Fall camp has a natural progression. At the beginning, almost everything is possible. A young player can take a jump, a transfer can find a role nobody originally expected, an offensive lineman can work at multiple positions and a defensive back can move between corner and STAR. Coaches install enough scheme to discover what players can absorb, while position competitions remain legitimately open because nobody has accumulated enough evidence to close them.
Oregon spent most of the first two weeks living in that space. Saturday changed something, not because one scrimmage produced a finished depth chart, but because roughly 120 plays created the first substantial collection of game-like evidence Oregon has had this fall. Dan Lanning’s refusal to assess the offensive line before watching the film should prevent us from pretending otherwise, but he did give us the framework through which the staff intends to judge what happened.
“Are you accountable and are you capable?” Lanning said. “Do you do your job when you’re asked to do your job and are you capable of doing the job we ask you to do?”
Then came the consequence: “If you’re not, then you’re going to get limited reps. If you do, then you’ll continue to grow on this team.”
That makes this coming week considerably different from the one Oregon just completed. The Ducks are still developing players and experimenting with possibilities, but those possibilities are beginning to encounter evidence. Between now and Saturday’s second scrimmage, these are the three observations I will be following most closely.
Competition has probably been the most consistent theme of camp, and Drew Mehringer supplied
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