Biggest threat to Oregon in Pac-12 North: Washington, Cal or Stanford?

The Oregon Ducks are favored to win the Pac-12. Can they be challenged in division by the Washington Huskies, the Cal Golden Bears or the Stanford Cardinal?

The Oregon Ducks won the Pac-12 last year and are poised to do the same in 2020.

Oregon has the best odds to win the Pac-12 at 6/5. Even though the Ducks lost star quarterback Justin Herbert to the NFL, the oddsmakers really like the job Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal is doing up in Eugene. He is recruiting at a level we’ve never really seen before out of this Pac-12 program. Can they even be stopped? What about even in the division?

Here are the latest Pac-12 title odds, via LVSuperBook.

Updated 2020 Pac-12 title odds

Oregon is followed by a pair of Pac-12 South teams in the USC Trojans at 11/4 and the Utah Utes at 6/1. It might be one of them who wins the division next year or it might be Herm Edwards‘ Arizona State Sun Devils at 20/1. As for Pac-12 North competition, the Ducks are chased by Washington at 10/1, Stanford at 20/1 and Cal at 25/1. Who is the biggest threat to Oregon?

Washington has a tough non-conference game to begin the year vs. Michigan, but this one is in Seattle. Though they don’t face Arizona State this year, Washington plays four very tough road games this fall: At Oregon, at Utah, at Cal and at USC. Though getting Stanford at home is a plus, playing archival Washington State on the road in the Apple Cup won’t be easy either.

With quarterback Jacob Eason going pro and former head coach Chris Petersen stepping down, Jimmy Lake’s team feels like it’s going around 6-3 in Pac-12 play. That’s not going to be nearly good enough to win the Pac-12 North. If the Huskies beat Cal and Stanford to get to around 7-2, that could be good enough to finish in second place.

Stanford was not a good team last year. With former starting quarterback K.J. Costello transferring to Mississippi State, it’ll be all about Davis Mills. While having no Arizona State or Utah on the schedule is a huge plus, they face Oregon, Washington and Cal all on the road.  If they can upend USC at home and beat one of their three division rivals on the road, 7-2 is possible.

The challenging part about Stanford is understanding what they are. Are they closer to what they’ve been under head coach David Shaw for the better part of a decade or are they closer to what they were a year ago? This was a team that didn’t even achieve bowl eligibility in 2019. With the oddsmakers giving them 20/1 odds this year, it means they believe last year was an outlier.

As for Cal, the Golden Bears get a brutal draw out of the Pac-12 South. They don’t play the perceived two worst teams in Arizona or Colorado. But what is an advantage for them is they only have two moderately difficult road games this year: at USC and at Arizona State. Though both are Pac-12 South contenders, they haven’t been as consistently strong as the Utes have been of late.

With home dates vs. Utah, Oregon, Washington, Stanford and UCLA, the Golden Bears will need to go at worst 3-2 to have any shot at a second-place finish in the Pac-12 North. One would think the Stanford and UCLA dates are the easiest of the five. Assuming they don’t beat Oregon, they’d have to beat Utah or Washington. They might be able to beat the Utes or Huskies as home dogs.

So of the three Pac-12 North contenders who could challenge Oregon, Stanford feels like the least likely to do it. Having to play all three division rivals on the road in a year after missing out on a bowl game seems like a tough set up. While the easy pick here is Washington, you might be getting better value out of Cal, especially if Arizona State and USC are overrated this fall.

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