The Oregon Ducks football roster got a bit younger this week.
It wasn’t because of anything unexpected, but rather the arrival of 5 early enrollees from the 2022 recruiting class that stepped onto the field as true freshmen in Oregon’s third spring practice on Tuesday. With the addition of Jahlil Florence, Justius Lowe, Devon Jackson, Harrison Taggart, and Michael Wooten — plus Anthony Jones, who has been on campus since January — a good portion of the true freshmen class is in the building.
Going forward, we now get to see how they adapt to the college level of play, and fit in with the Oregon system.
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“I don’t set expectations,” said Ducks’ head coach Dan Lanning on Tuesday. “You go one day at a time and today was one day and we still got to watch the film. Obviously walking off here, I’m sure it was spinning a little bit for them today, as you think it would be the first day. But I don’t want to set it too high or set it too low. They’re going to set the level of their expectation by the way they perform and the way they practice day in and day out.”
Though Lanning admitted that some of the incoming players may have their heads spinning a bit after the first day, he also made sure to mention that they won’t stop that from giving the players as much as they can handle, mentally. Since he came to Eugene, Lanning has emphasized the notion that everyone on the roster needs to be able to play multiple positions and move around on the field.
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But when do you start teaching them that? Is it sometimes too much to take a true freshman and teach him several different spots? Won’t that lead to some mental overload at some point? I asked Lanning that question on Tuesday:
“I mean, at the end of the day for us, each guy’s a little bit different, right?” Lanning said. “How fast do they pick it up? You know, are they drinking out of a water hose, or do they have it figured out? And we’re gonna give them as much as they can handle. So if he’s able to handle multiple positions coming in, then we want to be able to do that.”
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Because of roster construction and the sheer talent that is in this recruiting class, there’s a real chance that some of the players get an opportunity to play early on. Until then, though, Lanning believes that giving them a shot in practice is going to be the most beneficial for everyone involved.
“We want to throw them in there early,” Lanning said. “Let them get some experience and see, you know, see how they take. I’m not a big believer in having guys learn and watch from the sidelines. You know, you want to be able to get mental reps when you can, but you can do that by getting reps. So we’re gonna throw those guys out on the field coaching as we go if there are things we can improve on, that’s what we want to focus on.”
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