Evanson: There's a lot pressure being put on this year's Oregon Ducks, are they up for it?

How much pressure is too much pressure? And can the weight of expectations sink a season before it even starts?

Two questions I can’t help but ask myself as heavy-hitting prognosticators continue heaping on the 2024 Oregon Ducks football team.

Since Oregon fell painfully short of last year’s College Football Playoff, through the spring transfer portal and more recently this summer, pundits have been inching toward the Ducks’ bandwagon, and this past weekend some of the sport’s most notable talking heads — Desmond Howard and Kirk Herbstreit — positioned themselves firmly atop it by picking Dan Lanning’s squad to win the national title.

It’s not ridiculous. After all, Oregon was amongst the nation’s best teams last season, return a substantive level of talent and bolstered that talent in almost every position group via college football free agency.

The hope is that former Oklahoma Sooner Dillon Gabriel slides seamlessly into Bo Nix’s position at quarterback; cornerbacks Jabbar Muhammad (Washington), Kam Alexander (UTSA) and Brandon Johnson (Duke), along with safeties Kobe Savage (Kansas State) and Peyton Woodyard (Alabama) can bolster their defensive backfield; five-star receiver Evan Stewart (Texas A&M) and bruising running back Jay Harris can make plays and provide added depth offensively; and interior defensive linemen Derrick Harmon (Michigan State) and Ja’Maree Caldwell (Houston) can fortify the innards of a Duck defense that’s historically lacked such.

But despite what they already had, coupled with what they now do, their roster still has question marks, and their coach has yet to prove he can make a difference between the lines when the games matter most.

That’s not a knock on Lanning, after all nearly all things point to him being a coach on the rise. Players seem to like him, recruits seem to love what he’s building and his focus on winning cannot be denied. But it is an acknowledgement of mistakes the 38-year-old coach has made over his two years on the sidelines in Eugene.

He likely cost them the 2022 Civil War, his decision making undoubtedly cost them last year’s regular season contest at Washington and there have been enough head-scratching moments during his head coaching tenure to warrant hesitation to put him amongst the upper crust of the college game.

For what all he’s done to matter, what he hasn’t needs to matter as well.

The same can be said for the Ducks as a whole.

Since Chip Kelly took the program to another level in 2009, Oregon has proven itself as a perennial power.

They have a win/loss record of 147-47; have won three Rose Bowls and two Fiesta Bowls; been to two national title games; and boast a Heisman trophy winner.

They also have a road win over Ohio State, which broke the Buckeyes’ four-year home winning streak and 21-game regular season winning streak; a 39-point College Football Playoff win over undefeated and defending champion Florida State; and six Pac-12 championships.

That’s impressive.

But coupled with that success over the past 15 years have been the failures against the best of the best, including a loss to Ohio State in the 2010 Rose Bowl; a loss to Auburn in the 2011 BCS Championship Game; a loss to Ohio State in the 2014 CFP Championship Game; season-opening losses to LSU and Georgia; and this past season’s consecutive losses to CFP Championship Game runner-up Washington.

The Ducks have been very good, but you have to be great to win a national title in football. And while closer than most, close only puts them in the crosshairs of haters reveling in their “failure.”

Is Oregon good enough to thrive under the weight of expectations? We’re about to find out.

Alabama is used to such.

So are schools like Ohio State, Clemson of late, and most recently Georgia.

But not often has the spotlight shone so brightly on the Ducks.

Will they be up to it? There’s no way to know, but there’s only one way to find out — and they and we are about to.