Tag: Ty Thompson

Chip Kelly’s potential ouster at UCLA could lead to major opportunity for Dan Lanning’s Ducks

With news that Chip Kelly may be fired at UCLA, the Oregon Ducks have a major opportunity to benefit when it comes to the transfer portal.

A new report on Tuesday afternoon indicated the UCLA Bruins could be close to firing head coach Chip Kelly, potentially as soon as after this week’s game against the rival USC Trojans.

If you’ve been paying attention to college football this season, that shouldn’t come as a major surprise. The Bruins have had a rough 2023 after a solid start. They go into Week 12 6-4 overall and 3-4 in conference play. With losses to Utah, Oregon State, Arizona and an embarrassing loss to Arizona State this past week, it’s clear UCLA has subverted expectations this year.

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For the Oregon Ducks, that could become a benefit, particularly when it comes to the players who transfer out of the program with a change in the coaching staff.

The most notable of those players is quarterback Dante Moore, a former five-star who was committed to the Ducks before offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham left Eugene to take over as the head coach of the Arizona State Sun Devils. Moore was the No. 4 overall player in the class of 2023 and the No. 3 overall quarterback in the class. So far this season, he has played in eight games, completing 91 of his 175 passing attempts for 1,344 yards, 10 TDs and 7 INTs.

Whether you want to argue he was thrown into the fire too quickly as a true freshman or he is not living up to expectations is a conversation we can have. The more pertinent topic is whether Moore would choose to stick around in Los Angeles without the coaching staff that recruited him.

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Should he choose to enter the transfer portal, you have to imagine the former five-star would give a serious look to Oregon, a team that has arguably the best offense in the nation under offensive coordinator Will Stein. Moore also has a previous relationship with head coach Dan Lanning.

After this year, Bo Nix will be headed off to the NFL. While former five-star recruit Ty Thompson is next in line to take over as the starting QB in 2024, the Ducks are expected to bring in a transfer portal player to compete for the job.

Could that transfer be Moore? We certainly will have to wait and see, but the report of Kelly potentially being out at UCLA makes it seem like more of a possibility.

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Ranking Oregon’s top 10 players in win vs. Colorado according to PFF grades

Ranking Oregon’s top 10 players in win vs. Colorado according to PFF grades

When you play as well as the Oregon Ducks did in a 42-6 win over the previously ranked No. 19 Colorado Buffaloes, the stats are going to back you up.

More importantly for us, the grades from Pro Football Focus tell much of the story, with the defense largely winning out in our look back at the top 10 graded players from the week.

With seven total sacks on the day, and an ability to shut out the No. 15 scoring offense until the final 3 minutes, it comes as no surprise that Dan Lanning’s defense earned high marks in the contest. Here is a look at some of the top performers from the game, according to PFF (10 snap minimum):

Stock Report: Ducks see nothing but risers in 81-7 win over Portland State

Gary Bryant Jr. and Ty Thompson had big days on Saturday. The same can be said for Bryce Boettcher. Here are our biggest stock-risers of the week.

With an opening game against an FCS school where you put up a program-record 81 points and win by a margin of 74, it feels wrong to say that anyone saw their stock drop on the day.

For the Oregon Ducks, there was a long list of players — mostly young players — who got onto the field Saturday afternoon in the 81-7 win against the Portland State Vikings who showed what they could do after a long and hard offseason. We want to highlight them.

Throughout the season, we will bring this Stock Report to you every week after Saturday’s game, singling out the players who performed the best and saw their stock rise the most, and also identifying a few players who may have had a tough day.

As you would expect in the season-opener, there weren’t any players who saw their stock fall in Oregon’s dominant win over the Vikings.

Here are the guys whose stock rose the most in my mind:

8 takeaways from Oregon Ducks’ dominant blowout win over Portland State

The offense was elite, the defense showed promise, and overall, the Ducks knocked the rust off in a great season-opening win.

The Oregon Ducks dominated from the first whistle to the final whistle on Saturday, setting a program record with 81 points and going the final 52 minutes of game time without allowing a single score from the Portland State Vikings.

Of course, that’s what was supposed to happen.

