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Welcome to The I-5 Corridor’s fifth year of Oregon Ducks coverage
The Oregon Ducks kicked off the 2025 football season on Monday with their annual media day. While fall camp officially begins on Wednesday, here are 10 things The I-5 Corridor learned about the latest installment of Ducks.
Isaiah World is aptly named
At first glance, Isaiah World isn’t all that imposing. Oregon’s new offensive lineman has a big laugh and it was a treat to listen to him earnestly answer a question on Monday about why his peers have identified him as one of the team’s biggest personalities.
“I’m just happy,” said World, a three-year starter at Nevada who transferred to Oregon in the offseason. “I’m grateful for this position I’m in. That comes with whatever shenanigans — I try to be, I don’t know, as fun as possible. I don’t like to have the same stoic demeanor. I just like bringing happiness and joy.”
World seemed a little nervous at times speaking to the 20 or so reporters that attended his session, rubbing his massive hands under the table and taking his time to find the right wording.
But then he stood up.
There’s been an evolution of bodies at Oregon, something that began under Mario Cristobal and has continued here in Dan Lanning’s fourth year. And it’s always something to write down 6-foot-8 and 310 pounds in the offseason when these players are just names and those are just numbers. But 6-foot-8 and 310 pounds with a barrel chest in a room full of sports writers is quite the sight in person.
I’ve never seen anyone quite like World.
He looks like an NFL defensive end, but bigger. He looks like if Penei Sewell grew two inches, then spent every free minute off the field pumping iron. He looks like if Zion Williamson got in shape.
It makes sense now that the San Diego native has seen his name rocket up 2026 mock drafts: there’s a whole lot there for a future NFL team to work with. Part of why World said he came to Oregon was to push himself everywhere else.
“I just love the way Coach [A’lique] Terry approaches everything,” World said. “He makes you want to learn about football.”
Bear Alexander has never seen a bear
Not up close anyway — there aren’t that many roaming around where Oregon’s new defensive tackle grew up in Texas.
“It came from my father,” said Alexander, whose legal name is Keithian. “It was my father’s nickname so they just kinda threw it on me.”
Alexander is 6-foot-3, 310 pounds and now lives in a state that’s home to the American Black bear, which can weigh between 200 to 600 pounds and stands anywhere between 5 to 7 feet on its hind legs.
Bear Alexander is 6-foot-3 and 310 pounds. Throw on pads and a helmet and I’d take the USC-transfer over Smokey in the Oklahoma drill.
“He’s worked his tail off since he’s been here,” Dan Lanning said. “He’s been a pleasure to coach.”
Oregon’s corners have a new look
Oregon lost its top three cornerbacks from last season.
But maybe hold on to your predictions that Oregon’s secondary is about to take a step back.
Take it from Jahlil Florence, who started nine games for the Ducks in 2023, missed 2024 due to injury and returns in 2025 as a projected starter.
“I’d say you can keep your eyebrows raised,” Florence said. “We got a game coming up and you guys will be able to see for yourself what the group has. I feel like if you look at the groups — and I don’t really want to compare — but just look at the athletic abilities and the size and the differences in the speeds just based off the last group we just had and the group we have this year. All we got to do is play and I feel that’ll prove everybody and answer everybody’s questions that they have.”
The size of Oregon’s cornerbacks was a hot topic at media day. Florence is 6-foot-2, redshirt freshman standout Ify Obidegwu is 6-foot-2, junior Sione Laulea is 6-foot-4, redshirt freshman Dakoda Fields is 6-foot-2 and neither of the two transfer corners the Ducks acquired are shorter than 5-foot-10.
None of the corners Oregon lost from 2024 were taller than 5-foot-10.
“Those guys are super quick and change direction and they were all vets,” Florence said of last year’s team. “But with us, we got about four or five guys in our group that are above 6-2 or so, and we’re all fast and long. With that, it’s so hard for quarterbacks to be able to throw the ball deep and complete passes over our heads. I feel like we got a super aggressive group.”
James Ferguson-Reynolds needs a TiVo
Lanning wanted to add a punter after the spring game. Boiste State transfer James Ferguson-Reynolds turned out to be the answer — with the Ducks nabbing the 2023 third-team All-American who averaged 45.53 yards on 43 punts last year for the Broncos.
Ferguson-Reynolds is from Geelong, Australia and is a former Aussie Rules football player. He said one of the hardest adjustments of playing American football here in the States isn’t the actual game, it’s finding a reasonable hour to catch up on his Geelong Cats of the AFL.
“They’re a really good team and they’re doing really well, but I think I’ve watched maybe five to 10 games if that,” Ferguson-Reynolds said. “They have 24 regular-season games and they’re always at 3 a.m. and workouts are at six, so that’s probably not ideal to get up and watch.”
Becoming someone wasn’t easy for Charlie Pickard
Life was pretty easy for Charlie Pickard before Week 1 last season. The Portland native was playing for his home-state Ducks, and while his standing on the depth chart was rising in his fourth year with the team, to that point he had enjoyed a collegiate football career of relative anonymity.
But when Matthew Bedford suffered a preseason injury, Pickard was thrown into the deep end as the line shuffled around and Pickard found himself starting at center against Idaho in Week 1 and Boise State in Week 2.
While both wins, the two games saw Oregon’s offensive line struggle before the Ducks shifted Pancho Laloulu to center in Week 3.
