Oregon football is now halfway through fall camp. With two and a half weeks until the Ducks play Southern Utah, the team enters an important stage of development. It’s either “push through” and improve or stay complacent with the status quo.
“Three weeks now and we’re kind of in hump week,” quarterbacks coach Marcus Arroyo said. “We’ve got to push through that. … This is a good week for teaching guys they have to grind through it.”
For young freshmen especially, this is the time to adjust from high school football to collegiate football in time for games
“They’re drinking through a firehose, but they’ve got to understand that we’re a young team and we’ve got some positions that need some depth,” Arroyo said. “We’ve magnified the focus as far as them understanding, ‘You’re young but if you want to play, you came here to play, we’re going to play the best guy regardless of their age.”
The Ducks have also spent weeks working on special teams, in which punters Blake Maimone and Adam Stack are vying for the starting spot.
“They are battling day-by-day and it’s close,” special teams coach Raymond Woodie said.
To the untrained eye, neither punter stood out from the other, but Woodie knows what he wants.
“Hang time and then obviously being able to directional punt,” he said. “When you put things together scheme-wise, you want the punter to be able to fit the coverage of the guys running down to cover.”
Who catches the punt is also still up in the air. It’s safe to assume that Charles Nelson will return most of the punts this season, but with him battling an injury, other guys are getting reps in practice.
Brenden Schooler, Jaylon Redd, Darrian McNeal and Darrian Felix look to be contenders for that spot right now.
“It is an organizational depth chart and we want to give those young guys a chance to show what they can do,” Woodie said. “If they can do it, they will be on it and if not, we will move them to a different spot.”
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