Will Oregon's offense tailor-made for Dillon Gabriel pay off?
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Paolo Uggetti, ESPN
EUGENE, Ore. — It’s a midsummer day in July, and Oregon‘s present and future at the quarterback position are fittingly passing each other inside the brightly lit hallways of the Marcus Mariota Performance Center.
Dillon Gabriel and Dante Moore dap each other up and go their separate ways. Gabriel, the 23-year-old from Hawai’i who has been in college since 2019 and is about to play for his third program. Moore, the 19-year-old who was born in Cleveland, played high school football in Detroit and is suiting up for his second season on his second team.
Despite being at different stages of their career, Gabriel and Moore found common ground in what appealed to them about Oregon — a place where they had seen a quarterback like Bo Nix become the best version of himself while winning.
Gabriel’s journey is a peculiar one. He went from Oahu to UCF before making his way to Oklahoma and eventually, back toward the Pacific. It made him one of the longer tenured players in the sport and one of the most experienced. Over the course of six seasons, Gabriel has thrown 1,831 passes for over 16,000 yards. For reference, Oklahoma State‘s Alan Bowman — who has been in college since 2018 — has thrown for 6,000 fewer yards.
“It’s hard to find that type of experience,” offensive coordinator Will Stein said. “Everywhere he goes, he wins. He won in high school, he has won in college. He’s played in the biggest settings in college football.”
For Stein and head coach Dan Lanning, the option to bring in Gabriel was a no-brainer. His Hawaiian roots and experience watching former Oregon great and Hawai’i native Marcus Mariota was a bonus. For Gabriel, however, his first decision following his most productive season yet while at Oklahoma was whether or not to go to the NFL. As Gabriel explained it, once he decided to forego the draft, he wanted to make a different move. Oklahoma had been great for him, but with his offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby leaving to take a head-coaching job at Mississippi State and the Sooners being a younger team, he decided to find a new home.
“It wasn’t the best timing,” Gabriel said of Oklahoma. “But when it came to Oregon, I’ve never been so decisive and clear of what I wanted. When I was on the phone with them, I was already envisioning myself there.”
The Ducks are 5-0 this season as Gabriel is well on his way to another season of over 3,000 passing yards while being the most efficient quarterback in the country. However, Oregon has also shown it’s not quite operating at the level that it did with Nix last season. Though they are back at No. 3 in the AP poll, the Ducks dropped after struggling to beat Idaho and Boise State early in their first two games. Key statistics like red zone conversion and explosive plays from scrimmage are down from 2023, too.
“We can be better,” Lanning said after the Ducks’ win over Oregon State. After taking down UCLA, he reiterated the notion. “I see all the things we can get better at,” he said when asked about the win.
With No. 2 Ohio State coming to Eugene this week for what could be the biggest matchup in the new-look Big Ten this season, Gabriel is about to lead Oregon on a stretch of games that includes at least three ranked teams and another rival in Washington as it hopes to not just reach the College Football Playoff for the first time under Lanning, but also put itself in a position to win it all. As Lanning has said before, those are the expectations in Eugene. It’s part of why Gabriel transferred teams for one last ride.
“I had clear goals for myself and that’s winning a national championship and putting myself in the best spot to do so,” Gabriel said. “You get all you want here — the offensive fit, the surrounding cast and the team and a coach who believes and that chance to win the national championship.”
THE THREAD THAT is attempting to connect Nix to Gabriel and eventually to Moore is Will Stein.
Former offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham may have been part of what brought Nix to Eugene, but after he left for the Arizona State head-coaching gig, Stein was able to seamlessly pick up where he left off and help Nix put together a Heisman-worthy season in 2023.
You don’t have to spend too much time talking to Stein to realize that he’s a football-obsessed mind. Stein is pragmatic about how to run an offense and though that doesn’t mean he isn’t flexible with his approach, it does bring about a palpable confidence to what he does. As he put it, Gabriel has bought in since Day 1, because he knows this is an opportunity to run a “pro-style offense that will translate to the next level.”
“And we’ll run an offense that has been successful at every stop I’ve been at,” Stein said.
As soon as Oregon received a commitment from Gabriel, the former co-offensive coordinator at UTSA went back and watched all of Gabriel’s previous college games to see what schemes he thrived in, which ones he didn’t and how they could fit into the offense that Stein had already established in Eugene.
“It’s hard to put a label on what we do because we kind of do a little bit of everything. … We like to look complex, but we’re really pretty simple,” Stein said, describing his offense as one that can be nimble to different personnel groupings, formations and different quarterbacks. “Going back to the Chip [Kelly] days, which is high octane, high tempo, limited formation spread. We’re really not that, like we have that ability, we do a lot of that, but when you get down to the core of what we are, we’re as pro style as anybody else.”
The one thing that is certain inside Stein’s system is this: His offense gives the quarterback plenty of freedom, but also the responsibility of getting the offense “in good plays and out of bad plays.” It’s why filling that void left behind by Nix with a player like Gabriel and planning for the future with Moore was so crucial.
“He knew how to tailor the offense around Bo,” Moore, who was initially committed to Oregon before flipping to UCLA, said of Stein. “He adjusted it. He tailored it to him. Dillon, he comes in and says he likes this, he’s going to tailor it around him. Me coming in too, he’s going to tailor the offense around you.”
