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Can Ty Thompson beat out Bo Nix? Will the Ducks return to the Pac-12 title game? Can the author write a whole section comparing Noah Sewell and Justin Flowe to Disney characters? Yes.
EUGENE — Oregon’s roster isn’t settled and neither is new Oregon coach Dan Lanning. Still, it’s January and we’re in the business of making predictions that will almost assuredly come back to bite us.
With that, here are 10 for Oregon football in 2022:
1. Ty Thompson will win the starting quarterback job
Bo Nix is probably the front-runner, no? The incoming three-year starter at Auburn is a former five-star recruit and has a handful of big wins under his belt. He won his debut against Justin Herbert and Oregon in 2019, took down No. 5 Alabama that same year and finished his run at Auburn with 39 touchdown passes and 16 interceptions. There’s an ocean of experience between him and the rest of the quarterbacks on Oregon’s roster and Nix is paired again with offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham, who held that position at Auburn when Nix was named the SEC’s 2019 freshman of the year.
At the very least, that presents Oregon with a high floor. Nix’s experience, paired with better skill players than he played with at Auburn, should conceivably lead to favorable results.
But that was also the extent of the argument for Anthony Brown Jr. in 2021. And while that was good enough for Oregon to reach the Pac-12 championship game and for Brown to lead the conference in total offense, it was also a situation that routinely left fans and some teammates frustrated with his inconsistencies.
Thompson, a true freshman in 2021, was Brown’s backup and had an unmemorable 15 attempts in garbage time. And despite Thompson’s own touted background as a recruit — he was the No. 40 player in the 2021 class — Cristobal didn’t see him as ready, or a better option than Brown.1
It’s not a huge vote of confidence that Lanning’s first move as head coach was to bring in a transfer quarterback. And it doesn’t designate Thompson as a bust, either, if as a redshirt freshman he’s beaten out by a three-year SEC starter.
But I don’t think that’s going to happen.
1. Thompson is one of the most physically impressive players I’ve seen in person. He’s 6-foot-4 and 223 pounds with Royce Freeman-like arms and can flat-out move.
2. He’s always figured it out in the past.
You can go back to his high school days in Gilbert, Ariz., where he developed a reputation as one of the state’s most dangerous players in the fourth quarter. Sometimes it took a bit for the game to come to him, but once it did, he was nearly unstoppable.
I think we’re going to see that starting with Thompson this spring.
2. The Ducks will lose to Georgia and look fine in doing so.
The Ducks aren’t going to beat Georgia. But they’ll put up enough of a fight in Dan Lanning’s first game as a head coach that Oregon fans will come away from Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta feeling positive about the start of the new era. The Ducks will struggle to score against Georgia — even with the Bulldogs losing six starters from its national championship defense — but Oregon’s own front-seven will look formidable on a big stage with the return of Brandon Dorlus and Popo Aumavae, and the addition of transfer Sam Taimani to the defensive line.
3. Troy Franklin emerges as THAT guy
Johnny Johnson III and Jaylon Redd are gone. Devon Williams left early for the NFL Draft and former four-star recruit Mycah Pittman left midseason for the transfer portal.
Six months ago, the route for Troy Franklin and Dont’e Thornton to make an immediate impact at Oregon was challenged more by teammates than their ability to adjust to the college game. Those roadblocks are now gone, and while both players should thrive — Thornton’s first catch of the season was a 66-yard touchdown and his last catch of the season was a 54-yard touchdown — it’s going to be Franklin carving out a role as the best player on Oregon’s offense.
The No. 3 receiver in the 2021 class had his moments as a freshman — he caught 18 passes for 209 yards and two touchdowns — and should be the team’s No. 1 option in 2022. Give him a quarterback who can deliver a consistent ball and Franklin is going to make some highlight-reel catches over the next two years that few receivers at Oregon have hauled in before.
4. Byron Cardwell Jr. rushes for 1,200 yards
To be clear: Seven McGee and Sean Dollars are going to get their carries. Oregon coach Dan Lanning wouldn’t have talked both players into returning from the transfer portal if that wasn’t the case. But with Travis Dye off to USC and CJ Verdell leaving for the NFL, there’s a clear opening for a new No. 1 back in Eugene.
Byron Cardwell be thy name.
He showed flashes of speed and power as a true freshman, rushing for 417 yards on 61 carries with three touchdowns. He’s got prototypical running back size at 6-foot and 210 pounds, and is a more complete back than other options on the roster. With four starters returning on the offensive line, the Ducks are going to run, and Cardwell should flirt with eclipsing the career-best 1,271 yards Dye put up in 2021.
