Dealt the hardest of blows during the offseason, when one of their teammates died tragically, the Oregon football team could’ve folded.

Saddled with an embarrassing season-opening loss to a juggernaut opponent, the Ducks could’ve cracked.

Trailing North Carolina by 10 points in the Holiday Bowl on Wednesday night with under 7 minutes to play, they could’ve called it quits.

Instead, Oregon did what it has all season. The Ducks roared back, and in the process, secured a 10-win season for Dan Lanning with one incredible comeback that came down to the final minute.

*****

For a moment in the postgame press conference, the air escaped from Lanning’s chest. Before he was asked about the four players joining him on the stage — Mase Funa, Chase Cota, Bo Nix and Bucky Irving — and before the passing of Spencer Webb was alluded to, Lanning flashed a wide smile.

But for a moment, he was taken back to mid-July, when Webb, the Ducks’ jubilant tight end, died at 22 in a tragic swimming accident.

Galvanized by tragedy, it was then that the Ducks came together. But it was 6 weeks later, in a 49-3 loss to defending national champion Georgia, that the bond was tested for the first time.

How did Oregon respond then? By winning 8 straight games.

“It’s really easy when there’s change and transition – especially for some of these guys, change they didn’t pick — it’s really easy to buckle up,” said Lanning, Oregon’s first 10-game winner in Year 1 since Mark Helfrich in 2013. “Especially when you talk about early in the season when it didn’t go our way. This group has never stopped and they’ve never wavered.”

Not even in Week 11, when they lost to Washington, 37-34, in Autzen Stadium in a game that likely cost the team a shot at the College Football Playoff.

They responded by beating Utah a week later.

And what about after losing to Oregon State in the season finale?

They rallied on Wednesday in the grandest of ways as Nix rose to the occasion.

*****

Every chance Lanning has had to speak about Nix since the quarterback announced his return for 2023, the head coach has looked as giddy as a 7-year-old on Christmas morning. Nix’s announcement was a nice enough gift, but his Holiday Bowl performance was another good one.

Before the final two drives Wednesday, Oregon’s offense was not sharp. The Ducks’ 4 previous drives had ended in an interception, a punt, a turnover on downs and a punt.

Then Oregon got the ball back with 9 minutes, 13 seconds left and the ball on its own 39-yard line. Nix quickly went to work, connecting on passes of 6 and 30 yards to Chase Cota, sandwiching a pass interference penalty that gave the Ducks another 15 yards. After a 1st-and-goal at the 10-yard line, Nix found Troy Franklin 2 plays later for the 6-yard touchdown.

North Carolina countered with a 43-yard drive ending in a field goal to go up 27-21, but Oregon got the ball back with 2:29 left, ample time for Nix to do his work. And work he did, hitting his first 4 passes for 51 yards.

Eventually, Oregon had one last play with a 4th-and-2 at the 6-yard line with 19 seconds left, and Nix hit Cota up the middle for a touchdown.

“The whole bowl prep against our defense, we never got that look once,” Cota said in the post-game press conference. “Then we got it here at our practice site for the bowl one time, and we missed it, went over it, and sure enough it showed up in the game. Same exact one, perfect, Bo saw it, easy touchdown from there.”

If anyone showed resilience, it was Nix, who did not look fully recovered from a lower leg injury suffered in the loss to Washington. He wasn’t himself until the final two drives, and his interception near the end of the first half was an example of that.

“I was ticked off,” Nix said. “I was made I put my team in that position. It wasn’t a great play on my part, it put us kind of behind. but it goes back to the 22 guys who were out there playing for one another. … They didn’t quit. They could’ve easily tanked at that moment. Bowl games sometimes happen that way. Guys start falling apart and start not wanting to play. That wasn’t us tonight.”

That wasn’t Oregon at any time this season.