No. 5 Oregon football is one of four teams left in the College Football Playoff. It shut out No. 4-seed Texas Tech University in the Orange Bowl, after boatracing No. 12-seed James Madison University at home. It boasts four true freshmen playing significant snaps, a redshirt sophomore quarterback with top-five NFL Draft stock should he choose to declare and an All-American left guard.

And yet none of them are fifth-year transfer wide receiver Malik Benson. As of now, he has 696 receiving yards on 41 receptions, six receiving touchdowns, 155 punt return yards and a score there too (all five of those marks are FBS career-highs). He’s taken on multiple roles since joining the Ducks before the 2025 season, become one of quarterback Dante Moore’s go-to options and grabbed a knack for clutch plays that put the Ducks in position to fight for a first national championship in January.

Before the 2025 season, Oregon’s wide receiver room was a question mark. It hosted Benson, a transfer who shone at the JUCO level before posting 162 and 311-yard seasons at Alabama and Florida State, alongside five-star freshman Dakorien Moore and veteran Gary Bryant Jr. as projected starters.

It’s not a question anymore.

Benson’s speed — turn on the tape and watch him run by a JMU corner giving him a 10-yard cushion last month — immediately unlocked quarterback Dante Moore’s elite deep ball. He’s so fast that Moore couldn’t throw him in stride sometimes, a fact he  lamented after the JMU game.

He’s among Oregon’s most versatile players, too. It’s no easy feat in a program that features a running-back-slash-slot-receiver (Dierre Hill Jr.), an edge rusher who catches fake punts (Teitum Tuioti), and Kenyon Sadiq. When Dakorien Moore and Bryant both picked up injuries around the Ducks’ game against Iowa, Benson (the third-string punt returner who said he hadn’t returned “big-game” punts since JUCO) stepped up in the rain in Kinnick Stadium.

He also connected with Dante Moore for a crucial late-game first down in the same game to set up Atticus Sappington’s game winning field goal. Two games later, he housed a punt return against USC to break the game open. A game after that, he scored the coffin-sealing touchdown against Washington, in Seattle, and broke a “W” over his knee.

He’s impressed off the field, too. Oregon wide receivers coach Ross Douglas told me their story at Orange Bowl media day, and I’m relaying it here.

The two have “history together,” Douglas said. When Benson was transferring from Alabama in 2024, Douglas wanted him at Syracuse, where he was coaching wideouts. They talked on the phone, but Benson ended up at Florida State instead. The Seminoles went 2-10 while Douglas and the Orange finished 10-3, and Douglas called again.

“Man, I told you you should’ve came and rocked with me,” he told Benson, who thought he was declaring for the NFL Draft after that season until he was granted another year of NCAA eligibility.

Douglas then called Benson again from Syracuse University, but he committed to Oregon instead in January 2025. Then, in February, Douglas was hired as the Ducks’ new wide receivers coach. They finally got to work together. “I was just like, we finally linked up,” Douglas said. This season, they’ve shone.

Here’s what Douglas told me about Malik Benson, the person. There’s so much, I had to bullet-point the best of it out.

“His mom did a heck of a job raising him. He’s made of the right stuff.”
“He’s very selfless.”
“He has great energy.”
“He always has a smile on his face.”
“He never has a bad day.”
“He’s just a great individual for a lot of people to look at and get inspiration from.”

Ultimately, there are arguments for a ton of players on a CFP semifinalist team to reach athlete of the season status, but Benson’s single-season impact in Eugene has been stunning.

He added the vertical dimension to an Oregon offense that was lethal at short range and developed a connection with the Ducks’ new starting quarterback that helped turn a could’ve-been-development year into immediate national championship contention. He stepped in on special teams and made game-changing plays. He scored important touchdowns, heated up down the stretch of the regular season and grew as a draft prospect.

It doesn’t get much better than that.