5. Oregon’s passing defense takes a step back
You can…
1. Believe Oregon’s defense is in a better overall place with Lanning at the helm and…
2. Also believe that its biggest positional strength from 2021 will suffer.
Oregon has led the Pac-12 in interceptions two times in the last three seasons, picking off 20 passes in 2019 and 17 in 2021. And while Oregon’s secondary will get a healthy Bennett Williams back at Nickel, and the transfer of Colorado two-year starting cornerback Christian Gonzalez adds depth to a position that needs it, you can’t simply lose Jevon Holland, Brady Breeze, Thomas Graham Jr., Deommodore Lenoir, Verone McKinley III, Nick Pickett and DJ James from your secondary over a three-year period and come out better on the other side.
Fortunately….
6. Justin Flowe and Noah Sewell will put in one of the best one-two punch seasons in Oregon history.
Most remember Team USA’s win over Iceland in the 1994 Junior Goodwill Games for other things —
Adam Banks’ dramatic return from wrist injury. The Knucklepuck to force overtime. Julie “The Cat” Gaffney’s glove save on Gunnar Stahl’s patented triple deke in the shootout. We are the Champions around a Minnesota camp fire in the summer.
But none of that happens without the help of Fulton Reed and Dean Portman fighting the entire opposing bench to sway momentum for the good guys. Before the Bash Brothers made their stand, Iceland and its coach, Wolf “The Dentist” Stansson, physically intimated the Duc…err…Americans.
After the Bash Brothers?
The two teams stood on equal footing.
Anyway, Noah Sewell is a stud and Justin Flowe is finally going to be healthy. And when that happens, I feel sorry for anyone going against the toughest duo since Disney’s brought in $45.6 million at the box office.
7. Jackson Powers-Johnson becomes a fan favorite
Powers-Johnson was the surprise standout from the 2021 recruiting class, playing in 10 games on the interior of Oregon’s offensive line and having enough versatility to shift to defense for the Alamo Bowl.
“He’s the definition of a football player,” Oregon center Alex Forsyth said. “He loves to play the game. You know when you throw him out there he’s going to be physical, he’s going to get after it and that’s just what he’s done.”
Powers-Johnson is an engaging Twitter follow — as are his parents — and it wouldn’t surprise me if, between his work ethic and personality, he starts to develop a bit of a following similar to former Oregon tackle Tyler Johnstone’s time in Eugene.
If you never saw Moose Time, well, here’s a treat of a video that includes an all-time awkward Marcus Mariota interaction.
8. The Ducks reach the Pac-12 title
The I-5 Corridor isn’t ready to call the conference title, but the instability of the North division at least allows us to make a call on who will get there.
Yes, Oregon has a new coach, quarterback and will be revamping much of its defense. But we wrote ad nauseam about recruiting the last four years for a reason: The Ducks have depth.
Washington went 4-8 and has a new coach. Washington State has a new coach and a quarterback who transferred to Arizona. Oregon State is replacing most of its offensive line and playing its home games in front of a maximum of 26,000 people as Reser Stadium undergoes renovation. Stanford is 11-19 the last three seasons and Cal hasn’t had a normal season since 2019.
This Oregon team might not be ready to compete for a Playoff spot in 2022, but that doesn’t mean the Ducks have to take a step back while Lanning gets his toes wet as a head coach.
9. The Washington rivalry loses some heat for now
In the two years before Cristobal took over, Washington outscored Oregon 108-24. It was an embarrassing stretch for the Ducks, one that Cristobal seemed to take personally as he went about his vengeance against the team from up North. The Ducks went 3-0 against the Huskies under Cristobal, with the coach signing off from the rivalry after a 26-16 November win in Seattle through Kayvon Thibodeaux’s Instagram Live.
“Those guys right there,” Cristobal said, “they represent everything that’s wrong with football.”
That quote originally included a big-ol’ F-bomb, but Tuesday is too early in the week to post a story conveying a coach’s true distain for a rival verbatim.
But with new coaches at both schools and a growing power down South with USC, I see this being a rare period of peace between Ducks and Huskies. Of course, all it takes is one quote about academics to get it all going once again.
10. Camden LeGoat
A year after his career was left for dead, Camden Lewis hit 13 of 16 field goal attempts in 2021. More impressive were the five kicks he converted from more than 40 yards away. Once the most disdained player by the fanbase on the roster, Lewis managed one of the more improbable career turnarounds we’ve seen at Oregon by landing on the Pac-12’s second-team postseason roster.
And in 2022, Lewis will become Oregon’s first kicker to be named to the Pac-12’s first-team since Aidan Schneider in 2015.
— Tyson Alger
Maybe the usage of Brown vs. Thompson is viewed differently now, knowing that Cristobal was positioning himself for a job in Miami. I don’t know.
