It may still be summer, but don’t be fooled. Saturday’s visit from Oregon might just be Stanford’s most important game of the season.

The Cardinal’s first two games were blowouts that played perfectly to form and revealed little. UCLA torched Stanford’s suspect pass defense 45-17 in the season-opener before the Cardinal rebounded to run over undermanned San Jose State 37-0 last Saturday, just as expected.

So Saturday night, under the glare of the stadium lights and the eyes of thousands of new students, Jim Harbaugh will find out whether he has made any progress in his nine months here. His team will see if they belong on the same field as one of the Pac-10’s best.

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48-10. 44-20. Stanford faced Oregon twice under Walt Harris, and both times the Cardinal got creamed. Oregon just had too much speed, from running back Jonathan Stewart, once the top tailback recruit in the nation, to wideouts now playing on Sundays to Dennis Dixon, their whirling dervish of a quarterback. Harris was fired because he lost his team after too many one-sided losses like these, and on came Jim Harbaugh, who’s convinced a team and a fanbase that his team will bow to no one.

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On paper, No. 13 Oregon’s every strength seems to perfectly exploit a Stanford weakness or neutralize a Cardinal strength. Defensively, the Ducks’ front seven is nothing special, but their secondary is something fierce. Corners Jairus Byrd and Walter Thurmond are both proven, top-notch starters, and safety Patrick Chung might just be the best of the bunch – his position coach compares him to NFL star Shawne Merriman. Bad news for Stanford, whose receiving corps of sophomore Richard Sherman and seniors Mark Bradford and Evan Moore headlines the offense. 2006 quarterback Trent Edwards did throw for 224 yards last year against Oregon (3-0), but unless senior quarterback TC Ostrander can drastically improve his accuracy to Edwards’ level, he won’t match even that modest number Saturday.

That puts scoring largely in the hands of Stanford’s rushing attack. The Cardinal did run for 276 yards in last week’s shutout of San Jose State, but mustered only 52 ground yards against UCLA and little more in far too many games in 2006. Stanford’s offensive line needs to create rushing lanes as well as it has been pass blocking of late, the coaching staff needs to start sophomore back Toby Gerhart, by far the team’s best threat, and Gerhart needs to do something special with his touches if Stanford wants to keep it close.

The Cardinal offense has such little margin for error because Oregon’s attack looks downright unstoppable. It starts with offensive coordinator Gary Crowton’s spread scheme that has taken college football by storm this decade. The look unveils four- or five-receiver sets, forcing opposing defenses to keep up with the speed on the perimeter, all while having the muscle to keep Stewart and Dixon from running wild between the hashmarks. So far this season, no one’s been up to the challenge: the Ducks have scored 48, 39 and 52 in blowouts of defenses easily as stout as Stanford’s.

Dixon is threat number one. Taking off where Michael Vick left off, Dixon’s completed 65 percent of his passes for 565 yards, seven touchdowns and no interceptions this season, and has run for 276 yards and three scores. Stanford’s green defensive ends – senior Udeme Udofia, junior Pannel Egboh and sophomores Levirt Griffin and Erik Lorig –will need to stay wide to contain the mobile senior.

Of course, that slows any pass rush and opens lanes for Stewart, who is simply averaging 7.5 yards per carry and would likely start for any Pac-10 school save USC. Safety Bo McNally can continue to provide aggressive run support, but it’s on Stanford’s linebackers to make quicker reads and crash the rushing lanes hard. That’s a tall order for a group that lost Michael Okwo, last year’s defensive MVP, to the NFL Draft and may have lost this season’s star Clinton Snyder to a pinched nerve last week.

Even if the Cardinal can do what Houston, Michigan and Fresno State have not, somehow slowing the rush attack, that still leaves the matter of receivers Brian Paysinger and Jaison Williams, who have combined for 20 catches, 319 yards and four touchdowns on the young season. Save for McNally, Stanford’s secondary has really struggled, so unless God’s a Stanford fan, looks like it’s going to be a long Saturday for the defense.

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While the task is tall, the stakes are even higher. This is what a top-20 team looks like, and if Stanford wants to be one anytime soon, they better show something Saturday at 7 p.m. An outright win is probably too tall an order for the double-digit underdog Cardinal. But to fight, to show the fans and recruits needed to turn this mess around that Stanford could one day soon beat a ranked team like Oregon, this is a must.

That’s doubly true considering that the Ducks kick off the hardest stretch of the schedule –- undefeated Arizona State and No. 1 USC are on deck. And if the football team doesn’t want to lose yet another year of would-be freshmen fans to Harris-like incompetence, it better show some life on Saturday.