Jordan Burch’s late-season surge coming at perfect time for Oregon Ducks

There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the expectations that were piled upon Jordan Burch when he committed to Oregon last December.

A former 5-star signee who forged a reputation as a game-wrecker during his time at South Carolina, Burch is one of the more sheerly gifted athletes in all of college football. He was expected by many to single-handedly revive an Oregon pass rush that was, at times, entirely ineffective during the 2022 campaign.

During the early portion of his debut season in Eugene, however, things didn’t exactly go according to plan.

Burch produced just three tackles and one quarterback pressure throughout the first three games of the season. During the Ducks’ close-fought Week 2 win at Texas Tech, he played a relatively diminished role.

Lately, though, Burch has looked like the disruptive force that many expected he would become when he joined the program last offseason. Over the past three weeks, Burch ranks eighth nationally with 15 quarterback pressures. No other Oregon defender has produced more than 10 pressures during that time.

“It’s about walking in like, ‘I’m that guy,’” Taimani said. “I think we’re finally seeing that out of him — and that’s a big ole’ dude to be doing that when he’s got that juice. I think it’s finally clicking for him.”

According to those who work with Burch on a daily basis, a switch seemingly flipped for him during Oregon’s Week 11 win over USC after he made a couple of big tackles against his friend and former South Carolina teammate, Marshawn Lloyd.

“I was like, ‘Oh, he’s here. That’s the Jordan I’ve been looking for,’” Taimani said.

During last week’s 31-7 win over Oregon State, he spent the better part of four quarters terrorizing DJ Uiagalelei and the Beavers’ vaunted offensive front.

In just 25 pass-rushing snaps, Burch produced eight quarterback pressures, five quarterback hurries, three quarterback hits, and won a team-high 27% of his matchups. No other individual player has generated more than six pressures against the Beavers in any game this season.

For much of the evening, he was lined up across from Oregon State all-conference right tackle Taliese Fuaga — a projected first-round pick in the 2024 NFL Draft — and consistently outplayed him.

Late in the second half, Burch put Fuaga in the blender with a jaw-dropping spin move that helped set up a sack for Matayo Uiagalelei.

Since Burch arrived in Eugene, his teammates and coaches have spoken glowingly of his impressive array of pass-rushing moves. Ducks’ defensive lineman Brandon Dorlus joked that Burch has been reluctant to utilize his vaunted spin toward the inside shoulder of a tackle because “you never know when a guard is gonna come back and get you.”

Dorlus also noted that Buch has contributed far more than what shows up in the box score on a week-to-week basis.

“It’s not just sacks he’s putting in — it’s effort plays. Running to the ball, screen plays,” Dorlus said. “Those are the type of plays NFL teams wanna see and those are the type of plays that help us win.”

Following the win, Burch was asked if his performance against Oregon State validated his decision to transfer to Oregon after a relatively slow start to the year.

“Going into this season, you could watch this team on TV and see that they might have been missing a few pieces. But altogether, it was all there,” Burch said. “So just being a part of this team, trying to help them — it’s a great group of guys.”

“The connection here is crazy. Everybody is buying into the game plan that coaches put out.”

Burch is heating up at the perfect time for an Oregon defense that will need to be at its sharpest when it faces off with Michael Penix Jr. and No. 3 Washington in Las Vegas on Friday.

“The player that we all knew Jordan could be,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said this week when asked what he’s seen out of Burch recently. “He’s a powerful guy. He’s explosive. He’s really executing the plan — the rush plan really well right now. I think he would be the first one to tell you that it helps having great players around him too, because it’s hard to take a guy like that away when he has talented players around him and talented guys in coverage.

“But he’s playing at a really high level. I’m really proud of the progress he’s made.”

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