Oregon OC Drew Mehringer met with media for the first time this Spring. After Oregon\u2019s second practice of the Spring he was asked about his new promotion and some observations so far. <\/p>\n
Below are some of his top comments about Evan Stewart\u2019s return from injury, Gatlin Bair\u2019s return from his mission and the new look offensive line. <\/p>\n
On Taking over the Offense: <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople ask, what\u2019s your favorite play? And then I say whatever leads to the point, whatever we need to do in that moment. Let\u2019s say that one of the great things we had here before with Will is, that we saw the game very similarly. Not completely similar or not completely the same, but very similar. And I think you know I was asked a question about Will (Stein) last fall. And it was, what do we think the offense is going to look like? And I think Will would tell you the same thing. Namely, hey, every offense is going to be a little different every year. And regardless of who calls the plays or who is on offense, They\u2019ll be a little different. And the skills will be a bit different. Will be a few guys who are a year older and a little better. There will be some new guys showing up. There will be some young guys who have to play for them. What can you do? And how can we turn them into one? Put them in a position where they can be successful?\u201d<\/p>\n
On Added Duties Being OC:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are definitely more responsibilities. You know, we make sure everything is organized and that all employees are on the same level. Ultimately, that falls at least for the offensive employees back to me. Oh, it\u2019s a bit strange sometimes right? Today we had for example a ball security round. Usually you\u2019re the guy leading the exercise, and now you\u2019re the one organizing it. That was kind of weird. Do you know what I mean? But I think the feeling is cool. It\u2019s like Coach Lanning says, pinch yourself a little. That was pretty cool. And when you have the feeling that you are in a place and working for a boss that you absolutely wouldn\u2019t trade for anyone in the country and work for the players that we have you want to give them the best service possible. And that\u2019s why you work really hard because you care about these guys. And we want to make sure that we are very organized and don\u2019t waste their time. I\u2019m a firm believer in trying not to disrespect people\u2019s time.\u201d <\/p>\n
On Evan Stewart\u2019s Return: <\/p>\n
\u201cYes, Stewie looks good. I think Stewie is working harder than ever. I talked to him. I talked to him several times about his goals, where he wants to go and what he can achieve. It\u2019s no secret that he can run well. But there are a lot of guys who can run well who don\u2019t make it to the NFL. That is exactly his dream.That\u2019s everyone\u2019s dream in the locker room. What\u2019s the difference? Hey Dante, for him, in my opinion, it will be about that he changes in his approach. I think we see that and it\u2019s pretty cool to watch. He\u2019s one of the guys I met in our department meeting today expressly addressed and said, hey, we all know the goals, right? We need to see that these goals are reflected in the way you work today. He\u2019s one of the guys I specifically addressed in our department meeting today.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Koa Ka\u2019ai:<\/p>\n
\u201cKoa is a star. I was lucky more like being around some good young coaches. So a guy who has worked here for a while and with me a few times worked together, Jay Johnson, who now is the quarterback\u2019s assistant coach, I believe he was an assistant quarterbacks coach at the Cincinnati Bengals. Bro, you know, you get calls of people, regardless of whether they are media representatives or agents or something like that, hey, and they ask, hey, who is that? Who the next young guy is. We don\u2019t know that yet and I thought Jordan was one of those guys.<\/p>\n
And I think Koa is one of those guys too. Koa is really, really intelligent. Koa is a very, very hard worker. And I think he has incredible balance. He\u2019s definitely right, but he doesn\u2019t tighten up the boys. And that\u2019s what you want from a quarterback. You want it to have structure. You can\u2019t just say, hey, go out there and let\u2019s just sort this out. And then the ball just flies everywhere. You need someone to say, no, here\u2019s the structure. We have to think and act in a disciplined manner. We have to be strict. He doesn\u2019t have to be afraid of the coach. Some of these players, these 5-star stars, will be drafted in the next rounds, maybe even number 2.\u201d <\/p>\n
On the Offensive Line:<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, I think it\u2019s no secret, that in our league what these guys did was an incredible job. I mean, Joe Moore was semi-finalist three times in a row. And that\u2019s not because that there are only five guys out there, right? You know. We start the game against SC and Fox Crader plays left tackle for us. And how many Snaps has Fox played up to this point? Not many. Correct. And how does he play in this game? He plays pretty well.<\/p>\n
I think we are at a point where we have a lot of good young players at this position who have grown and developed and worked hard and are ready to to take a step. Who will these guys be? I\u2019m not sure yet. We\u2019ll see. There will be tough competition for this position. Ryan Switzer told me a quote from Mike Tomlin when he was talking about the Slot receiver position when he was in Pittsburgh. When he was in Pittsburgh. And that\u2019s two dogs and a bone. There still needs to be continuity, right? The strength of unity still has to be there. They all have to support each other, but they also have to make an effort. And we\u2019ll see who these five are when it happens. But I think we have a lot of good young players.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Gatlin Bair: <\/p>\n
\u201cSo, hey, Gatlin is really fast. That\u2019s no secret. I think he\u2019s definitely knocked off some rust that needs to be fixed on him. Like everyone in your job, if you don\u2019t do anything for two years, you know, with live ammunition out there then you might be thinking, maybe not the best article I\u2019ve ever written. But yeah, Gatlin he\u2019s fast, he\u2019s fast, he\u2019s got a really good work ethic, he\u2019s just whole, he\u2019s strong. So there are some very exciting things we\u2019re seeing with Gatlin. He\u2019s still, even though he\u2019s two years older than most freshmen, right, he\u2019s still learning properly.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oregon OC Drew Mehringer met with media for the first time this Spring. After Oregon\u2019s second practice of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":815000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[113335,7,869,21886,1381,1788],"class_list":["post-814999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-drew-mehringer","tag-football","tag-or","tag-oregon-ducks-eugene","tag-oregon-ducks-football","tag-regwall"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116237717964405702","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814999","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=814999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}