“It’s a standard,” head coach Dan Lanning said after the game. “That’s how we measure ourselves, based on the standard — not necessarily on the scoreboard.”

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The scoreboard at Autzen Stadium read a number that it never had on Saturday, and the Ducks got off to a strong start for the 2023 season. Of course, the story of Oregon’s season isn’t going to be told based on what the team did against Portland State, but rather against schools like Texas Tech, Washington, USC, and Oregon State.

However, the season has to start somewhere, and the Ducks did everything possible to convince those who watched on Saturday that they are every bit as elite as people expect them to be this year. Following the game, here are some of my biggest takeaways from all of the action:

Oregon Ducks featured prominently in ESPN’s Future Offensive Power Rankings

Projections for Oregon’s offense are high looking into the future, says ESPN.

We have a good idea about who is going to be good this upcoming season. Much of the offseason has been spent parsing through rankings and diving deep into depth charts to see which roster is best suited for immediate success. We’ve looked at the transfer portal action and deciphered the incoming recruiting classes, singling out which players can have an instant impact on their new teams.

The 2023 season is not a mystery. Beyond that, though, is up for debate.

One of the best things that ESPN does each year is put out its future power rankings. By taking a look at the next three years across the college football landscape and placing weight on the depth of a roster, rather than the talent that may be leaving after this season, they are able to project into the future and see who they think will be among the top teams going forward.

The Oregon Ducks feel great about the 2023 season, but beyond that there are some question marks, particularly at the QB position. While a crowded future QB room will have a number of options — Ty Thompson and Austin Novosad will back up Bo Nix this year, with Michael Van Buren and Luke Moga coming in to compete with the pair for the starting spot in 2024 — there is some uncertainly on who will ultimately be the QB1 after this year. How heavily did that factor into ESPN’s future rankings?

Let’s take a look:

Where does Michael Van Buren rank among highest-rated QB recruits in UO history?

Where does Michael Van Buren rank among the highest-rated QBs to ever commit to Oregon?

The Oregon Ducks had a banner day on the recruiting trail Saturday afternoon, picking up a pair of blue-chip players in the 2024 class and adding them to the mix in Eugene.

4-star quarterback Michael Van Buren and 4-star defensive lineman Xadavien Sims announced their commitment to Oregon on Saturday afternoon. Both players are rated among the top 130 players in the 2024 class, offering a boost for the Ducks in the national recruiting rankings.

For the sake of this article, we want to focus on Van Buren.

While Oregon has seen a major jump in recruiting over the past decade or so, the one position group where they still haven’t had the elite of the elite players come through is at QB. We’ve seen 5-star linebackers, 5-star offensive linemen, 5-star wide receivers, and 5-star cornerbacks come through Eugene, among others. However, the highest-rated QB commit in Oregon history was a 4-star — Ty Thompson.

Van Buren doesn’t change that — he is widely rated as a high-end 4-star prospect, though ESPN has him rated as a 5-star. However, we wanted to look at how highly-rated Van Buren is when you compare him to the rest of the QB recruits in Oregon history.

Here’s where he now ranks in that group.

QB Ty Thompson opens up about passing on transfer portal, staying at Oregon

On the @mentalsweatshow Oregon QB Ty Thompson broke down his reasoning for staying in Eugene, and not testing the transfer market.

One of the underlying stories in Eugene over the past couple of seasons has resided at the quarterback position for the Oregon Ducks, and a player who wasn’t playing, rather than who was.

We’ve talked about the Ty Thompson situation a ton since he joined the Ducks as the highest-rated QB in program history. While many believed that he would take over potentially as a freshman, but likely as a sophomore, things haven’t gone that way for Thompson. He was unable to beat out Anthony Brown in 2021, and Oregon brought in Bo Nix via the transfer portal in 2022. You know the rest of the story.

In this era of college football, you often see highly-rated players like Thompson choose to transfer to a new school after a frustrating start to his career like that, searching for playing time rather than the program. Thompson decided to stick it out, though, and he is still in Eugene serving as a backup, biding his time until he can compete for the QB1 job in 2024 once again.

I’ve written before about how noble and impressive this decision is from QB13, and former Oregon legend Joey Harrington also talked in length about how much he respects the decision.