“I’ll be honest with you, it’s difficult at the beginning going from being a guy that’s kind of in the background here for the first three years and then all of a sudden having the attention and the spotlight on me,” Pickard said. “My belief in myself even wavered at times during that couple week stretch, it was, ‘Oh, am I really ready for this?’ But leaning on the guys around me…They’re the ones that see the work that I’m putting in. They’re the ones that have been here at the highest and lowest points. They know what it really takes and what I’m capable of. I love those guys and I trust those guys. So yeah, it was a huge shift and something I had to deal with and work with through and I’m capable of.”
Luke Basso is still the best interview on the team
Well, the Oregon folks sure put me in a pickle.
When I arrived at Autzen Stadium, I had a handful of people ask me what I had prepared for Luke Basso, who was my favorite conversation from last year’s media day. It seems my affinity for specialists has developed a bit of a reputation.
But two things:
1. I’ll be completely honest — I thought Basso graduated.
2. They brought him out at the same time as Dante Moore, who you may have heard is in a battle for the team’s starting quarterback position.
Here was Moore’s group:
Across the room, there were two people at Basso’s table. And I think by now you’ve read me long enough to know which direction I headed.
So here’s Luke Basso on his highlight reel, Moore, the trick plays Oregon never ran and the state of Oregon’s athletic facilities.
Some traditions never change
What’s the line from Phil Knight? Something about tradition eating turkey on Thanksgiving?
No, there’s not much at Oregon that’s left sacred in its ever-advancing quest to be on the cutting edge. But there is one thing that has stood the test of time in Eugene — or at least the 12 times I’ve been to media day — if you tell a bunch of reporters that Hawaiian food will be served after interviews, you’re going to get every single one of them to stick around.
My goal of not putting on any weight this season is off to a challenging start.
Dan Lanning: Big fan of anxiety
I found it interesting what Lanning said about a coach’s responsibility for getting the team ready to climb back up the mountain.
“Everything in football is about learning different ways to say the same thing over and over again,” Lanning said, “to make sure it’s interesting and exciting for your team.”
And if they can’t make it interesting, they can at least ratchet up the anxiety levels.
With another offseason of portal additions, coupled with a series of strong recruiting classes that have stacked upon each other, Oregon’s fall camp may be the most competitive in Lanning’s tenure when it comes to competing for jobs. But there is going to be a lot of unproven on the field come Week 1 for the Ducks.
At least unproven in the public’s eye.
“Competition anxiety and a lack of confidence, that’s why people fail,” Lanning said. “So our goal within fall camp is, How can we create the same anxiety we have on game day? How can we make practice look as much as possible like a game? How can we build confidence in what guys do well? That’s part of our job as coaches. It’s about having belief in players that the next play is the most important play.”
Austin Novosad can draw a crowd, too
I did make it over to the redshirt sophomore quarterback’s availability, who said he spent some time during the most important offseason of his career back home in Dripping Springs, Texas and in California getting workouts in.
He said he ate some pretty good steaks while he was away.
“Little surf and turf, here and there,” the 6-foot-3, 205-pounder said. “Medium-rare, all day long.”
That was one of the few times Novosad got to talk about anything other than the task ahead of him. While Moore appears to be the front-runner, Oregon coaches have called the competition to replace Dillon Gabriel wide open as practice gets underway this week. Novosad said his best chance is to stick with what’s been working for him already.
“Like Coach Lanning says, ‘Just one day at at time. Get that one percent better,’” Novosad said. “That’s how we view it in the QB room.”
A dozen trips around the block
Had my wife, Ali, take a picture yesterday before I embarked on my 12th trip down to Eugene for Ducks’ media day.
Those numbers tripped me out a bit when I started thinking of them. At my first Ducks media day in 2014, I wrote about how Bralon Addison was handling his season-ending knee injury. I also wrote that B.J. Kelly thought he was a faster runner than Devon Allen.1 Over the years, I’ve written about Aidan Schneider sneaking in naps on the back couches, about Dawson Jaramillo’s mullet and have awkwardly appeared in more than enough “first day of camp” videos with Andrew Greif that show up way too high in our Google search results.
Speaking of Greif: I was going to do a Vlog sort of video from yesterday’s media day, and sent Andrew this test intro as I rode the escalator up to the club level:
He thought it was funny. He also had some advice: Remember, “you have someone’s dream gig.”
I do. And I agreed, self-deprecation was probably not the right tone to set considering how I actually feel.
While I’ll crack jokes sometimes about not recognizing many of the younger media members in the room, or complain about how access used to be, or how that new Mazda 3 I bought in 2017 somehow has 150,000 miles on it, the thing that stuck with me yesterday was that it was the start of my fifth season covering the Ducks with The I-5 Corridor.
I started this thing up in 2021 as an impulse, survived some very thin years where I’m very grateful for Ali’s2 support as a nurse over at Providence, and have somehow managed to build this thing into my primary form of income.
I get to write the stories that interest me. I’m fortunate that often intersects with things that resonate with you all, too. The I-5 Corridor is nothing without its subscribers. We’ll hit 1,000 paid subscribers in August, there’s more than 4,500 of you who signed up for free and I’ve been over the moon about the continued growth of the Traffic Report and how much better Justin Myers has made me on the mic.
It really is a dream gig. And I can’t wait to tell you this season’s stories.
— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor
They’re not all bangers.
It’s her birthday today. Let’s get some happy birthdays in the comments, eh?
