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QuickTake:
Oregon’s 5-star recruit Gatlin Bair is back on the field — with a quarterback and supporting cast capable of unlocking his track-star speed.
When Cameron Andersen watches Gatlin Bair run onto the field for Oregon’s spring game Saturday, he won’t just be watching the fastest player he’s ever coached.
He’ll be watching the version of Bair that he, as head coach of Burley High School, could never fully develop.
“If I had a Dante Moore,” Andersen said, “I think we could have done a lot more things with him.”
Granted, Bair did plenty in his time at Burley.
Two years ago, Bair committed to Oregon as one of the fastest recruits in college football. He was a three-time Idaho all-state selection in football and earned Boys Track & Field Player of the Year honors as a junior after running 10.15 in the 100 meters — the fifth-fastest prep time in the country in 2023.
“He runs angry,” Andersen said. “If you watch him run, he looks pissed off at the world.”
Everything Bair does is fast — Andersen said they laser-timed Bair once at 4.11 in the 40. It’s what has made his collegiate debut such a contrast.
While Bair’s fellow 5-star peers joined college rosters in the spring and fall of 2024, Bair was heading to Dallas to serve a two-year mission with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Oregon’s 15 practices this spring were Bair’s first time back on the field, in an organized way, since finishing his Burley career with six catches for 123 yards and a pair of touchdowns in an October 2023 playoff loss to Bishop Kelly High School of Boise.
He graduated high school early that December and began his mission, allowing him to join the Ducks this spring as opposed to just before the season in the fall.
And while Bair has yet to speak with the media, so far, two things are clear.
“Gatlin’s really fast. Like, that’s not a secret. He’s got the track times to prove it,” Oregon offensive coordinator Drew Mehringer said. “There’s definitely some rust that has to get knocked off for him … But does he show a lot of very exciting things? Yeah.
“I mean, he didn’t forget how to run, you know? He can definitely do that.”
It was no surprise to Andersen that Bair came back to the field looking to make up for lost time. Andersen said that thanks to “divine intervention,” Bair was able to serve his mission in Dallas, where he had more access to training than he might have had elsewhere. And while some athletes might have viewed a two-year pause on a promising football career as an obstacle, well, that’s not Bair, Andersen said.
“The mission thing was always going to happen. It’s been one of his goals for his whole life,” Andersen said. “He has an acute ability to not see the sacrifices that are involved with commitment as sacrifices. The kid just doesn’t see burdens. He sees blessings.”
And at Oregon, he’s going to see far less triple-team coverage.
That’s the blessing and curse of being a generational football talent in a place not known for them. Burley isn’t a football hotbed. It’s had an athlete here and there, but the town in southern Idaho is far more known for its smooth waters along the Snake River and its boating regattas. Opposing defenses threw everything at Bair, and Andersen didn’t exactly have the depth to prevent it. They prayed for the rare instances when Bair got single coverage.
“There were a lot of things we couldn’t do with him,” Andersen said. “I mean, running a 10.15, on a football field, in order to throw him some deep vertical concepts that Oregon will throw, we had to be able to protect for a very long time. We had to have other elite receivers to pull the coverage. We had to have a quarterback that could get it there.”
Oregon has a former 5-star quarterback in Moore. The Ducks also have Dakorien Moore and Evan Stewart, two receivers who could certainly hang with Bair in a foot race. And while everything with Bair is fast, that depth allows Oregon the luxury of time.
“He hasn’t played football for two years, but football is a game of repetition,” Oregon receivers coach Ross Douglas said. “So the more you play it, the better you get at it. So just continue to get him practice reps and really forge him in a fire, like just learning on the fly and making mistakes, getting corrected and not making the same mistakes again.
“It’s just really been a good process with Gatlin. I like where he’s at and just excited to continue to work with him.”
On the other end, Andersen misses his time with the receiver. Andersen is in his sixth year since beginning a full rebuild of Burley, a process that may have seemed a little further along than it truly was with Bair on the roster.
“We’re a very young team,” he said. “Gatlin masked a lot of things.”
Athletes like that don’t just come around Burley every year. They don’t come around most places.
“Gatlin is a generational talent at any school,” Andersen said. “He carried us a long ways. He’s a floor raiser.”
