{"id":129693,"date":"2025-06-14T16:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T16:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/129693\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T16:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T16:37:07","slug":"oregons-dillon-thieneman-pegged-as-a-first-round-sleeper-in-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/129693\/","title":{"rendered":"Oregon’s Dillon Thieneman pegged as a first-round sleeper in NFL draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan Lanning has become an expert at picking just the right player out of the transfer portal and it seems as if he’s hit another homer with former Purdue safety Dillon Thieneman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When he said he was coming to Eugene to be a Duck, Thieneman received rave reviews, and he should be the starting safety when Oregon<\/a> begins the season Aug. 30 with Montana State.<\/p>\n

Almost no one thinks this is going to be a miss. ESPN has Thieneman as a “sleeper” pick in the next NFL draft in 10 months. According to ESPN scribe Matt Miller<\/a>, Theineman’s overall talent surpasses his supposed lack of size.<\/p>\n

“At 6-foot and 207 pounds, Thieneman isn’t a supersized<\/a> prospect like Nick Emmanwori in this past draft, but he is a versatile defender who can align at either safety spot or even as a slot cornerback,” Miller said. “Thieneman can get overaggressive in his pursuit angles, but he’s a clean open-field tackler and provides a true split-safety value that fits any defensive scheme. If he slots into Lanning’s defense like we think he will, Thieneman has first-round ability.”<\/p>\n

In his first two seasons with the Boilermakers<\/a>, Thieneman had six interceptions and was a dangerous punt returner. Whether he returns punts for the Ducks<\/a> remains to be seen as Oregon has a number of good players to choose from, but having his talent at the back end of the defense is going to go a long way for Oregon in 2025.<\/p>\n

Contact\/Follow\u00a0@Ducks_Wire<\/a> on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0to follow ongoing coverage of Oregon Ducks news, notes, and opinions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dan Lanning has become an expert at picking just the right player out of the transfer portal and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[323,247,265,322,20844,8160,318,339,324,11865,12,388,7,20842,379,248,267,49,1225,88,6,15,683,575,1381,245,537,530,984,4729,8178,9,266,1223],"class_list":{"0":"post-129693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-draft","8":"tag-323","9":"tag-american","10":"tag-american-football","11":"tag-big","12":"tag-big-10-hub","13":"tag-boilermakers","14":"tag-college","15":"tag-college-sports","16":"tag-conference","17":"tag-ducks","18":"tag-espn","19":"tag-espn-inc","20":"tag-football","21":"tag-hub","22":"tag-inc","23":"tag-national","24":"tag-national-sports","25":"tag-ncaa","26":"tag-ncaa-big-ten-conference","27":"tag-news","28":"tag-nfl","29":"tag-nfl-draft","30":"tag-oregon","31":"tag-oregon-ducks","32":"tag-oregon-ducks-football","33":"tag-overall","34":"tag-overall-positive","35":"tag-positive","36":"tag-purdue","37":"tag-purdue-boilermakers","38":"tag-purdue-boilermakers-football","39":"tag-sports","40":"tag-sports-news","41":"tag-ten"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114682701027137025","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}