Ready to Bo

With their quarterback coming to a billboard near you, the Oregon Ducks are here to make a run through the Pac-12.

EUGENE — Bo Nix is ready, specifically, for the final media availability of his final fall camp as an Oregon Duck.

Feels like he just got here didn’t it? In an instant, the conversation has teleported from wondering whether he was really an upgrade of Anthony Brown Jr. to a point where Oregon fans keep checking the sky at night waiting to see the back of Nix’s jersey on the moon. 

Nix seems to embrace all of this. Not that he’ll outright say it. Like past Oregon greats, Nix isn’t one to shower himself in praises. He’s as earnest as Mariota. He’s as polite as Herbert. But unlike either of them, Nix seems, at the very least, comfortable in the spotlight — like now, as he strolls into the press scrum wearing a smile and ribbing media about whether they saw anything exciting in practice. 

Just some stretching. Hey Bo, what’s your favorite stretch? 

“That’s a great question,” he says. 

It’s called the A Skip — he’s been doing it since middle school, which was also one of the last few times college football fans didn’t know who he was.

Because since high school, Bo Nix has been: 

1. Bo Nix, the son of an Auburn Legend

2. Bo Nix, Mr. Alabama, the 5-star Recruit 

3. Bo Nix, the Auburn Savior 

4. Bo Nix, the Auburn Transfer

5. Bo Nix, Oregon?

6. Bo Billboard. 

The man — he was a year old when Oregon first pulled out the billboard stunt — has been football famous for a large portion of his life. And while he may not have the three-year stay that Mariota did here, nor have grown up down the street like Herbert, it’s beginning to feel more and more like the Nix/Oregon pairing has similar magic.

Hey Bo, what do you think of the billboards?

“Well,” he says, “Fall camp has been great.”

Then he smiles like this:

Then, a masterclass.

“We’ve really connected over the last few weeks. We’ve had a lot of players step up and fill roles. And a lot of vet guys that have been doing it a long time. And with that comes great things, like billboards…,” he says. “One time you’re on one side [of the story] and then you get to a school like Oregon and things can change and your story can change.”

Stories can change. This, Bo knows.

It’s why he’s enjoyed his final fall camp so much. It’s why he’s smiling during his cat-and-mouse approach to the billboard. Nix has been in college long enough to know that all of this is going to go by fast.

“Once it starts,” Nix says, “It’s on to the next week and it never quits.”

That is something his head coach, Dan Lanning, now understands. Throughout fall camp, Lanning’s focus has been on getting the Ducks ready for Week 1, Saturday against Portland State. Where Nix will indulge reporters’ open-ended questions, the second-year head coach has often swatted attempts down in the way he hopes his retooled Oregon secondary will follow.

The Ducks are No. 15 in the AP Preseason poll and coming off a season where the highs registered on par with anything from the past. The same could be said for the lows. Lanning is 10-3 as a head coach. He has losses to his rivals. He’s won a bowl game and earned a new contract that’ll pay him more than $7 million a year well into Oregon’s debut in the Big Ten.

No, he’s not going to let us know the depth chart before he has to. That hasn’t changed from a year ago. But other things, Lanning said, have.

“Just knowing what’s next, right?” Lanning said of his development from Year 1 to now. “Being prepared for the next moment, the next day. [Knowing] what we still need as a team. Being able to operate with that mentality.”

And to give the coach credit, he did crack the door slightly: He said the defense is tackling better. And the offense?

“Definitely executing at a high-level,” he said.

Which is to be expected for a team that returns the key components of a top-10 offense from 2022 (38.8 points per game) and adds key talent at receiver (Tez Johnson, Jurrion Dickey, Traeshon Holden, Gary Bryant Jr.), tight end (Casey Kelly) and reloaded along the line with four-and-five-star talent. There are a lot of moving pieces, though, considering the Ducks are operating the fall under new offensive coordinator Will Stein.

But it all comes back to Bo.

Since Stein’s December hiring from UTSA, Nix has spent countless hours behind the scenes getting on the same page as his new coach.

“There’s some life, there’s some what’s up with Izzy and Darby, our wives, and how’s my family,” Stein said. “‘What’s Joey doing? Is he in bed yet?’

“And then there’s the, ‘Ok, what are we doing on four verts today? Where’s the protection? Do we like how this formation is?’ He’s as much involved in this offense as anybody because I want him to feel extremely comfortable.”

And, frankly, he’s the one with the most on the line. Remember, it was this time a year ago that Nix threw a pair of picks in his Oregon debut, a 49-3 loss to Georgia, that turned him and Oregon into the butt of the joke until they steam-rolled through the rest of their schedule with an offense that played every bit as well as those commanded by Herbert, Adams, Mariota, Thomas, Dixon and Harrington.

Harrington, who graced a 10-story billboard across from Madison Square Garden 22 years ago, would know that pressure better than anyone else.

“Had we gone 6-5 that year,” Harrington said in a 2021 interview with Yogi Roth, “it would have been the most colossal flop, regarded as this giant waste of money. I can’t believe the audacity to do that. 

“But instead, we went 11-1.”

And that’s possible for the Ducks, especially when you read between the lines as Nix talks about the development of Oregon freshman quarterback Austin Novosad.

“He’s done a really good job on focusing on what he can control and staying positive,” Nix says. “…He’s very young. He’s a freshman and we don’t necessarily go against an easy defense every day as far as scheme and stuff. He’s having to see a lot. I was telling him the other day, I’d hate to be a freshman against this defense.”

Oregon’s defense is faster than it was a season ago. It’s healthier, more versatile and may finally have the front to do the type of damage that could bail the offense out from time to time. The Ducks, almost everywhere, are better.

Of course, it’s hard to illustrate all of that on a billboard.

So the national brand instead went with the national quarterback.

“They saw an opportunity,” Nix says, “and they went with it.”

It’s just a shame he might not make it out to New York until December.

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor