After last week’s 24-14 win over Idaho, the No. 7 Oregon football team will be looking for a more complete performance against a better foe in Boise State this Saturday at Autzen Stadium.

The Ducks (1-0) underwhelmed in their season debut against the Vandals but have a chance to put that all behind them this week against the Broncos (1-0).

“We get to play a really good opponent,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said. “They’re really talented across the board and have had a lot of success over the last several years. They’re a really good team and a good challenge for us.”

Here are three keys to a successful outing against the Broncos this week.

Ducks must limit Ashton Jeanty, Boise State run game

During his weekly Monday press conference, Lanning said that Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty was the best he’d seen in his three years at Oregon.

The star back ran for 267 yards and six touchdowns in the Broncos’ 56-45 barnburner win against Georgia Southern last week.

“He’s certainly an NFL guy and he doesn’t go down on first contact ever,” Lanning said. “He’s one of the best stiff-arm guys we’ve gone against. He runs really physical, and the next guy they brought in (Sire Gaines) ran for 100 yards, too. It’s a really powerful rushing attack. Their offense does a lot of really good things to scheme you up.”

The Ducks did a good job of limiting Idaho’s run game last week, holding the Vandals to 2.5 yards per carry and just 49 rushing yards, but a different challenge awaits at Autzen Stadium this week when the Ducks take on Jeanty and the Broncos.

Though the Broncos nearly threw for 300 yards as well, with quarterback Maddux Madsen completing 22 of his 31 passes for 280 yards, the focus for Oregon’s defense will be containing Jeanty and Gaines.

Oregon needs to find offensive rhythm, establish run game

Though the Ducks outgained the Vandals and more than tripled them in first downs gained, Oregon only put 24 points on the board and was in a single-digit contest with an FCS foe late in the game.

Oregon players and coaches repeatedly said penalties and miscues in the red zone contributed to the lack of scoring. The Ducks are aiming to correct those mistakes against a susceptible Boise State defense.

“The categories we didn’t win on were situational football and the way we ran the ball,” Lanning said. “So, you attack it, you build your practice plan around that as well. A lot of the things we saw that were places for us to improve, those are exact things that we worked on today.”

The Broncos scored 56 points last week against Georgia Southern, but allowed 45 on defense, including giving up 139 rushing yards and 322 yards through the air.

If the Ducks can get their run game into a rhythm and loosen up the defense, it’ll allow quarterback Dillon Gabriel to stretch the field more in the passing game and create some explosive plays.

UO has to leave whatever happened vs. Idaho in the past

The Ducks came out slow, lethargic and played sloppy against an undermanned and undersized Idaho squad.

Oregon did not look like the preseason darling that many national media members labeled them. Dillon Gabriel did not look like the odds-on favorite to win the Heisman Trophy, as he was picked to be in most sportsbooks.

But that was last week.

“There’s a bunch of missed opportunities on our end that we didn’t maximize,” Gabriel said. “When you look back after the game, you’re emotional and you have certain thoughts, but you dive deeper into the film, you watch it two to three times, and you realize there’s opportunities there, but we didn’t take advantage of them.”

The Ducks have the perfect chance to course correct and prove that Week 1 was an anomaly, rather than further prove that maybe this isn’t the team many thought it was in the preseason.

So far, Oregon has responded in practice, per Gabriel.

“Practice has been fiery, and it’s been good,” he said. “We needed that. We need to keep getting better. You look at the film and you keep diving in to how we can improve.”

The Ducks kick off against the Broncos at 7 p.m. at Autzen Stadium.

Alec Dietz covers University of Oregon football, volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball for The Register-Guard. You may reach him at adietz@registerguard.com and you can follow him on X @AlecDietz.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Oregon football keys to victory vs. Boise State Broncos