This past week on The Mental Sweat Show, a podcast hosted by former Oregon players Ryan Walk, Brad Yaffe, and Nate Heaukulani, Thompson broke down his ultimate reasoning for staying in Eugene.

“I feel like at this point, I’ve built a very good bond and laid some very strong roots here in Oregon,” Thompson said. “I’ve been in this program for 2.5 years now, and I’ve given everything to this program. To just up and leave because something didn’t go my way, or because there might be a different opportunity somewhere, I feel like that would be extremely selfish.”

While Thompson has a point, that hasn’t stopped a ton of players from transferring out of Oregon in the past couple of years. Even this past offseason, we’ve seen more than 30 players decide that they want to look for another opportunity out of Eugene. Some are still looking.

“Also across the board, there’s not a whole lot of… people hit the portal and don’t have a great destination or there’s not a great opportunity on the other side of the portal,” Thompson said. “I think I made a very calculated decision. Obviously, the thought of the portal crossed my mind, but at the end of the day, whether I play a whole lot this year or I don’t, I think I have a great opportunity the next coming years to do what I do here at Oregon.”

After the 2023 season comes to an end, Bo Nix will be off to the NFL, and the starting QB job for the Ducks will be up for grabs once again. Thompson will look to compete with true freshman Austin Novosad, and likely a transfer portal QB going into next spring, and potentially be able to win the top spot by the time fall rolls around.

Should that come to fruition, the patience that Thompson has shown will definitely have been worth it.

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Stock Report: Which players proved the most at Oregon spring game?

Who impressed us the most at Oregon’s spring game? It’s a long list, filled with a lot of young players and new faces.

The Oregon Ducks’ annual spring game came and went this past weekend, and there are a million things to decipher from what we saw.

We’ve already given you our biggest takeaways, and an overall report card for each position group. I also told you my thoughts on QB Ty Thompson, and how after a rough start to the game, I was incredibly impressed at how he turned things around and had a nice outing.

We’ve got attendance numbers, a photo gallery, Twitter reactions, and a look back on how all of the recruits in town enjoyed the experience. One of the last things on the list of things to do in order to properly wrap up this spring scrimmage is to look at the stock report.

Throughout the regular season, the stock report is something we do after each week of the season, determining which players on the roster did the most to help or hurt their metaphorical stock price. Some call it winners or losers, but we put a different spin on it. Of course, it feels a bit strange to say anyone in the spring scrimmage saw their stock go down since it was a glorified practice with split up teams and may not be a perfect indication of what we see this coming season.

For example, neither RB Bucky Irving nor Noah Whittington put up impressive stats on Saturday, but that doesn’t mean either of them saw their stock go down. Rather, it shows that in the spring game, the coaching staff was more interested in getting reps for young guys.

With all of that being said, let’s get into it. Here are the players who impressed the most and saw their stock rise on Saturday:

Report Card: Defense looks improved while offense showed flashes at spring game

The defense passed with flying colors, while the offense showed some flashes on Saturday.

The Spring Game brought some interesting things to the forefront. Hopefully, for the Ducks’ sake, the high points will stick around for the season, while the handful of low points will be ironed out in the coming months.

We can start with the quarterback situation. Bo Nix is obviously the top guy on the depth chart, and he played well on Saturday, though the game didn’t call for many heroics from No. 10. Ty Thompson struggled mightily at the start of the game, but he eventually settled in and had a great second half that should give fans some confidence going forward. 

There were several highlights with some receivers, though. When they got the chance, Troy Franklin, Traeshon Holden, Kris Hutson, and Tez Johnson all made big plays and showed off their unique talents.

But Oregon fans should get used to what the Ducks showed them on Saturday as long as Dan Lanning is in Eugene. They saw a dominating defensive attack that snuffed out a good offense and very talented players on that side of the ball.

Here’s our official report card for the 2023 Spring Game.

Column: After familiar start, QB Ty Thompson showed growth at UO spring game

Ty Thompson was among the biggest winners of the day at the UO spring game. After a tough start, he settled in and came to play.

For the first 29 minutes and six seconds of game time on Saturday afternoon, things went about as poorly as they could have for Oregon Ducks redshirt sophomore quarterback Ty Thompson.

