Oregon quarterback Bo Nix took a seat, exhaled and looked out at the small, crowded room full of reporters ready to ask him about the Ducks' game against Cal. He wore frustration across his face, bordering on sheer disappointment.

Had anyone not been watching the game that had just taken place, it would have been easy to assume the Ducks had just suffered their first Pac-12 defeat of the season. Nix's first words of reflection conveyed the same message.

"This was a tough game," he said. "I think that we played OK offensively, but we just kind of shot ourselves in the foot a few times. I didn't play my best today, but fortunately the guys around me played really good to still put up some points."

By "OK offensively," he was describing a unit that piled up 586 yards of total offense — the most Cal has ever allowed under coach Justin Wilcox, a span of 62 games dating back to 2017. By "some points," he meant 42 points — against a team that had not allowed more than 31 in a game all year. Individually, Nix became the first quarterback in FBS this season to throw for 400 yards and three touchdown passes and rush for three scores. He's just the third to accomplish that over the past decade. By every conceivable metric, Nix played well.

Most importantly, Oregon won. Handily, 42-24.

Two thirds of the way through the regular season, the Ducks have one of the more interesting résumés in college football. They're one of eight undefeated Power 5 teams in conference play, rank fifth nationally in scoring (42.4), third in yards per game (525.8) and Nix's play has earned him a place in the Heisman Trophy conversation.

All of that, however, is shaded by their opening-week disaster in Atlanta, where they lost 49-3 to Georgia in first-year coach Dan Lanning's debut. The Ducks were so uncompetitive that it's easy to understand why anyone watching them would have written them off as a serious College Football Playoff contender on the spot. At the time, it would have been a fair and logical conclusion.

That dynamic is why heading into tonight's release of the initial College Football Playoff rankings (7 p.m. ET, ESPN), the Ducks promise to be one of the most interesting teams to monitor. Had Oregon scheduled a pushover instead of Georgia, it likely would have been viewed as a top-four team. It would be in the thick of the playoff conversation. With the loss, that's not the case. The Ducks will likely remain on the periphery, hoping results outside their control break in their favor.