Wounded Ducks invoke memories of Oregon's painful past.

Byline: Ron Bellamy The Register-Guard

When Dennis Dixon got hurt, and the Ducks lost at Arizona, a friend asked if I'd ever seen a team so dependent on just one player. In fact I had: The team was Oregon, and the year was 1988, and the player was quarterback Bill Musgrave.

When Brady Leaf got hurt, and the Ducks got down to their fifth-string quarterback, well, I'd seen that before, too. The team was Oregon, and the year was 1991, and the players were Danny O'Neil, Brett Salisbury, Doug Musgrave, Kyle Crowston and Bob Brothers.

In both years, the Ducks lost their first-string quarterback and never won another game, which meant losing the Civil War in an era in which the Ducks didn't lose many of those.

The 21-10 loss to the Beavers in 1988 broke a 20-game Civil War winning streak for Rich Brooks, as a player at OSU and then as the Oregon coach. The goal posts came down in Parker Stadium; it was Oregon State's first win in the Civil War since 1974.

The 14-3 loss to OSU in 1991 allowed the Beavers to snap a 15-game losing streak, longest in the nation. First-year OSU coach Jerry Pettibone, going into the game 0-10, with his team 20-point underdogs, in a place the Beavers hadn't won in almost 20 years, had his players practice - practice - carrying the OSU seniors off the field at Autzen Stadium.

And then the Beavers won, and they did just that.

"I'm not going to sit here and make excuses," Brooks said then. "We need to execute better whether we've played five, 10 or 15 quarterbacks. Oregon State kicked our fannies and deserved to win."

A day later, Brooks was more philosophical, as he looked back on a season in which the Ducks lost their last six games, scored seven or fewer points in four of them, and completed only 46.7 percent of their passes overall.

"The whole thing snowballs when that position goes bad," Brooks said. "You've got to get execution at quarterback. ... If your quarterback doesn't play well, it's difficult for the other positions to play well around him."

In 1988, Musgrave, then a sophomore, wasn't a Heisman Trophy candidate, as Dixon became this season, but he was vitally important to the Ducks, a consummate winner. And that season, he had the Ducks not simply in contention for their first bowl berth in 25 years, but in the Rose Bowl race.

They were 6-1, and tied 14-14 with Arizona State, when Musgrave scrambled for a first down and then tried to get more. His eyes were focused ahead, on ASU linebacker Drew Metcalf, when another linebacker, Rodney Dillard, swooped in from the side.

"I knew he cracked me pretty good, but I didn't think it was extraordinary," Musgrave said that season. "The yard markers were way back. I knew I had the first down. I was just being careless.

"When I got up, I thought my shoulder was separated. I knew my left shoulder wasn't feeling quite right. I tried to move it a little bit and I felt the bone, and I knew what it was."

And so with 6:24 remaining in the first half, Bill Musgrave called timeout, and went to the Oregon bench, and then to the locker room, where they cut off his jersey. There are Oregon fans who will always remember this moment, and always remember the searing sight of a downcast Musgrave watching the second half from the entry way to the Oregon locker room at the west end of Autzen Stadium.

On that day, the Ducks committed seven turnovers and lost, 21-20, when a two-point conversion pass from backup Pete Nelson to wide receiver Joe Reitzug was nullified because Reitzug was ruled to have stepped out of the back of the end zone. There was no overtime in that era, and Brooks had the Ducks go for the win because a tie wouldn't have helped them in the Rose Bowl race.

They never again got closer to a win than that very moment. They lost 16-6 to a sixth-ranked UCLA team quarterbacked by Troy Aikman; lost 41-27 at Arizona; lost to the Beavers and then lost 41-17 at Hawaii. It wasn't just losing Musgrave - there were other injuries - but the quarterback would ultimately finish his Oregon career 19-1 in games he started and finished at Autzen, so that shows his immense importance to the Ducks.

And other things went wrong, too; when Nelson or third-stringer Bob Brothers, just two years removed from Marist High School, did some good things, they didn't always get help. A wide receiver dropped an apparent touchdown bomb that might have turned the Arizona game; Derek Loville, the star running back, fumbled a wet ball with the Ducks leading OSU 10-7 and driving for a clincher.

In 1991, it was different, the expectations not as great as in '88; Musgrave had graduated after taking Oregon to the Independence and Freedom Bowls, and his replacement was redshirt freshman Danny O'Neil, who had some early success, struggled, and then dislocated his right thumb in Oregon's fifth game and was lost for the season.

It wasn't so much that the Ducks couldn't replace Musgrave; they couldn't replace O'Neil.

Brett Salisbury, a highly recruited JC transfer, started the sixth game; he was ineffective in a 45-7 loss at Cal - 3-for-12 with three interceptions - and hurt his shoulder as well. Doug Musgrave, Bill's brother, started at Washington; he broke the ring finger of his passing hand trying to make a tackle on a lost fumble near halftime of a 29-7 loss.

Kyle Crowston, who had been moved to defense a few weeks earlier and then moved back to offense, started against Stanford; that was a 33-14 loss in which Crowston was replaced by Brothers, who had been the quarterback in the 1990 Civil War - a touchdown-less 6-3 Oregon win with Musgrave injured - and had then been moved to wide receiver in the spring.

"I never thought we'd be this inept again," Brooks said that year. "I thought those days were behind us. I didn't think we'd be searching for ways to get first downs again, but that's where we are."

Brothers became Oregon's fifth different starting quarterback in five weeks in a 24-21 loss to Arizona State, "I told the coaches that I'd love to say, `Hey, you made the decision to move me, and I'm going to stay at receiver,'" Brothers said that season. "But that would have let my teammates down, so I said I'd do the best I can."

At least Brothers finished the game, but he was limping afterward, and Salisbury started in a 16-7 loss at UCLA, and started again against the Beavers in the Civil War. However, he was replaced at halftime by Brothers as the two quarterbacks combined to complete 11-of-31 passes for 119 yards with one interception, and the Ducks were held without a touchdown.

There was, of course, no bowl game for that Oregon team, which finished 3-8, or for the '88 team. If you want to find a silver lining in those gloomy stories, well, that was it.