LAS VEGAS -- Like so many visitors to Sin City before them, the Oregon Ducks left here Saturday night tired, confused and attempting to piece together exactly when their luck ran out, and their fortunes turned.
With facemasks pointed toward the Sam Boyd Stadium turf, the Ducks trudged into the offseason Saturday after a 38-28 Las Vegas Bowl loss to 25th-ranked Boise State.
Promoted eight days before from co-offensive coordinator to head coach on a platform of physicality and behind full-throated support from his players, Mario Cristobal watched as his team was dominated up front by the Mountain West Champions, who now are 3-0 all-time against UO.
"We didn't perform well enough tonight and we know that," Cristobal said. "It's disappointing from that standpoint."
The bowl added a deflating, nationally televised coda to the Ducks' roller-coaster 2017 season, which ends 7-6. Oregon began 3-0, went 1-4 while quarterback Justin Herbert recovered from a fractured collarbone, then routed Arizona and Oregon State to finish the regular season with their quarterback healthy again. They lost their coach, Willie Taggart, to Florida State on Dec. 5, and saw Cristobal promoted three days later.
Cristobal and his players flatly denied a suggestion that the team's emotional two-week stretch, nor the uncertainty of which staffers will leave or be retained, had any bearing on what was mostly a flat performance Saturday.
"We felt we really had one of our best weeks of preparation," Cristobal said. "We really can't make an excuse of anything."
From the very start, Boise State looked confident and Oregon spooked. In many ways, the Ducks were devoid of the crisp execution that made it one of the country's most explosive in the final weeks of the regular season. In other ways, it was awfully familiar. The nation's most-penalized team drew 10 more flags, for 95 yards.
"Shot ourselves in the foot," Cristobal said.
Before the opening kickoff, Cristobal ran UO's sideline, headset in his left hand, his right arm pumping to elicit a reaction from his team. But that energy rarely appeared again on UO's sideline as it fell behind 24-0.
The Ducks took a timeout before the opening play -- Cristobal said Boise State was slow to line up on defense and he didn't want to risk a delay of game penalty -- and then punted after three plays.
A hold killed Oregon's second drive, a fumble by Tony Brooks-James its third, a fumble by Herbert the fourth and interceptions by Herbert the sixth and seventh. The last was returned for a 53-yard touchdown, and when Herbert walked to the sideline, defensive coordinator Jim Leavitt was waiting with a pep talk.
Aided by those turnovers, the Broncos ran 90 plays to Oregon's 64 and gained 481 yards to UO's 280.
Meanwhile, Boise State used a pair of Oregon penalties -- defensive holding on Deommodore Lenoir and roughing the passer on Troy Dye -- to kick a 39-yard field goal and take a 17-0 lead. Receiver Cedrick Wilson had 10 catches for 221 yards and a touchdown.
Said Boise State coach Bryan Harsin: "We moved the ball up and down the field, and Oregon had a very tough time stopping it."
With Boise State leading 24-0 in the first half's final minute and driving for more points, linebacker Troy Dye recovered a fumble on a muffed "Statue of Liberty" trick play and returned it 86 yards for a touchdown.
The Broncos marched back inside Oregon's 10-yard line before quarterback Brett Rypien severely underthrew his pass to the corner of the end zone as safety Tyree Robinson cut the throw off for an interception. His 100-yard interception return is the longest in UO history, and came just days after he said he wanted to end his career by scoring a touchdown. Mission accomplished.
"We knew we didn't start off right," said Robinson, whose pick-six is the longest in school history. "We knew we had to make a change whether it was getting stops or getting off the field or getting our offense in a better position. Our defense wasn't going to quit."
For the Broncos (11-3), the unpredictable sequence revived echoes of their September collapse against Washington State, in which BSU led by 21 late in the fourth quarter before losing in overtime.
"The vibe on the sideline was not very good," said Harsin, who spoke with UO officials about their head coaching opening each of the past two seasons. "But the leaders again, they stepped up. They said shake it off, we're on to the second half."
With school record-holder Royce Freeman looking on from the sideline, electing to sit out what would have been his career finale in a move that was widely criticized on the ABC broadcast but equally supported by teammates, the Ducks rushed for 47 yards. Boise State's active linebackers plugged gaps in Oregon's line time after time, holding UO to fewer than 100 yards on the ground for the first time in 16 games.
When that didn't work, new play caller Marcus Arroyo tried to attack the edge of the field with multiple, quick-hitting screen passes, rather than test the Broncos secondary downfield.
Oregon's offense punted eight times and didn't cross midfield until the third quarter. It took 36 plays.
Mountain West defensive player of the year Leighton Vander Esch lived up to his all-conference billing with 12 tackles, including three for loss. How bad was UO running the ball? Justin Herbert had a team-high 17 rushing yards -- despite being sacked four times.
Running back Kani Benoit gained 11 yards on eight carries in his career finale, and attributed Oregon's awful start to "probably jitters and not playing in a game in a couple weeks."
"I think it was just shaking those jitters out," he said. "We weren't able to get them out in time and we made costly mistakes that cost us the game."
Even without Dye, the team's leading tackler who did not play in the second half while reportedly being treated for dehydration, Leavitt's defense rebounded to give it a chance to make it a game by forcing four consecutive punts.
But UO couldn't shake its issues running the ball and protecting Herbert. UO's first offensive touchdown came 47 minutes into the game, in the fourth quarter, on a 24-yard touchdown pass to Brenden Schooler. Boise State answered with an 86-yard touchdown drive to push the lead to 38-21.
Herbert threw another touchdown pass, this time eight yards to Jaylon Redd, with 1:12 remaining in the fourth, but any last gasp at a comeback ended with Boise State's recovery of an onside kick with 63 seconds remaining.
"I think a lot of teams would have folded their tent down 24," Cristobal said. "You look at the way we kept scratching and clawing to make this thing a competitive game, that's to me the positive. There's trust and belief in that locker room. The thing that's negative is the way we executed."
Oregon now faces a quick turnaround to stabilize what could be its best-ever recruiting class, as well as a long offseason. In both, Cristobal's challenge will be putting the program on an upward trajectory by building on its accomplishments from this season -- namely improved team chemistry and an upgraded defense.
In doing so, UO will try to follow a familiar playbook.
Its last Las Vegas Bowl loss, in 2006, was the final straw before the program underwent a massive transformation.
In 2009, a loss at Boise State in Chip Kelly's coaching debut became the unlikely spark for a season that ended in the Rose Bowl.
What will this lead to?
"We'd like to think the things we're building upon, and especially our last two games, they were the kind of thing we're striving to be," Cristobal said. "We didn't do that today. Obviously that's not what our identity is, or is going to be."
-- Andrew Greif
agreif@oregonian.com