It’s been a long road for Oregon Ducks running back Sean Dollars to get to this point.
After committing to the Ducks as the No. 2 all-purpose back in the 2019 recruiting class, Dollars had a slow but steady start to his career at Oregon. He played in four games during his first season, and seven games during his second, rushing 15 times for a total of 128 yards.
Then injury struck, and he was forced to sit out for the entire 2021 season while nursing a knee back to full health. After Mario Cristobal and the coaching staff that recruited him left, making way for Dan Lanning and the new staff to come to Eugene, Dollars decided to put his name into the transfer portal and look for a new school with which to jump-start his career. Not long later, Dollars opted out of the transfer portal, choosing instead to come back to Eugene.
Now with his mind made up, he’s ready to get after it this fall.
“I’m 120 percent locked into whatever comes my way,” Dollars said on Wednesday at Oregon’s annual Media Day.
After working back to full strength, Dollars has been able to grow stronger this offseason and prepare for a new offense that will position him alongside several other running backs jockeying for carries.
“I feel like guys that we have in the room right now, we all have our different traits and our different types of special abilities to go out there and be able to contribute to the game,” Dollars said. “Really it’s an iron sharpens iron type of deal, and you understand the visions that the coaches have, and you have to understand the vision of the guys beside you.
What Dollars can control is how he prepares, and the type of shape he is in physically. According to the fourth-year sophomore, that part of his game has never been better.
Sean Dollars says that he has PR’d with his speed this off-season.
“I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in.”
— Zachary Neel (@zacharycneel) August 3, 2022
Will it translate into more playing time and a jump-start to his career this year with the Ducks? That’s yet to be seen. However, it appears that this is the strongest version of Dollars that Oregon fans will have ever seen. That’s encouraging enough in itself.
[mm-video type=video id=01g9jqnwkt18cwdkxbd8 playlist_id=01f27mq9z7hjgk6vc6 player_id=01f1jz1vgtfhzk6ner image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01g9jqnwkt18cwdkxbd8/01g9jqnwkt18cwdkxbd8-9171904eabdce142a378dbb112fef3f2.jpg]
[listicle id=26775]