On Monday morning, Bruce Feldman and The Athletic put out an article in their series of recruiting breakdowns looking at some of the top teams in the nation over the past couple of decades and offering superlatives for some of the most notable recruits to come through the program.
In the article (subscription required) they talked about Joey Harrington and De’Anthony Thomas as two of the most important recruits in program history, and identified Justin Herbert as the biggest developmental project, rising from an overlooked 3-star into the No. 6 overall pick in the NFL Draft.
I’m not going to bite into Feldman’s writing; it’s very good and deserves your attention. However, it did get me thinking about some superlatives that could be handed out for a more current group of recruits. While Feldman looked as far back as 2000 to identify some top players, I wanted to dial in the microscope a little bit and come of with some superlatives of my own.
For this exercise, I go back five years ago to the 2018 recruiting class, and started from there up to the last class that was signed in 2023. I also threw in a few “future superlatives” for good measure, highlighting a few of the recruits in 2023 and 2024 who I think will have major impacts down the road.
Without further ado, here are my superlatives for the Oregon Ducks recruiting over the past five years: