Tag: Tez Johnson

Oregon OC Will Stein details the luxuries and the challenges of having so much depth at WR

There are a lot of mouths to feed in Oregon’s WR room, but only one ball. It’s a good problem to have, says Will Stein.

It may seem ironic, but sometimes it isn’t easy in college football to have a roster as complete as the Oregon Ducks do ahead of the 2024 season.

The Ducks are coming off a season in which they boasted a top-10 offense and a top-10 defense in points and points allowed per game — something only two other FBS teams did. Somehow, on paper, they’ve improved.

Although Oregon is losing Troy Franklin this offseason, the Ducks’ WR room looks like one of their most talented and deepest position groups, with elite talent at the top and bottom of the depth chart. For the 2024 season, Oregon is returning Tez Johnson, Traeshon Holden, and Gary Bryant Jr., and they’ve added Texas A&M transfer Evan Stewart and a trio of freshmen in Jeremiah McClellan, Ryan Pellum, and Dillon Gresham as well. Be sure not to sleep on Jurrion Dickey and Kyler Kasper, either.

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After practice on Tuesday, Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein spoke about the luxury of having so many talented wide receivers on a team.

“It’s huge,” Stein said. “I mean whenever you can roll six or seven deep at wideout, you know you’ve got a really good room. We still want to keep our play count up, and earlier in the year especially with the weather and the heat, we want to roll a lot of guys in there.”

It’s tough to say at this point in the process who Oregon’s top receivers will be, but Johnson, Stewart, and Holden are the early favorites to lead the WR room. With the quality receivers Oregon has in addition to those three, though, Stein may have a tough time balancing everyone’s usage.

“It’ll be fun, but it’s going to be stressful too,” Stein said about the challenge of getting everyone involved. “There’s a lot of players on our team. It’s a wonderful problem to have. It comes back to game planning and when you’re in that setting, personnel-specific plays are, I think, huge. We’ll see when we get there.”

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In addition to the wide receivers, Stein will have the challenge of working the ball to Oregon’s talented tight ends. Terrance Ferguson is coming back for his final season this fall, and last season he showed he is one of the best TEs in college football. Earlier this spring, Stein even said that he “needs to get him (Ferguson) the ball more.” Patrick Herbert and Kenyon Sadiq are two other TEs who could be big producers for the Ducks in the fall.

Like Stein said, having a variety of weapons at your disposal is a great problem to have. It should lead to a more diverse offensive strategy, making things more difficult for opposing defenses by throwing different concepts at them. It should also help the Ducks’ players manage their load, hopefully mitigating injuries.

“Shoot, we’ve got a lot of really good players. It’s about getting those kids the ball and getting their confidence up early,” Stein said.

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Oregon QB Dillon Gabriel is making an impression on and off the field

Oregon wide receiver Tez Johnson says the Ducks newest QB is making a strong early impression.

If there’s one guy on the Oregon Ducks football team to assess how the newest Duck quarterback Dillon Gabriel is faring in the early going, it would be Tez Johnson.

The Oregon senior receiver was in Gabriel’s place this time last year when he transferred in from Troy. Although he had plenty of experience under his belt, he was still the new guy on the field trying to make a positive impression to everyone on and off the field.

Only in Johnson’s case, he was catching passes, not throwing them.

So when asked how his new quarterback was doing in his short time on campus, Johnson offered up this analysis on the former Oklahoma Sooner.

“He’s funny. Ya know, Dillon Gabriel is a total goofball,” Johnson said. “Like, he’s all for the team. He’s a goofy guy. He’s a kid in the locker room. But he’s also good people like when it’s time to put work in, you’re gonna put the work in. And we like that about a quarterback.”

There was no other player like Nix when it came to putting the work in and being good people. Gabriel certainly has some big cleats to fill, but from the sound of it, No. 8 is handling it like the cool customer he was billed as being.

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Tez Johnson and other Duck receivers adjusting to lefty QB

The ball comes out a bit differently from a lefty QB, but Tez Johnson says Oregon’s WRs are adjusting quickly.

You would think catching a football would be the exact same thing whether is was coming out of the right hand or the left hand, but those who watch baseball know the ball spins differently for a southpaw than it does for a traditional right-hander.

The same goes for a football and the Oregon Duck receivers are adjusting to the differences as the lefty Dillon Gabriel doesn’t spin it as Bo Nix did.

“The rotation is different, but it’s all pretty much just the same. When he (Gabriel) throws it, you just have to go up there and grab it,” Oregon senior receiver Tez Johnson said. “He throws a pretty good ball, though. You just have to know that on the right side, it’s going to drift away from us, and on the other side it’s going to drift towards us.”

It’s quite the adjustment, but this is why you have a month and a half of spring practices and fall camp later this year before the actual season begins. From the sounds of it, Gabriel’s passes are hitting their marks.

“It just takes a day or two, just a couple throws to be like ‘Oh okay,'” Johnson said. “More right-hand dominant than the left because the right-handed quarterbacks are gonna hit more on the left hand than the right.”

The Ducks won’t care which hand Gabriel’s passes hit, as long as they stick is all that matters.

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Early anticipation is high for Evan Stewart with Oregon Ducks

Let the Evan Stewart hype build.

Dan Lanning and the Oregon Ducks had a spectacular offseason, but you know that by now. With the spring football season beginning, we’re finally getting a look a some of the newest Ducks and how they’ll fit into this season’s team.

On Tuesday, two of Oregon’s most high-profile transfers, wide receiver Evan Stewart and cornerback Jabbar Muhammad, practiced with the team for the first time, after coming to Eugene for the start of the spring term.

In the past few seasons, Oregon has been home to some of the best wide receivers in program history. Troy Franklin became the greatest Ducks receiver ever. Tez Johnson had one the best single seasons in Oregon football history last year.

Evan Stewart is another elite talent, and he has the potential to put his name near Franklin’s over the next few years at Oregon. On Tuesday after practice, Dan Lanning expressed excitement for the arrival of the Texas A&M transfer and shared his thoughts on what Stewart can bring to the team.

“I think speed, catch radius. I think there’s a lot of things that pop off with Evan,” Lanning said. “I think he saw a lot of opportunity here with what we’ve done with our wideouts here in the past over the last few years.

“But you know, he has the skill set to be really, really talented player. We had some coaches that were really familiar with them before as well. That’s certainly paid off.”

In his two seasons at Texas A&M, Stewart caught 91 balls, racked up 1163 receiving yards, and scored 6 TDs. Stewart struggled with injuries during his time as an Aggie and played in only eight games as a sophomore. For that reason, his stat totals aren’t as high as they could be, but his 12.8 career yards per catch are impressive.

It’s unclear how the wide receiver depth chart is going to shake out come fall since the WR room is loaded. Tez Johnson will be back for one more year, joining Traeshon Holden, Gary Bryant and redshirt freshman Jurrion Dickey. With Stewart’s talent, he should be comfortably in the mix. I’d expect him to be one of the top two or three options for Dillon Gabriel this season.

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Spring Position Preview: Evan Stewart, Tez Johnson lead WR room stacked with talent

Oregon might possess the most talented and deepest WR room in the country in 2024.

After a couple of long off-season months, the grass is starting to grow and trees are getting ready to bloom. Spring is coming in Eugene, and with it comes the long-awaited return of football for the Oregon Ducks. A lot will look different in this new year for Dan Lanning and his team, with several of last year’s top players moving onto the NFL, including guys like Bo Nix, Troy Franklin, Bucky Irving, Jackson Powers-Johnson, and Brandon Dorlus. All of that is not to mention the fact that the Ducks are joining the Big Ten, and have a new-look conference to get used to on top of a spot in the expanded College Football Playoff to strive for. 

It’s safe to say that there are a lot of things to talk about going into this spring season, and a lot of storylines to discuss. To get things started, we want to give a position-by-position breakdown of Oregon’s current roster, getting readers up to date on which players left, which players are returning, and what the overall outlook is going into the spring. So far, we’ve looked at the quarterbacks and the running backs. Now we’ll examine the Ducks’ receivers’ room.

The Ducks have had some great receivers in the past, but this particular group might be the most talented and deepest receiver corps Oregon has ever had. It’s not often that you see arguably the best WR in school history come and go in one season, and expect the talent level to rise the next year, but that could be the case in Eugene with this group that is ready to wreak havoc on Big Ten defenses.

