Oregon’s veterans know the routine. Now they must set the tone.

For Kawika Rogers, so much of this has become routine.

Monday, Aug. 3 was his fifth media day with the Oregon Ducks, an event where he sits at a podium, is lightly grilled for 15 minutes and then goes about one of his last free afternoons before his fifth fall camp begins Wednesday.

He’ll once again be fighting for reps on a preseason top-10 Oregon team — the Ducks were ranked No. 2 in Tuesday’s coaches poll. He’ll play Ohio State again. He’ll see Michigan again. His team will ultimately be graded on what happens in January, again.

You’d forgive some of the Ducks if there was a feeling of déjà vu to all this, down to the star players being asked how they respond to the way the previous season ended.

“That day is in my past,” quarterback Dante Moore said of the Peach Bowl loss to Indiana. “I watched the film and learned from my mistakes. You have to move on. I don’t take it as a loss. I take it as a lesson.”

Rogers doesn’t get asked the same questions as often as Moore or his head coach, Dan Lanning, who described his fifth Oregon team as “hungry.”

Rogers has played 347 snaps over his four years, filling in at every position along the offensive line except center. He has yet to make a start.

He does know how to thrive when things begin to feel too familiar, though.

Like many Ducks before him, Rogers is from Hawaii. But unlike players such as Marcus Mariota, who played on O‘ahu with nearly 1 million residents to draw from, Rogers is from Kaua‘i. The oldest of the Hawaiian islands is home to about 73,000 people and four high schools.

Three of those schools have football teams, and the regular season of the Kauai Interscholastic Federation involves Kauai, Rogers’ Kapaa and Waimea playing each other repeatedly  — until the playoffs, when the league’s winner flies to Honolulu.

“Playing the same three teams over and over again, you kind of get to know every person you’re going against and their family — the island’s only so big,” said Rogers, a key piece on a 2021 Kapaa team that went 6-0 against its rivals before advancing off-island and winning the Division II state title. “I knew who I was playing every week. We would watch film and it was like, ‘OK, that’s my boy. I know his moves. Let’s do this.’

“Coming out here, you watch film on one team, then it’s on to the next week and it’s a whole new scheme, a whole new way to play, a whole new game plan. We’re just watching totally different people.”

The newness is something that has kept Rogers glued to his playbook and his focus locked in — a trait Lanning would like to see passed through osmosis in a locker room that keeps getting the “veteran” label.

Yes, the Ducks have a lot of familiar faces in 2026. The quarterback is back, the entire defensive line is back, and while the Ducks are replacing both coordinators, they did so with two coaches promoted from within.

“There’s experience, but talking to our team recently, I said, ‘Raise your hand if you’re new.’ There are still a lot of new faces in that room,” Lanning said. “So, it’s gonna be about that experience, and those young guys, and new guys leaning on the people that have been here before, on what it’s supposed to look like, and how it all plays out.’”

Rogers didn’t raise his hand. He’ll be one of the players expected to show the way. He’ll also be one of the veterans appreciating each game as it comes, down to the lights — because of rules designed to protect endangered birds attracted to them, night games were prohibited on Kaua‘i.

He once played at night on Maui, though.

“We tried to stay calm and relaxed, like it was just another game,” Rogers said. “Then the lights came on.”