Like everyone else, I watched the Oregon game and immediately assumed our defense fundamentally wasn't good enough. But I’ll offer a contrarian take: even when we spent 60 minutes shooting ourselves in the foot, both sides of the ball played well enough - on the road in a tough environment - to win a title when you compare against national title games for a sample of elite vs. elite.
First, a few stats:
| Team | Points | Yards | Yards Per Play |
| Average CFP Winner | 41.8 | 502 | 6.9 |
| Oregon | 32 | 496 | 7.6 |
| Ohio State | 31 | 467 | 6.9 |
| Average CFP Loser | 21.7 | 382 | 5.4 |
So, both teams, and both sides of the ball, played a little better than your average CFP losing team and a little worse than your average CFP winning team.
| Team | Points | Yards | Yards Per Play |
| OSU Off. (UO Def.) vs. Avg. Winner | -10.8 | -35 | = |
| OSU Def. (UO Off.) vs. Avg. Winner | -9.8 | -6 | +0.7 |
People forget that with modern rules and schemes, good offenses tend to put up points and yards on good defenses. There are very few defensive battles at the talent-equated level anymore.
The takeaway for me is that these are evenly matched teams who played slightly below the standard of a title team (which is unsurprising for week 7), but who both are structurally good enough to win the CFP. It will come down to play-by-play execution, not structural changes, imo.
