Noah Whittington Article

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Noah Whittington: Injury Recovery, Big Ten Defenses, and What It All Means for 2025

The 2024 season was full of ups and downs for Noah Whittington—something that, in hindsight, should have been expected given the injury he was recovering from. His yards per rush dropped by a full yard compared to his last full season in 2022. I believe there are two main factors behind that decline:

1. Whittington wasn’t fully healthy to start the 2024 season.
2. Big Ten defensive lines are a tier above those in the old Pac-12.

What I’m attempting to do here is determine if one of those two factors played a bigger role in Whittington’s drop in per-carry

efficiency. If the injury was the main culprit, that’s a good sign for his 2025 outlook—he’s entering fall camp fully healthy this time. If the tougher defenses are to blame, then that’s more concerning, especially since Oregon is still in a conference where the second-most popular sport is corn farming.

Side note: The discussion around the B1G vs. Pac-12 trench warfare could be its own article. If you’d like to see that, let me know in the comments. For now, just trust me—Big Ten defensive lines are better than what we used to see in the Pac.

The Injury

Let’s try to quantify the injury’s impact first. Whittington suffered a season-ending knee injury on September 23, 2023, and missed the remainder of the season. Though the exact injury was never officially confirmed, the nature and recovery timeline suggest a torn ACL. The rule of thumb with ACLs is about a full calendar year to recover. That means for the first three games of 2024, Whittington was still under that one-year mark and not yet at full strength.

After Oregon’s first bye week, however, he had crossed that one-year threshold. Here’s how his yards per rush (YPR) break down before and after that point:

There is a modest improvement post-bye week, but a few issues complicate the picture:

• Uneven sample sizes: Pre-bye week includes just 3 games and 27 carries, while post-bye week spans 11 games and 91 carries. One 27-yard touchdown run vs. Oregon State inflates that early average—remove it, and the pre-bye average drops to 3.50 YPC.
• Recovery is not linear: Every knee injury is different. While one year is the general recovery benchmark, it’s not universal. Personally, I think it took Whittington a bit longer to truly get back to form.

While he showed flashes of his signature breakaway speed early, his agility and elusiveness—the traits that require full confidence in both knees—didn’t fully return until later. One particular play that stood out: Whittington absolutely trucked the soul out of an Illinois defender in Week 9, roughly 13 months after the injury. Not only was it a highlight-reel moment, but it was also the first game in which he averaged over 5 yards per carry against a B1G opponent.

If we use the Illinois game as the marker for when Whittington returned to form, here’s how the season splits:

This creates a more meaningful contrast. The carry counts are also more balanced: 54 carries from Weeks 1–8, and 64 carries after Week 9. Further our resident film reviewer Hythloday was kind enough to share with me the data he charted on Whittington in 2024. Here are Whittington’s efficiency and explosiveness numbers from the 2024 season using the Illinois game as the marker.

Now, to be fair, only Noah himself can say when he truly felt 100%. I’m just making educated guesses here. The Illinois game feels like the turning point—and I’ve got more than enough data to back that up to give Duck fans some hope for. That said, I’ll admit using that game as a dividing line is a bit convenient for the narrative. Which brings me to…

Big Ten Defensive Lines

Whittington is what I call the “lightning” in a thunder-and-lightning running back duo. Backs like him—who rely on speed and open-field elusiveness—need at least average offensive line play to shine. When they get that, they can turn 10-yard gains into 20 or 40-yard chunks. But without it, they struggle to even get past the line, since they’re better at exposing defensive backs than slipping through partially blocked defensive linemen.

Compare that to the “thunder” backs—guys like Jordan James and Makhi Hughes. These players thrive between the tackles with short-area quickness and vision. They don’t always produce the jaw-dropping highlights, but they consistently churn out efficient runs, even with a mediocre offensive line.

In short:

• A Whittington highlight reel might look flashier than Hughes’.
• But a full-game compilation of every Hughes carry probably looks more impressive than Whittington’s.

Put even more simply: Whittington’s production is more O-line dependent than James’, and entering a conference with better defensive lines hurt him.

To test this theory, I split Oregon’s 2024 games into two categories:

• Games where Oregon had a perceived O-line advantage: Oregon State, UCLA, Michigan State, Purdue, Illinois, Maryland, Wisconsin, Washington
• Games where Oregon didn’t due to quality of opponent or black box reasons: Idaho, Boise State, Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, and the Rose Bowl

Here’s what the stats tell us:

Takeaways:

1. Jordan James was an absolute gem of a running back—San Francisco better take good care of him.
2. Whittington’s production dipped sharply when Oregon didn’t have a clear O-line advantage.
3. While you’d expect Whittington to outperform James in games where the O-line was dominant, he didn’t—likely due to two things:

a. James isn’t just “thunder”—he’s got breakaway ability, too.

b. Whittington’s early-season struggles were likely still tied to his injury recovery. In two early games where Oregon did have an O-line edge (UCLA and Michigan State), Whittington averaged just 3.13 YPC.

What It All Means for 2025

After digging through all this, I’ve convinced myself that both the injury and the Big Ten defensive lines played a significant role in Whittington’s 2024 campaign.

The good news? He’s fully healthy now.

The bad news? I’ve got legitimate concerns about Oregon’s offensive line in 2025.

This year’s line could feature as many as three transfer starters—which longtime readers know is less than ideal. Even if younger players like Kawika Rogers and Gernorris Wilson impress in camp and limit the reliance on transfers, Oregon’s best-case homegrown lineup still includes:

• 1 returning starter
• 2 guards with some meaningful snaps
• 1 transfer tackle
• 1 tackle who’s been “cooking in the oven” but hasn’t played outside of garbage time

That could form a capable unit—but it won’t be the line we had last year, which sent four starters to NFL rookie camps, including two draft picks (and one first-rounder).

Last season, Oregon had a clear advantage in the trenches in 8 of 12 regular season games. How many times will they have that edge in 2025? We won’t know until the season kicks off—but it’s one of the biggest questions facing this team.

And nobody might be more affected by that answer than Noah Whittington.

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