Nix, Stein said, was a phenomenal processor of information, giving him the ability to handle all the pre-snap motions, scheme changes and protections. To maintain that level of competence on that side of the ball, they needed someone who could jump in and process things quickly, someone who had already seen a lot before.
“It’s like talking to that graduate-level student, you know, compared to freshman,” Stein said of a player with as much experience as Gabriel. “He’s seen a lot of defenses over his career. He has played in big moments, but there’s still a process to it. His command of the offense has to be of the utmost importance for us to function at a high level.”
Stein said that some of the initial learning may have been outside of Gabriel’s comfort zone. But his willingness to learn — through repetition and trial and error — meant that as the first game of the season approached, they had now installed the offense three separate times, and both of them felt as comfortable as they could have on such a fast timeline.
“I’ve been in the McDonald’s menu where you may have the number one, but there’s more to memorize,” Gabriel said of the different offensive approaches he’s encountered. “But then I’ve also been in the Bible verse era, they tell every single person what to do, but you’re able to be much more clear on communicating every single thing. So it’s just a mixture. Whatever gets the job done.”
Whether it’s a playcalling style that’s more intricate or one that’s simpler, Gabriel has experienced it all. In Eugene, Gabriel said, learning the offense has been complex but not unfamiliar. If anything, it’s similar concepts with different terms, and he knows that the elaborate nature of the offense is also what allows him to have more control over it.
So far, the results have been both undeniable — five wins, an average of 458 yards per game and 35 points per game — but not quite an encore of last season, where Nix and Co. averaged 531 yards and 44 points per game while boasting the eighth best red zone touchdown conversion rate in the country. This year, the Ducks are 45th in that stat.
Still, it’s hard to nitpick Gabriel’s production (1,449 yards, 11 touchdowns). Like Nix last season, Oregon’s offense has produced the most efficient quarterback in the country. Gabriel’s 77.8 completion rate tops all quarterbacks so far this season (Nix finished at 77.4 last year), even those who have nearly half the passing attempts he does.
“Dylan’s been extremely efficient,” Lanning said after Oregon’s win over UCLA. “It’s all him. He’s the one making every play. None of these coaches get to go make any of those plays.”
For all the talk about Stein’s scheme or Gabriel’s experience, even Moore’s potential, Lanning’s rhetoric during most postgames is a reminder that none of it matters without execution. Without being able to conjure up another year of eligibility for Nix, getting a quarterback who has executed at a high level for five full seasons now like Gabriel was the next best thing. And now, with Moore in the system as a sophomore and former No. 2 overall recruit, Oregon is hoping it can have a longer runway to develop a quarterback in their image.
“I think after his freshman year [Moore] realized that maybe the decision he made wasn’t what he wanted to do originally,” Stein said. “We wanted to make his original dreams to play here come true. And when you can add and improve your team at a spot that you feel is like a positional need in the future, you do it. It’s just like free agency in the NFL. We have the opportunity here to do that.”
TEZ JOHNSON IS smiling.
Oregon has just handled UCLA 34-13 at the Rose Bowl and Gabriel is sitting to his left after throwing for three touchdowns — two of them caught by Johnson. Gabriel’s 10 incompletions in the game are the most he has had all season to this point. The week before against Oregon State, Gabriel started the game 15-for-15.
When Johnson, who witnessed Nix’s development into one of the best quarterbacks in the sport while in Eugene firsthand, is asked what he has seen from Gabriel so far this season to give him confidence in the Ducks’ offense going forward, he does not hesitate.
“I see confidence, poise, trusting his teammates,” Johnson said. “And when you got a quarterback like that, it’s always comfortable. … As a receiver you love that because you don’t have to really think of too much. His job is already hard as it is, so we try to make it easy for him.”
Though the scores and the win column tell one story, it hasn’t been all easy for Gabriel and Oregon. The shuffling — by design — of the offensive line early on in the year didn’t seem to put the Ducks in the best position to succeed as Gabriel was sacked seven times in the first two games.
But against Oregon State, Lanning put Iapani Laloulu at center and shuffled the rest of the line around him, sticking with the unit throughout the victory. Since the shift, Gabriel has not been sacked once in the past three games.
It took Nix a full season to reach his full potential inside Oregon’s offense. Much like Gabriel, the best version of the combination between the two parties didn’t happen right away. But if Gabriel and Oregon want to turn this season into something more than just Gabriel’s last and another close call for Lanning, any learning curve must be erased.
There has been marked improvement from Oregon’s offense from its first game to now, but with the undefeated Buckeyes and the stingiest defense in the nation looming, there will be no margin for error.
Oregon has trusted Gabriel with ushering the unit in the footsteps of one of the more productive quarterbacks the school has seen. The first five games were about getting acquainted with what the offense looks like on the field and setting the tone. The next five will determine what kind of season Oregon will have. What may seem like pressure to some is easy for Gabriel to embrace, in this environment more so than most.
“They have complete confidence in me out there and it’s empowering,” Gabriel said. “If s—‘s f—ed up, you want to make it right, you know? The freedom they give me allows us to make it right.”
