After nine months of high hopes and dreams of grandeur, Dillon Gabriel, Oregon’s new quarterback, sat inside Oregon’s Autzen Club, seconds away from yet another confirmation that the start of a new chapter was here.
With a whirlwind five years of college football firmly in his rearview, he turned his focus to leading another new team with the No. 2 transfer class — a movement that Gabriel himself spearheaded. The foundation of a new expectation had taken hold, and what could be Oregon’s most talented team in the Dan Lanning era was finally ready for Fall camp.
Any angst that filled the 5’11” quarterback addressing a lofty media contingent on Media Day soon gave way to something that the 23-year-old Gabriel is well-polished at: talking.
“Success for me looks like focusing on the little details,” Gabriel said. “As we focus on that one week approach, even one day, we all know if we put this thing together the right way we will be right where we want to be. If we keep stacking those things up, we will be right where we want to be and be playing on that certain date we want to be playing on.”
Gabriel’s words set the stage perfectly for what was to come, but in so many ways it was what fans had grown accustomed to seeing from Oregon in recent years.
On top of Gabriel’s prowess, Lanning, the man who recruited him, is even more of a known entity, with plenty of experience and the Ducks’ first 12-win season since 2019 under his belt.
And on media day, Oregon’s seemingly-official start of its Big-Ten tenure, there was no massive blowup duck — a spectacle that greeted fans by appearing in true Ducks’ fashion on Indianapolis White River at Big Ten Media Day — and little pizazz from the team. But with a media-trained group of players and a post-conference lunch, there was plenty of substance that enveloped the four stanchions the players sat at.
“My plan for the day is to avoid giving you guys any bulletin board material,” Oregon head coach Dan Lanning said in his opening remarks during media day.
In that regard, Lanning was successful, resonating confidence while being sure not to overly divulge. That same moxy resonated at Oregon’s Media Day with Gabriel, who for one day more than lived up to the heavy expectations placed upon his shoulders since his transfer from The University of Oklahoma in the offseason.
It was no surprise that Oregon’s quarterback deflected talk about the Heisman Trophy but later lit up at the thought of competing for a National Championship.
After all, that’s the Ducks’ goal. Not for the future, but for now.
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The clichés of course, were abundant.
Has Terrance Ferguson seen a team work this hard in the offseason? Never.
Has Matthew Bedford been a part of a more tight-knit offensive line group? Nope.
And does Tez Johnson think there’s a better wide receiver corps in the country? Of course not.
Still, those ever-present words can’t fully mask that everywhere inside the Autzen stratosphere sat reminders of how much his circumstances had changed since last season. New coaches, new players and new logos. New everything.
It wasn’t just the new conference and all its new fixings, though. The landscape of college athletics has been upended since Oregon beat Liberty University in the Fiesta Bowl in January.
Within the Ducks’ own roster, so much has turned over, too. Gabriel, a new running backs coach, a new defensive scheme and a new, stiffer schedule to handle, all with a BIG payday from the conference’s media deals on the horizon.
Amid all the new and unfamiliar that the Big Ten will bring, the message from Lanning at the start of his third season at Oregon was, by now, rather predictable.
“The next four weeks of preparation are about us, and becoming the best possible team we can.” Lanning said.
Lanning understands Oregon’s branding, once again flaunting the strength that is Oregon’s marketing team.
In that same breath, he was sure to add that Oregon is “far away from where we want to be.”
But above all, Lanning talked for nearly two minutes about the type of competition Oregon has awaiting for it. That is, afterall, the biggest theme underscoring all of the hooplah and prestige.
“I’m just as excited to see these position battles as you guys are,” Lanning said. “I don’t really know if there’s one position where I go ‘we got to go find out who that guy is [because] that’s every position. We have depth and we have talent and we will see who rises to the top.”
The top, of course, is also where the Ducks’ new opponents reside. And — despite Oregon’s roster insisting that they’ve “played like a Big Ten team for a while” — there will undoubtedly be an adjustment period.
“Some of these guys, of course, are asking me about playing in the Big Ten,” Bedford, who played in the Big Ten at Indiana, said.
But Oregon can compete with these guys now. The Ducks are no longer a program built to peak and then bottom out. They lost their quarterback, leading receiver, leading rusher, best offensive lineman, sack leader, interception leader and are still widely expected to be better. Last year’s 12-win season will inevitably also go down as a disappointment in Lanning and co’s eyes.
And even when asked about future renovations for the university’s facilities, the predictably tight-lipped Lanning even made sure to mention that he certainly won’t divulge anything the media isn’t supposed to know.
So remember, amid the new logos and flash within Lanning’s football program, the standard — toward everything — is the same.
The roster is set. The team is ready. Last summers’ talks of potential conference realignments have shifted to shocking reality, but Lanning has aligned his Ducks to be right where they need to be: in a spot to make a BIG splash.