to combine all of these statistics into one number against each other I used an AP style method of ranking each stat. For example, for offensive pass efficiency the teams would be awarded points accordingly:
- 2022 Ohio State 55.27% – 4 points
- 2024 Ohio State 55.04% – 3 points
- 2025 Oregon 54.05% – 2 points
- 2023 Michigan 53.87% – 1 point
This is not a perfect method of aggregating these stats as the difference between 2022 Ohio State’s (62.77%) and 2023 Michigan’s (51.92%) offensive rush efficiency is worth the same as the difference between 2024 Ohio State’s (55.04%) and 2025 Oregon’s (54.05%) passing efficiency but for the purposes of summarizing to see where Oregon stacks up against these teams here are the results:
- 2022 Ohio State – 25 Points
- 2025 Oregon – 23 Points
- 2023 Michigan – 17 Points
- 2024 Ohio State – 15 Points
Once again, I would like to reiterate Oregon is at a very different point in its schedule as compared to the 3 other teams where we have season long data. But another metric puts Oregon smack dab middle of a group of championship caliber teams and the Ducks are by no means an outlier.
For what feels like the second time this year I feel like I’m writing an article that says “everyone stay calm, there is still a long journey ahead, but early indications are positive”
Hopefully as the Ducks play more games, I can continue writing these types of articles.
Category: General Sports
