A new coaching staff, a new quarterback, and a new offense. That’s a lot for a relatively young team to be dealing with in the confines of a single offense, and when you’re being asked to nail it all down before taking on the defending national champions in the first game of the season, it can be a lot to handle.
As the Oregon Ducks cross the two-week mark until their kick-off game against the Georgia Bulldogs, though, the offensive side of the ball seems confident that they’ve got things under control. There remains no public answer as to who the starting QB will be, but with Kenny Dillingham running the show on the offensive side of the ball, comfortability has started to take root.
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“I think we’re comfortable,” said wide receiver’s coach Junior Adams. “I can say going through spring ball, the summer workouts, the player-led practices, I think guys took really good leadership and teaching themselves the offense. And then obviously going through day 16 of camp, everyone’s got a pretty good understanding of what’s going on.”
The Oregon offense is expected to look vastly different from what we’ve seen in recent years. No longer are the Ducks planning to be a run-heavy team that personifies their former offensive lineman of a head coach and pounds the ball between the tackles 35-plus times per game. Instead, Duck fans have been sold a scheme that will continually take shots downfield and put the ball in the hands of playmakers, letting them go to work.
Dillingham — or ‘Dilly’ as many coaches and players call him — the former offensive coordinator at Florida State, is the genius behind this operation, but he’s enlisted the help of numerous forward-thinking coaches — like Adams — that can help put his vision on the field.
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“Dilly’s done a great job with our unit,” said tight end coach Drew Mehringer. “And you know, I think the collection of coaches that he has working for him is really good and I think the players have really, really bought into what we’re doing. We have a pretty good idea of, you know, getting a feel for ‘Hey, in this situation, this is what Dilly likes and you know, this matches our personnel’ and stuff like that. So I feel really good about where we’re at from my standpoint.”
There are still a lot of unknowns about the offense, such as the aforementioned unsettled QB competition, or how widespread the running back usage will be. Those are answers that we might not get until the afternoon of September 3. However, it feels pretty unanimous that the scheme that Dillingham has put into place in Eugene is being received well.
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