Looking back on his record-setting performance inside Autzen Stadium on Saturday, Dillon Gabriel wasn’t about to pat himself on the back.

There is too much room for improvement for the Oregon quarterback and the Ducks’ offense after struggling to put points on the board in a 24-14 season-opening win against Idaho.

“A lot to fix, a lot to clean up, but that’s a good thing as well,” Gabriel said Tuesday afternoon. “Practice has been fiery and it’s been good. We needed that. We need to just keep getting better. You look at the film and you just keep diving into how we can improve.”

Boise State is up next for No. 6 Oregon at 7 p.m. Saturday, and the visiting Broncos (1-0) are expected to be a tougher challenge than the Football Championship Subdivision Vandals, who were within three points of the Ducks’ lead late in the fourth quarter.

“Pads are smacking,” Gabriel said of Oregon’s practices Monday and Tuesday. “Naturally it’s just going to be fiery. You go through camp, you go through a week of prep, and now you’re kind of getting into the thick of things of getting into the season.

“Preparation is a process and I just love seeing everybody compete through it.”

Gabriel had a statistically great game against Idaho, throwing for 380 yards and two touchdowns on 41-of-49 passing.

The 41 completions were a career-high for the sixth-year senior and also tied Oregon’s single-game record set by Danny O’Neil against Penn State in the 1994 Rose Bowl.

Gabriel’s completion total and yards were a record by a quarterback in his Oregon debut.

“I thought in the pass game we did a good job of catching and just being efficient in the pass game, taking what they gave us,” Gabriel said. “I felt like we mixed up a lot of things, formations and stuff like that, which I think is very beneficial to what we want to do, but I think overall, just a bunch to clean up as we look back.”

Beginning with better execution, Gabriel said.

“It starts with me, for sure,” he said. “I’m the guy who (takes the) snap and gets us into the right looks, pushing the tempo or controlling it, and at times we didn’t do that.”

Few of Gabriel’s attempts were deep shots, and coach Dan Lanning said that was because Idaho’s defense did a good taking those options away from the Ducks.

“We took a shot early in the game down the field and they stopped playing that coverage,” Lanning said. “They gave us the opportunity to take that shot. We called a lot of shot plays and they played over the top. Dillon made the smart decision with where he put the ball, where he got the ball.”

The production on offense wasn’t helped by a poor performance from the offensive line, which had several pre-snap penalties and allowed three sacks — two fewer than what the Ducks allowed during the entire season in both 2022 and 2023.

“Three sacks are unacceptable, but that’s on my end too,” Gabriel said, “getting the ball out and not taking a sack, and trying to be proactive in that.”

Still, Gabriel said the offense just needs to do a better job of maximizing its opportunities.

“I think when you look back after the game you’re emotional and have certain thoughts,” Gabriel said. “But then you dive deeper into the film, you watch it two, three times and you realize that there’s opportunities there, but we just didn’t take advantage of them.”

Chris Hansen covers University of Oregon football, men’s basketball, track and field, cross country and softball for The Register-Guard. You can reach him at chansen@registerguard.com and you can follow him on X @chansen_RG.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Oregon football's Dillon Gabriel talks prep for Boise State