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Looking back on the 2021 Oregon football season, it’s easy to identify many highs and lows.
The biggest high, obviously, was the Week 2 road victory over the Ohio State Buckeyes, putting the Ducks on the map nationally and propelling them to a No. 3 ranking in the nation.
However, the down moments included the road loss to Stanford and the pair of losses at the hands of Utah at the end of the season. Of course, the cherry on top of it all was the loss of coach Mario Cristobal, who left after the season to take the head coaching job with the Miami Hurricanes.
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Now that the old coaching staff has largely moved on to new positions, we are starting to hear a bit about the inner workings in Eugene over the past couple of years. Most recently, former offensive analyst and Oregon quarterback Nate Costa talked with John Canzano about a number of things, including the situation at quarterback.
If you’ll remember, the Ducks started QB Anthony Brown, but after some up-and-down play, much of the fan base called for true freshman Ty Thompson to start instead. Costa said the coaching staff discussed making a move several times throughout the year.
“We had those conversations. We had them early on. We had them midseason. We had an extensive one at halftime of the bowl game against Oklahoma,” Costa said. “We almost made a move (at halftime).”
With the Ducks down 30-3 at the half of the Alamo Bowl — a glorified exhibition game that was played between two teams with interim coaching staff — Oregon fans wanted Thompson to get some game reps in the second half and find out what he could do after not seeing him much throughout the season. The Ducks kept Brown in the game, though, and went on to lose 47-32.
“I think Anthony did just enough — just enough — to hold onto that position,” Costa said. “He won us a lot of football games. The quarterback standard at Oregon is very high. It’s a high bar for a guy to try and reach. I don’t think Anthony reached it on a daily basis, and the fan base let him hear it from time to time.”
Brown moved on from the program and is working to play at the next level, while Thompson is in yet another quarterback battle, this time with transfer Bo Nix. Early this spring, he looks like he has improved over the offseason and all indications are that the competition will be tight down the stretch.
In hindsight, though, it sure would have been nice to see what the true freshman could do in some live-action situations a year ago when the stakes were relatively low. Now, should he win the QB competition against Nix, his first start would come against the defending national champion Georgia Bulldogs in Week 1.
There is still a long way to go in the process of deciding who will be Oregon’s starter for the fall, and Thompson seems to have a great shot. Had the coaching staff decided to put him in the game a few times last year, we’d have a better idea of where he is, though, and there might not have been a need for a QB competition in Eugene this offseason.
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