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.