Football Practice Report Report: Jaylon Redd Finally Becomes a Skill Player
In which we have an annual conversation about jersey number changes, tough injury news, and the real true freshman you should be bullish on.
In the secretive era of Cristobal, we are fortunate to still get the classic Rob Moseley Practice Reports on GoDucks dot com after every football practice. They give us a rundown of the day’s activities, any standout plays, and maybe even some dark horse players we’ll have to look out for.
These reports are often a Duck fan’s only peek into the program nowadays, other than some select twitter photos. But it’s also important to remember that it’s all still essentially State Propaganda.
It’s all been vetted by the powers that be, it’s all been carefully worded, and it sits on the official website of the Athletic Department. There is nothing in these reports that Mario Cristobal & Co. don’t want the public to know.
So my plan is to read these Practice Reports, and then I’ll decode, digest, jest, and editorialize through whatever information they think they can trust us with. Hopefully giving you a different (read: better) picture of the program.
Let’s dive in. Football Practice Report: April 1st.
Injury News that Wasn’t April Fools
Mario Cristobal announced that three players were going to medically retire. LB Sampson Niu, OL Chris Randazzo, and OL Jonah Tauanu’u. Niu and JT seemed to have the higher futures within the program, at least to this point, but all three of those guys missed last season. No matter what the specific injuries are, if it’s bad enough that these guys feel it’s time to hang it up, nobody should blame them at all.
You might remember that OL Justin Johnson also took a medical retirement back in 2019, right after his redshirt freshman year. It’s happening more often throughout college football, but a lot of these guys are making that decision for their futures, their families, and their bodies. It’s all for the same reasons some guys announce early for the Draft.
There’s more to life than these four years of college.*
The biggest medical news came right after that though, when it was revealed that the much-hyped RB Sean Dollars would miss all spring, summer, and at least part of the fall with a “significant leg injury.”
Mario doesn’t go into injury details anymore, so it’s hard to know exactly what the problem is, but it was disclosed that Dollars got hurt sometime this winter while working out. The lengthy recovery timeline suggests that it might be ACL or at least ACL-adjacent. But that’s all speculation on my part.
Don’t expect to ever know what the real injury is. State secrets are precious.
It sucks that we might miss out on even a part Dollars’ break out year, but we still have CJ and Travis—who both get to have a full offseason of practice and they’ll get to run behind a more experienced and organized O-Line. I still feel very, very good about our Run Game.
*Mark that lesson down as something I should try to internalize one day, too.
The Real True Freshman Phenom
You all want to talk about QB battles, but I want to talk about Troy Franklin.
Just like Mycah Pittman before him, Troy seems to have turned in an acrobatic catch in practice that has put him on the map already.
Rob Moseley’s Practice Reports reported on a circus grab by Mycah two springs ago, and from that point on he was the hot new wideout on campus.
Yes, Troy is already a highly touted recruit. And yes, our receiving corps is deeper than a high schooler who just watch Donnie Darko for the first time. But if you asked me right now who gets more playing time on September 4th vs Fresno State—Troy Franklin or Ty Thompson—I’d tell you that I bet it’s Franklin, and that I bet he catches a second quarter TD from Anthony Brown, too.
Jersey Numbers Make the Man
Back when I used to write for Autzen Zoo, I wrote a piece on Ducks that changed their jersey numbers in the offseason, and what those changes meant.
My favorite change was CJ Verdell going from 34 to 7. Not just because it’s a cleaner number, but because The Bowermanian tradition at Oregon states that an athlete should search to reduce as much excess weight as possible in order to become faster.
The number 7 uses less fabric on the uniform than 34, thus making a “powerback” like CJ that much faster.
He managed to breakaway for a quite a few home run touchdowns that year, too.
However, I think Jaylon Redd’s latest change from a bulky number 30, to a sleek number 6, is much more than a Bowerman weight reduction tactic. It’s a perception tactic.
Jaylon has been the program’s most reliable skill position player for the last three seasons, and not too many of us have woken up to see that. The larger Oregon consciousness doesn’t seem to associate Redd with a guy like Charles Nelson, Josh Huff, or DAT. And while I know those are all lofty comparisons, I think the largest mental hurdle for us has been that the number 30 just looks plain gross on an otherwise electric slot receiver.
And what better way to help change the conversation around the type of player you are than to grab the number that Duck fans can most easily identify as a jack-of-all-trades, speedy, ultra-reliable weapon?
That’s the kind of big brain branding move that could only happen at the University of Nike.
Go Ducks.