Oregon’s second fall scrimmage is less about the scoreboard and more about whether the Ducks can tighten up the little things.
With the Sept. 5 opener against Boise State getting closer, Dan Lanning and his staff have spent the days after the first scrimmage drilling the issues that showed up on film. Saturday’s work gives them another chance to see whether those corrections are sticking.
For tight ends coach Jack Smith, the target is simple.
"I would love to see clean football," Smith said. "That's been something we've said around here for the last couple of years: Just play clean.
That's always what you want to do in these scrimmages. Play clean and come out healthy."
That doesn’t mean Oregon is ignoring the big plays. The Ducks want touchdowns and explosives, too. But Smith said all of that starts with players handling their jobs the right way.
"I hope we go out there and there's good back-and-forth from an entire team standpoint," Smith said. "But it boils down, in my mind, to us playing clean, doing our job and executing."
Wide receiver Jeremiah McClellan echoed that idea.
"I would say if we go out there, do our job, do our assignment and play fast, we should be just fine," McClellan said.
That speed of play was a specific point of emphasis after the first scrimmage. Lanning said Oregon had issues with tempo in some of those situations, and the staff responded by recreating those moments in practice.
"We struggled with tempo the other day in some of our scrimmage settings, so let's recreate that more in practice," Lanning said. "I think our ability to adapt and create drills that fit the skills we have to work on has been a strength for us in our program."
Saturday also serves as another chance to sort out the depth chart, especially at the skill spots where Oregon believes it has real competition for playing time.
At tight end, Smith said the group behind Jamari Johnson has continued to develop while learning a system that asks a lot from the position.
"We've gotten a lot better since those guys got here," Smith said. "We ask our dudes to do a lot within our system, and seeing the growth that's happened in that room with all of those guys has really been impressive to watch."
At receiver, Ross Douglas isn’t locking himself into a set number of players for the rotation. He wants the room to show who can be trusted to help the offense win.
"My goal every single season is to maximize every single player in the room," Douglas said. "I've always come into a season asking, 'How many players can I get as game-ready as possible?'
If that's three, then it's three. If it's six, then it's six.
If it's seven, then it's seven."
That evaluation goes beyond catches and touchdowns. Douglas wants to know what his receivers do when the ball isn’t coming their way, whether that’s blocking, carrying out assignments or helping create space for someone else.
"We're trying to eliminate bad football every day," Douglas said. "We just want to get better from scrimmage one to scrimmage two.
"How selfless can we be?"
To drive that home, Douglas has shown his players how infrequently even the best receivers actually touch the ball. He studied Ja'Marr Chase's Triple Crown season and found Chase played roughly 1,100 snaps while receiving 183 targets.
"That's a big mantra in our room: What impact are you making on the field when you do not have the football?" Douglas said.
"What is your impact in the run game? What is your impact on a route you might have to run to get somebody else open?"
The quarterbacks are under the microscope, too. Koa Ka'ai called the first scrimmage one of the better ones he has seen from that group in terms of decision-making, though Lanning said there is still room to grow.
"I thought there were good decisions made," Lanning said. "There were also some decisions that could have been better."
Oregon’s defense forced turnovers in that first scrimmage, but Lanning said some of those takeaways were tied more to mistakes elsewhere on offense than to poor quarterback reads.
"The quarterbacks did make good decisions," Lanning said. "We've got to speed up the process at times with the QB, and the defense has been attacking the ball well."
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