For the second week in a row, Oregon’s coach and players were being asked Saturday night to explain themselves after an error-prone performance.

“We didn’t play our best,” wide receiver Tez Johnson said. “We had a lot of mistakes on the field. Always, you wanna go 1-0 each week.”

Then mission accomplished, as the No. 6 Ducks improved to 2-0 with a 37-34 nonconference victory against Boise State inside Autzen Stadium.

A crowd of 58,134 witnessed a game taken to the very end of regulation as kicker Atticus Sappington’s 25-yard field goal split the uprights as the game clock expired to deliver the win for the Ducks.

“You know, I just did my part, and Coach always talks about doing one-eleventh and I take pride in that,” said Sappington, the transfer from Oregon State. “That was my whole mindset going in, doing my one-eleventh to go help win the game for the team.”

The kick was the first game-winner of his career — including high school — for the junior from Central Catholic High School in Portland.

“It’s pretty surreal,” Sappington said. “It’s one of the best feelings I’ve had in my entire life.”

It certainly made the Ducks feel better about themselves, especially on a night the offense struggled (again).

Oregon finished with just 352 yards, went 4 for 12 on third downs, had nine penalties for 74 yards, lost two fumbles and had another at the goal line following a 99-yard kickoff return by Noah Whittington that would’ve negated a touchdown if teammate Jayden Limar hadn’t alertly recovered the loose ball.

Quarterback Dillon Gabriel was also sacked four times. That’s just one less sack than the Ducks allowed in all of 2023 and all of 2022.

“Thank goodness for Atticus, because we left it up to chance,” Gabriel said. “And you don’t want to do that.”

It wasn’t all bad, however, as Gabriel also threw a pair of long touchdown passes and went 18 of 21 for 243 yards.

His first TD was a 34-yard laser to receiver Evan Stewart, who also had a 71-yard catch in the game. Gabriel’s other TD pass was 59 yards to receiver Traeshon Holden.

But in between those big plays was a lot of just grinding away with little success, as it took 54 plays to get the other 188 yards.

“I don’t think anything is preventing us from having success, we’re just shooting ourselves in the foot,” Johnson said. “False start, illegal formation, illegal motion, those little things we cannot have. But we’re aware of that and the coaches are gonna do their best to keep on coaching those things … and we’re gonna do our best to fix it.”

Johnson also had one of the biggest plays of the game — an 85-yard punt return for a touchdown, the first by a Duck since Ugo Amadi in 2018. That play ignited the crowd and gave Oregon a 27-20 lead late in the third quarter.

It was the first punt return TD of his career for Johnson, a senior.

“My dad, the first thing he said to me was after all these years, you finally got one,” Johnson said. “I didn’t know it was going to come in this game though. But I told him I said when I walk back there I’m like, ‘You be aggressive. Just be aggressive.’ As soon as I caught the ball I was like, ‘All right, here we go.’”

Johnson said that big play didn’t help him relax. He knew the team was in a “dogfight” against a team that Oregon hadn’t beaten in their three previous games.

“The whole game was just ups and downs,” Johnson said. “They had some missed plays and opportunities, they had some big plays, we had some big plays, we had missed plays. So it came down to who had the most explosive plays, and we had the most.”

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 players react to walk-off win against Boise State