Wednesday was a good day for the Oregon football program. The Ducks inked 20 of the nation’s best recruits and did so with “no drama”, as Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal put it.
The Ducks addressed a lot in the class — which ranks sixth nationally and first in the Pac-12, per 247Sports. The biggest haul took place on offense. Oregon added four-star recruits at quarterback, running back, wide receiver (three of them), offensive line (four) and tight end (two). They also added some elite defensive players at all three levels too — five in total.
“Overall, just an awesome, awesome National Signing Day and still some more room to get an even bigger class,” Oregon coach Mario Cristobal told media members on Wednesday evening.
As Cristobal acknowledged, the Ducks have scholarships remaining to continue adding to this class. It will likely wind up even better. In total, Oregon has between three and five scholarships remaining to work with this cycle.
Four-star linebacker Jonathan Flowe, Justin’s younger brother, is a verbal commitment who will hold off signing until his academics are in order. He is expected to take up one of them. Oregon also saw JUCO corner Jadarrius Perkins open up his recruitment just before signing day. He will announce his decision on Christmas, and the Ducks aren’t totally out for him either.
How might they use that additional space?
Cristobal identified three areas of the team he suggested could use more bodies. Those are edge defensive players, offensive and defensive linemen and players in the defensive secondary.
“We want to be the most dynamic in the country on the edge. We also want to always invest in the lines if we can,” he explained during his 20-minutes press conference. “We really thinned out at certain positions on the back-end. Certainly earlier in the year we were. We want to bolster it.”
But the Ducks also have the luxury of approaching the remaining scholarships from a different perspective. Having already addressed every position on the team (aside from quarterback and running back) a few times over, there is now room to simply look at it as a take the best player regardless of position proposition, he stated.
“There’s also a best available aspect to this,” he explained. “We feel good at certain positions, at other ones it’s almost like ‘OK, we have room if he is elite, if he will be a guy who will find a way to play regardless’.”
The Ducks also aren’t limited in their mode of acquisition. While the current 20-player class features high school star recruits, Cristobal didn’t rule out adding players from a variety of different means to fill out the additions.
“There are a lot of possibilities coming up with the one-year rule coming into affect, grad transfers coming up. There’s a lot. We still have spots available,” he started. “We will have between all the different avenues: grad transfer, transfer portal and guys that we are still recruiting. I mean overseas recruiting has picked up a bunch now. Heck, Henry Katleman is a soccer player who came over and played football. You just never know.
“But certainly we are searching always for the best available talent.”
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The post “Cristobal explains how Ducks might use remaining scholarships” Was originally published on 247sports.com
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