A teary-eyed Behren Morton takes blame after CFP loss: ‘I didn’t settle down’
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MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Behren Morton’s teary eyes in the post-game press conference told the story for the Texas Tech football team in the Red Raiders‘ first appearance in the Orange Bowl.
With the second-ranked scoring offense in the FBS this season, one of the last things the Red Raiders would’ve expected was to be shut out in their College Football Playoff debut. No. 5 seed Oregon held No. 4 seed Texas Tech to 215 yards total offense and nine first downs on New Year’s Day, handing the Red Raiders a season-ending 23-0 setback at Hard Rock Stadium.
“I think that we had a great game plan,” said Morton, who was limited to 137 passing yards in his last college game. “The whole month, we had a great game plan. We just didn’t execute base plays. We didn’t run our day-one stuff that we run good.
“I didn’t do a good job of settling down and really focusing on the next play.”
Oregon (13-1) sacked Morton four times, intercepted him twice, and recovered fumbles by Cameron Dickey and by Morton. The latter was a strip-sack by Matayo Uiagalelei that the Ducks‘ defensive end returned to the 6-yard line, setting up a touchdown that gave Oregon a 13-0 lead.
The Red Raiders gained less than 10 yards on each of their first three possessions and nine of their 13 series overall.
The Ducks, who’ll play the Rose Bowl winner Jan. 9 in a CFP semifinal at the Peach Bowl, came in 10th in the FBS in scoring defense. Tech was the sixth team over the past two years that Oregon has held to single digits, the fourth this season.
“You can’t turn the ball over,” Tech coach Joey McGuire said. “That’s one of the top defenses in the country. We knew that coming in, so I want to give them all the credit. They did a great job defending us. I thought they did a good job of keeping the ball in front of them, not giving up a lot of big plays.
“We’ve been a big-play offense, an explosive offense and they kept the ball in front of them.”
It was the first time for Tech to be shut out since 2021 and the first shutout in a CFP game since Clemson beat Ohio State 31-0 in the 2016 Fiesta Bowl.
“We knew their tempo would be an issue,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said, “so we wanted to get the call in fast and let our guys get lined up. I thought we did a really good job of that.
“I thought coach Lupoi did a great job of calling the game,” Lanning added, referring to defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi, “and our defensive coaches preparing them. I feel like it was probably faster in practice than it was in the game, which is ultimately what we wanted.”
Oregon and Tech came in one-two in the FBS in plays of 20 yards or longer with 91 and 90, respectively. The Ducks held the Red Raiders to three such plays.
“They’ve been really good at completing shots down the field,” Lanning said. “They had a really good screen game. Those are things that we really prepared for and worked really hard for.”
J’Koby Williams broke a 50-yard run in the second quarter, setting up a field-goal attempt, but Stone Harrington missed from 54 yards. On back-to-back series in the third, the Red Raiders turned the ball over on downs at the Oregon 35, and cornerback Brandon Finney intercepted Morton’s throw into the end zone for Reggie Virgil.
“I thought they were in man (coverage), was going to throw the corner route,” Morton said. “The corner fell off of it, made a great play.”
Lanning said Finney executed the coverage perfectly.
“It’s a strategic play,” Lanning said. “We tell him to play low to high down in the red area. He did exactly that. He played low until the other player was able to show up and take away the low, and then he crept to high and he made an outstanding play.”
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Oregon suffocates, shuts out Texas Tech football in CFP quarterfinal
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