Led by Tez Johnson, Evan Stewart, and Traeshon Holden, Oregon’s receivers have all the qualities a coach would want. There are big, speedy, and tall ones for Gabriel to choose from. The only problem might be there is just one football to spread the wealth with. Fortunately, it’s a problem most teams would love to have.

Here’s a full breakdown on everything you need to know regarding the receiver position, from who left, who joined, and some of the biggest storylines to follow.

Tez Johnson to return to Eugene for 2024 season

Oregon Ducks wide receiver Tez Johnson announced he would return to Eugene for the 2024 season.

While a lot of energy has been spent focusing on players who are leaving in the world of college football, whether it be via the transfer portal or to the 2024 NFL Draft, Oregon Ducks’ wide receiver Tez Johnson provided some encouraging news on Thursday, announcing that he is returning to Eugene for another year.

Johnson had a breakout year in his first season with the Ducks, hauling in 86 catches for 1,182 yards and 10 touchdowns. Much of his production came in the latter half of the year.

There was a lot of speculation about whether or not Johnson would return to Eugene in 2024 or test the NFL Draft water. After a solid career at Troy before transferring to Oregon, it’s clear that Johnson has the skills to produce at the next level, but there is a belief that he could stand to benefit from one more year at the collegiate level, this time as the WR1 on the team.

With Troy Franklin off to the NFL this year, Johnson will lead the Ducks’ WR corps in a 2024 season that sees them enter the Big Ten. After seeing what he did in 2023, fans should be thrilled to have him back once again.

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Instant Reactions: Ducks outplay Liberty in Fiesta Bowl as Nix, Irving shine

Instant Reactions: Oregon blows out Liberty 45-6 in the Fiesta Bowl and ends the season on a high note.

It was Liberty 6, Oregon 0 before Bo Nix touched the ball.

Forty-five straight points later, the Ducks had pasted Liberty 45-6 in the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl. Nix broke all sorts of school records, including the single-season pass completion percentage record.

He threw for four touchdown passes in the second quarter alone and receiver Tez Johnson made Duck fans forget about Troy Franklin for a moment. Johnson finished the game with 11 catches for 172 yards and a touchdown.

While the offense was moving up and down the field with relative ease, the Oregon defense had one bad possession, the opening possession, but after that, the Flames never had much of a chance. The Ducks took the spread-option out of the game for the most part and limited quarterback Kaidon Salter’s play-making abilities.

Dan Lanning highlights impact current players like Troy Franklin, Tez Johnson have on recruiting

In his national signing day press conference, Dan Lanning highlighted the impact current Oregon players have on recruiting new talent.

After the drama and fireworks of Dan Lanning’s first signing day as an Oregon Duck in 2022, I don’t think many fans expected the start of the 2023 early signing window to be quite as eventful. But, Dan Lanning and Co. had other plans, and they turned in the highest-rated recruiting class in Oregon Ducks history, with more commitments potentially still to come.

After the success of Wednesday morning, Lanning spoke to the media in the afternoon to talk about signing day and the new additions. Lanning was asked how much elite skill players like Troy Franklin, Tez Johnson, and Terrance Ferguson impact Oregon’s ability to recruit new talent out of high school.

“Yeah, huge. I mean, I think early on when you come to a program, you tell people what you hope to do. Right?” Lanning said. “And after you’re able to have a couple of seasons, you can point to what you have done.

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“Guys like Troy, and Tez, and Bo and what we’ve done on offense the last two years, and what we’ve done on defense, I think all those things attribute to being able to point to success and what it will look like for people here in the future.”

With Lanning headed into his third season, he now has spent enough time in Eugene to point to his results with the Ducks, instead of just his goals. Sometimes, those results are the performance of certain players, such as Franklin, Johnson, and Ferguson, all of whom have blossomed under Lanning’s coaching.

And if recruits can see themselves becoming the next Troy Franklin or Terrance Ferguson at Oregon, Lanning’s job becomes easier.

