Tavion Thomas has had a remarkable season in a way no one saw coming. He picked an opportune time to break out, though.

Against Stanford last weekend, Thomas looked fresh as he rumbled for a career-best 180 yards and two touchdowns on 22 carries. It was not only his best performance as a Ute, but his first extensive action in over a month.

“It felt amazing,” Thomas said this week. “The energy and juice out there was amazing, the way we prepared and were ready to go out there. It was good to be back out there with the guys and playing with them.”

The fifth-year junior was sporadically deployed over a six-game stretch from Sept. 24 at Arizona State through Nov. 5 against Arizona. He was reportedly suspended for the first half of the game against the Sun Devils. He did not travel to Utah’s game against Washington State on Oct. 27. Against Oregon State, USC, and Arizona, he had 22 combined carries.

“We’ll see how the week goes and what the plan is, but I can’t see him not being a big part of what we do,” coach Kyle Whittingham said when asked about how he’d factor into the gameplan for Oregon. “He came off of one of his best performances and was very productive for us to say the least — that’s an understatement. Hopefully we get more of the same this week.”

Added quarterback Cameron Rising: “It was great to see — him flying around with the ball, making plays, out there having fun, it’s a good sight to see. Just got to keep it rolling.”

Oregon has given up the fewest explosive runs of any team in the Pac-12 this season. The Ducks are fifth in the league in yards per carry allowed. It’s true that teams have been more content to throw the ball on the Ducks’ struggling secondary, but the run defense hasn’t been as big a problem.

The Ducks’ head coach knows they will be tested on Saturday (7:30 p.m. PT, ESPN).

Dan Lanning says the Utes do “a great job of running the ball with big people.” Even with a rotating group of runners this season, they’ve produced a top-15 scoring offense (39.3 points per game) and a top-20 rushing outfit (5.2 yards per carry).

“I don’t know if we have,” Lanning said when asked if they’d seen a back quite like Thomas this year. “He’s different. He’s big. He’s a big back, he runs hard, he’s not gonna go down on first contact. This is gonna be a knockback tackle game, right? It’s really important to run your feet, a lot of contact surface area on these tackles. He’s obviously a different one.”