Oregon rallies behind embattled quarterback Anthony Brown

EUGENE — It didn’t take long Friday for Oregon’s supporters to call for the head of their starting quarterback.

Just over 50,000 fans turned up for the Ducks’ 24-17 win over Cal. By the end of the first quarter, a small group of them began booing starting signal-caller, Anthony Brown. By the end of the first half, many more had joined in.

“We want Thompson!” Oregon’s student section began to yell early in the second half. The chant took on the form of a request; the Autzen faithful wanted to see what Ty Thompson, Oregon’s star freshman and the top quarterback signee in school history, could do with the keys to Joe Moorhead’s offense. More than anything, though, it was a protest. For weeks, there has been a growing feeling among Duck fans that Brown does not have what it takes to lead Oregon.

Friday was the first instance of that sentiment escaping the social media vacuum and taking the form of real, vocal frustration.

Mario Cristobal heard it. Brown heard it. Thompson heard it. Oregon’s entire sideline heard it. The chant was so loud that it could be heard on the ESPN broadcast.

The question now is: what comes next? Much to the chagrin of those in attendance, the Ducks did not make a change at quarterback Friday. Brown took all 63 of Oregon’s offensive snaps and orchestrated 70- and 62-yard scoring drives on the Ducks’ final two possessions. He finished the night 20-for-28 for 244 yards and a touchdown and added 44 yards and a touchdown on three carries.

He also scored the game-winning touchdown on a 10-yard scramble that required him to out-sprint a pair of Cal defenders and dive to the pylon before coming to a sliding halt in front of the student section that had been calling for his job minutes earlier.

“I think Anthony played a really good game and did a lot of good stuff,” Cristobal said when asked how Brown handled the criticism. “I know you have a job from a media standpoint with narratives or whatnot, but I think over here it’s always going to be about turning up the volume and intensity on what we do as opposed to anything on the outside. Things like that sometimes happen in sports and it has to be irrelevant in terms of our process and how we go forward.

“It never has played a part in what we do or how we do it and it can’t be. But in terms of Anthony handling himself in the game, he made a lot of good plays tonight, a lot of big plays.”

It’s hard to remember an instance of Oregon’s fans and a UO team — the players and coaches — disagreeing so vehemently on a subject. For an ever-growing percentage of Oregon’s fans, another week of Brown starting ahead of Thompson sounds unfathomable.

For Oregon’s players?

“Not everybody understands football,” Oregon safety Verone McKinley III said when asked about Brown being booed. “Not everybody understands what’s going on — the system, the concepts being run, what they’re looking for. So, for people to boo, it’s kind of disappointing.

“But at the same time, we’ve gotta worry about us; we can’t let the crowd truly affect us. I think Anthony did a good job of getting guys back rallied up and leading that drive at the end to get us a score.”

Oregon center Ryan Walk praised Brown for his leadership in big moments and said Brown encouraged Oregon’s offensive linemen to finish blocks late in the game because he sensed Cal’s defense was on the ropes.

“At the end of the day, it really motivated us,” Walk said of the boos directed toward Brown. “You wanna say that you didn’t notice it, but I’m not gonna lie to you, we all noticed it. You can’t sit there and be like, ‘Oh, I didn’t notice it.’ You notice it, and it motivated us.”

It’s hard to know where Brown’s limitations start and where Oregon’s offensive dysfunction ends. Brown had been criticized for not making enough deep throws and not being effective enough with the downfield shots he does take.

On Friday, he produced one of the tidiest performances of his Oregon career. His 71-percent completion rate was his second-best of the season, and his 244 passing yards were a season-high.

He made a nice back-shoulder throw to Devon Williams in the first half and fired a 20-yard missile to Jaylon Redd in double-coverage for the game-tying touchdown in the fourth quarter.

But scattered around those highlights were a cluster of check-downs. Is that by design? Well, we may never know.

But one thing is just as apparent now as it was in Week 1: Oregon’s locker room is behind Brown. The vocal majority of Oregon’s fan base and those at the helm of the program may never see eye-to-eye on the subject this season.

But Brown’s teammates see something in him that season ticket-holders don’t; something that is hard to put a statistical value on.

“AB is our guy; he’s our leader. We’re rolling with him regardless.,” Walk said. “I think that’s what great teams are made of; when they’re willing to go out there and have each other’s backs and finish a game in the fourth quarter where other teams may have folded.”