At the annual spring game with a chance to show his offseason improvement as the leader of the yellow team, Thompson completed just one of his first eight passes, and the single completion came on an underhand pitch that traveled less than a yard in the air. Things could have been worse, of course; of those eight pass attempts, three could have easily been intercepted. The very first play of the game was almost disastrous, with Thompson locking in on a running back flaring out to the right and throwing an ill-advised screen pass despite the fact that LB Mase Funa had jumped the route and was ready to take it for a TD the other way.

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Fortunately for Thompson — and every Oregon fan in the building who was desperate to see even a glimmer of hope from the Ducks’ former 4-star quarterback — the pass fell incomplete, and kept Thompson’s turnover record clean for the day.

The first four drives of the day for the yellow team were hard to watch. There were dropped passes, stuffed runs, and very little juice. With one final drive before the half, though, something flipped for Ty. Now in a position to run a one-minute offense and cobble together some stats before the break, Thompson showed something that we’ve never publicly seen inside Autzen Stadium: poise, confidence, and an ability to pick apart the defense.

“That’s football a little bit, right?” Dan Lanning said after the game. “You know, we had some bad balls early, some adversity early, didn’t complete some, some slow starts. And then to be able to get some shots there at the end, I think that was big.”

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The drive didn’t result in points, but QB13 had chunk yardage completions to Tez Johnson over the middle, Kyler Kasper down the sideline, and Kris Hutson over the middle, ultimately picking up 60 yards in 54 seconds.

What started out as a tough watch had quickly turned into an adequate performance from someone that looked to be settling into the position and getting comfortable in the pocket.

“I thought he played really good,” Bo Nix said after the game. “Ty’s just a very consistent guy. He’s not gonna get too high or too low. He’s gonna go to the next play and he’s gonna make the next play. He does a really good job in our offense of executing and I thought he showed that today. He made some incredible throws. He made some deep throws, touch throws, and some firm throws. I think he showed it all today.”

Going into Saturday, you could list Thompson among the players who arguably had the most to prove, and the most at stake.

That may seem odd to say about a backup quarterback who is not competing for a starting job this season, but with Bo Nix leaving after this year, the Ducks have a vacancy at the QB spot in 2024. Whether they will admit it or not, you can guarantee that Dan Lanning and Will Stein are already weighing their options, looking to see if the answer is on the roster already or if they will need to go back to the transfer portal well in order to find their future passer.

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That notion made Saturday a bit of an audition for Ty, and one that he’s gone through a few times at this point. As a true freshman, Thompson showed a few flashes in the spring game but was ultimately not impressive enough to beat out Anthony Brown for the starting gig. A year ago, Thompson was asked to go up against Nix in a QB competition, which in hindsight doesn’t feel like a fair fight.

There were a few times when Thompson could have put some confidence in the bank during the 2022 regular season, but after every time he left the field, fans were still lacking the confidence necessary to write his name down on the 2024 depth chart in anything but a very light pencil.

Saturday was going to be our last best opportunity to see what he could do.

Did I leave Autzen Stadium after the spring game feeling that the Ducks have a surefire difference-maker at the QB spot after Nix leaves? Not exactly. However, I left with an open mind about the possibility that Thompson can still be that guy, which feels notable considering that a couple of hours earlier I was ready to wrap up this whole experiment and start trying to figure out which passers at the Power 5 level might be unhappy with their situations and willing to enter the transfer portal following the 2023 season.

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Thompson has the benefit of more time on his side. By sticking around in Eugene this year and accepting the role of QB2 behind a Heisman Trophy candidate, he obtained the opportunity to continue his growth and development while biding his time.

Barring an injury to Nix this season — God forbid, knock on wood, throw a handful of salt over your shoulder — QB13 shouldn’t be seeing the field for any meaningful minutes until the calendar says 2024. It will then be at the annual spring game once again where we can dive into his abilities and assess whether or not he’s the man to lead the Ducks to a successful campaign.

Will he end up becoming the quarterback that Duck fans so desperately want him to be? I don’t know, it’s still too early to tell.

On Saturday afternoon, though, I left with an open mind about it, and the willingness to watch him continue to try.

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