We are just about midway through the 2023 season for the Oregon Ducks, so it feels like a good opportunity to take stock of where we are at, and how the team got to this point.
Through five games, it’s hard to think things could have gone much better for the Ducks than they have. Dan Lanning and his team are undefeated for the first time through five games since 2013, and they’re one of two teams in the nation with a defense and offense ranked inside the top 10 for total yards.
Obviously, it’s been the players who have gotten them to this point, so we want to take a second to highlight the guys responsible for the early success. While it’s easy to pore over box scores and see the statistical leaders on the team, we want to do what we do every week after a game and head to Pro Football Focus to see how they graded everyone out using their advanced metrics.
With an eye towards both offense and defense, here are the 10 top-graded players on both sides of the ball for the Ducks so far this season.
Note: For this exercise, in order to highlight players who have had a sizeable impact on the season, we made it a requirement that you play a minimum of 10% offensive or defensive snaps thus far. Apologies to true freshman LB Jerry Mixon, who is the highest-graded overall player on Oregon’s team thus far, but missed the cut-off by a single snap.