Every game you see the huge, human frames and the jerseys barely covering the bellies. Their arms covered with scrapes and bruises, their helmets scratched and beat down from the contact, the paint chipped with opposing players slamming into them.
Every snap looks almost the same: the ball gets snapped and then, wham, a human car crash.
After every big gain, it’s the running back that gets the most credit. Who in their right mind would want to be an offensive lineman?
They’re battering rams. They’re the biggest guys on the field.
They’re also the funniest, the tightest knit, the glue that keeps a team together.
Forty-eight hours before fall practice where Oregon players will drag each other to the ground and linemen will thud viciously into one another, there were plenty of laughs.
Wearing black shorts and polos adorned with an Oregon logo on the chest, offensive linemen made their way to their stations within Oregon’s Autzen Club. A usually tight-knit community of fans who can pay the prettiest penny for the nicest of amenities.
On Oregon media day, however, the club was home to Oregon’s offensive lineman, a gregarious group of the “tightest-knit” guys in the locker room.
“As an O-Line, naturally, we’re already real tight-knit,” Marcus Harper II said. “Now we kinda just do our thing. Whenever it’s a bus of O-Linemen we’re going to be some of the funniest people on the bus, we’re going to be one of the loudest groups. I think it’s all just an expression of what the team is through and through. We just happen to be one of the focal points of it and I think we just take that on.”
The football part, too, is paramount for the Ducks who notably lost Rimington Trophy-winning center Jackson Powers-Johnson (who was full of personality himself) last year to the NFL draft.
“Some of these guys, of course, are asking me about playing in the Big Ten,” Indiana University transfer Matthew Bedford, who spent nine minutes behind the mic talking about everything from kickball to how he keeps his energy high throughout the game, said.
Others however, could not quite replicate Bedford’s enthusiasm.
“I’m definitely not like Matt, I don’t know if I have energy like Matt,” lineman Ajani Cornelius said. “But I’ve got my own kind of swag, an east coast vibe. [I’m] definitely like the cool vet.”
The next time we see these lineman, they may be going toe-to-toe in the trenches, bashing heads and working in the trenches. After all, Oregon’s offensive line did allow just five sacks in all of 2024, a minuscule 0.36 sacks allowed per game. And there will be a time to criticize them, penalties will be called and sacks (probably more than five) will be allowed.
But Media Day was a great reminder of how in the unforgiving world of college football, where NIL dominates and the transfer portal reigns supreme. There was a group of some of the strongest men in the world talking about just how connected they feel.
“I’m like this all the time. That’s just my energy bro,” Bedford said. “I bring it every single play. I’m a huge proponent of if you’re not like that all the time then you don’t have to fake it. Fake energy is not really energy. It’s just who I am, the way my folks made me to be.
When asked if he would welcome the introduction of a burger — something Powers-Johnson had at Elk Horn Brewery — Harper II was sure to add that “I might need something bigger than a burger… like the Marcus Harper platter or something that highlights my many elements.”
It might not always result in wins — although Oregon only lost twice by a combined six points to the national runner-up, and is largely expected nationally to be even better. But having a tandem like the Ducks’ hard-hitting human frames is always a plus.
“I always say the offensive line group is one of the tightest groups on campus,” head coach Dan Lanning said. “But it’s clearly very tight here.”
Even Josh Conerly Jr. is considered the quiet one of the group, and even Bedford admits that “When Josh talks, we all listen.”
When the offensive linemen are at the podium, so do we.