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The Ducks certainly had success recruiting skill positions in this recruiting cycle. Tight end Roger Saleapaga and wide receiver Dillon Gresham signed their letters of intent on Wednesday as they were expected to, but Oregon also flipped two major 2024 WRs: Jeremiah McClellan and Ryan Pellum. Originally, WR seemed to be a weakness of this class, but it has become a strength

As is always true with recruiting victories, getting the player is only half the battle. The key is developing those blue-chip players into cornerstones of the program, otherwise, you see former 5-stars jumping in the portal after two seasons and minimal snaps. Dan Lanning has shown that he is an elite developer, by bringing players like Bucky Irving and Johnson to the national stage, so hopefully, he’ll have the same success with this new crop of talent.

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WATCH: 4-star WR Jeremiah McClellan details decision to flip from Ohio State to Oregon

Jeremiah McClellan goes through his “stressful” decision to flip from the Ohio State Buckeyes to the Oregon Ducks.

While we didn’t receive a cigar video from Dan Lanning like last year, I think most Oregon Ducks fans went to bed on Wednesday thinking “Today was a good day.”

A big reason for that was the pair of WRs Oregon was able to flip from other schools: Jeremiah McClellan and Ryan Pellum.

McClellan, who had been committed to Ohio State since August, was the first to flip, becoming the highest-rated offensive recruit in the Ducks 2024 class. Often, flipped commitments like these are solidified days or weeks before signing day, but McClellan made his choice at the last moment. In an interview clip shown below, McClellan details when he made his decision, and how the decision was made.

In the video, McClellan highlights how stressful the decision was for him, which is why he was unsure where he’d end up until the eleventh hour, but overall he seems excited about his decision. The biggest draw for Oregon that McClellan mentioned is his relationship with Dan Lanning, as well as WR coach Junior Adams.

Lanning also talked about the process of getting McClellan back in the fold for the Ducks, continuing to recruit him all along even after he announced his commitment to Ohio State.

“I remember the day that he committed somewhere else and just be able to talk to him saying, ‘Hey coach, I’d love to keep the communication going.’ And it never really stopped on our end, all the way into late last night and early this morning,” Lanning said. “So I always felt like there was an opportunity if he felt like this was a fit, that there would be an opportunity for him to be here. And our staff did a phenomenal job of continuing to work all the relationships necessary for him to see the same picture and vision that we saw.”

While there was uncertainty at the wide receiver position at the beginning of the offseason, the Ducks are set to have a full WR room in 2024. The top guys will likely be, Tez Johnson, Gary Bryant, Traeshon Holden, and Jurrion Dickey (Oregon’s top recruit in 2023), but there are always depth chart surprises come fall. McClellan has been described by some analysts as the most “ready-now” receiver in the class, so there’s a chance we see him make an early impact in Eugene.

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2024 Wide Receiver Outlook: Promising young talent set to take over for Ducks next season

The Oregon Ducks are expecting a lot of promising young wide receivers to take over in 2024 as the team heads to the Big Ten.

The 2023 season is now behind us, and while there is still a bowl game to be played — The Fiesta Bowl vs. The Liberty Flames — Dan Lanning and the Oregon Ducks are working hard on the construction of their roster and hitting the transfer portal in attempts to formulate what this team will look like going into the 2024 season, the team’s first year in the Big Ten Conference. While they work on bringing new players in via the transfer portal, we want to look at the future breakdown of each position, detailing current players on the roster, incoming recruits, and potential targets on the market right now. On Wednesday, we broke down the future of the quarterback position. Today, let’s turn to wide receivers. 

Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the wide receiver position take off in Eugene in ways that Oregon Duck fans haven’t seen for a long time. A lot of that is thanks to the style of offense that Dan Lanning and his offensive coordinators — Kenny Dillingham in 2022, Will Stein in 2023 — have chosen to deploy, and part of that is due to the wide receiver talent that is currently residing in Eugene.

There’s no reason to believe that anything should change going forward.

While the Ducks are likely to be without Troy Franklin next year — the arguable best WR in school history is expected to enter the 2024 NFL Draft — there’s a long list of players on the roster and in the 2024 recruiting class who could step up and make a huge difference going forward.

On top of that, there is a high likelihood that Lanning and Co. bring in at least one, and potentially two pass-catchers via the transfer portal this offseason to further bolster the roster.

Let’s look at the various players on the roster, and provide an overview of the projected WR room in 2024 for the Oregon Ducks.