Gatlin Bair’s return to football has been less about shaking off the dust and more about catching up to the speed of the game - and, by all accounts, he’s doing it fast.
After a two-year break from the sport, the Oregon receiver is finally starting to look like the elite athlete the Ducks signed out of high school. Teammate Jeremiah McClellan said Friday that Bair’s early camp work was all about rediscovering football, but that the process has started to flip in his favor.
"I would say early on he would tell you that he was still getting back into it and things like that. He hadn't really been playing football.
Now, he's playing football. He's being a football player," McClellan said.
"The offense is starting to slow down for him. He's starting to know what he's doing in all of his assignments.
He's really growing right now, and he has to keep growing."
That progress has been a long time coming. A two-year LDS mission kept Bair away from the field, and when he arrived for spring ball, the adjustment was obvious.
Ross Douglas, his position coach, said the early stretch was about getting his body and mind back into football mode. But Douglas also made clear that Bair has been trending the right way since the moment he got to campus.
"Football is one of the only few games, not basketball where you play 82 games, or the MLB where you play 162, where you're going to practice way more than you play," Douglas explained. "I think you learn by doing and I believe in forging people through the fire.
"Gatlin got here in the spring, and ever since he stepped foot on campus, he's gotten better every single day."
Douglas said those first practices came with some growing pains as Bair worked through what it felt like to move like a football player again. Now, though, the coach says the learning curve is paying off.
The athletic tools have never been in question. Bair, who ran 10.15 in the 100 meters as a high schooler, has been turning heads with his straight-line speed since he arrived. McClellan said Bair reached 24 miles per hour during speed training earlier this month, a number that made him do a double take.
"I hit 23.3 [miles per hour] that day and Gatlin hit 24 miles per hour, and I was like 'Whoa'," he shared. "Gatlin was sliding.
He was definitely sliding that day. His knees were picking up really fast."
Douglas said those kinds of flashes aren’t rare.
"He's big. He's fast.
He can jump. There's not much he can't do athletically.
You definitely see it every single day. He's one of the best athletes on our team.
He's in really good condition so he can uphold that athleticism for a very long time and repeat those efforts," he explained. "It's incredible to see."
Bair came to Oregon as a 5-star recruit and the No. 27 overall player in the 2024 class. The Burley, Ida. native signed with the Ducks out of high school, then chose to serve his mission before joining the team in January for postseason preparation practices. Now he’s working toward a spot in this year’s receiver rotation.
Oregon began its third week of fall camp Monday morning. Practices are closed, but the Ducks will have media availability with coaches and players after practice on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, plus an interview with Lanning after Saturday’s second and final scrimmage of camp.
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