Flying in Formation : Quarterback O’Neil No Longer Believes He Needs to Be Superduck to Win at Oregon

Watching his Oregon teammates upset USC without him seven weeks ago, Danny O’Neil decided it was time to give up the role of Superduck.

“I was trying to be the offense earlier in the year, thinking I had to perform for us to win,” said O’Neil, former Mater Dei quarterback. “Then when I saw us win at USC without me, I thought I really didn’t need to be the hero each week. I’m just letting it happen.”

And what a happening it’s been. Oregon has won five consecutive to climb to No. 12 in the national rankings, its highest since 1964. A victory Saturday at Oregon State will clinch the Ducks’ first Rose Bowl appearance in 37 years.

Oregon and O’Neil seemed headed nowhere three games into this season. The Ducks were 1-2 and the losses, to Hawaii and Utah, were ugly. Although Oregon did come back to beat Iowa, O’Neil was far off the form of his junior season in 1993, when he threw for a school-record 3,224 yards and 22 touchdowns.

To make matters worse, he came down with an infected finger and missed the game at USC.

Backup Tony Graziani led the Ducks to a stunning 22-7 upset, their first victory over the Trojans in Los Angeles since 1971. That game looms large in retrospect. If Oregon and Southern Cal finish 7-1 in the Pac-10, Oregon will go to the Rose Bowl because of that victory.

O’Neil traces the Ducks’ turnaround to that Oct. 1 afternoon in Los Angeles.

“I’m not sure what happened, but it seems like the team said, ‘It just doesn’t matter. Let’s win.’ It showed this team could definitely play some good football,” he said.

O’Neil didn’t exactly catch fire after that, either. He was supposed to sit out the Washington State game, but had to play when Graziani was injured and wound up throwing 17 consecutive incompletions in a 21-7 loss.

The next week, he was solid in a 23-7 victory over California.

But the fans still booed the four-year starter at every opportunity, labeling him the quarterback who couldn’t come through in the clutch, who had never brought a team from behind in the second half.

Then came the upsets over Washington and Arizona, when O’Neil rallied the Ducks on consecutive weekends.

He completed all four passes on a 98-yard scoring drive that put Oregon ahead for good against Washington and passed 15 yards to Josh Wilcox for the only touchdown in the 10-9 victory over Arizona.

Still, most of the attention went to Oregon’s “Gang Green” defense, and the offense noticed. The last two weeks, against Arizona State and Stanford, the Ducks took to the air for 89 points. In those two games, O’Neil has thrown for 573 yards. He has had no interceptions in the last three games. In the last six quarters, he’s thrown nine touchdown passes, raising his total to a conference-leading 18.

“We got tired of just scraping by and understood that if we want to be a great team, a Rose Bowl team, we’ve got to have a Rose Bowl offense, not just a Rose Bowl defense,” O’Neil said.

The return of favorite receiver Cristin McLemore, a former Marina High star, has helped. After missing two games because of a sprained right ankle, McLemore returned against Arizona and caught three of O’Neil’s six touchdown passes in last week’s 55-21 rout of Stanford. McLemore, a junior, holds the Oregon record for touchdown receptions with 19.

“We have some special chemistry,” O’Neil said. “We’re just on the same page. We understand what each other is thinking.”