Daniel Uthman

USA TODAY Sports

EUGENE, Ore. – For David Yost, the choice to join Oregon’s football program represented a chance to return to what he knows and loves best.

For Terry Wilson, the choice represented love at first sight.

For Dakota Prukop, there was no choice.

These three men, a quarterback coach and two of his new pupils, are part of a major change in the makeup of the Oregon offense – change that also includes new roles for assistant coach Matt Lubick and redshirt freshman quarterback Travis Jonsen.

Quarterback at Oregon – the position that has led the FBS in pass efficiency the past two seasons, that gave the school its first Heisman Trophy winner two seasons ago and that has helped the Ducks rank among the nation’s top five scoring teams for the past six seasons – has a new coach, a new offensive coordinator and three new faces competing for the starting role this summer.

Early riser: Oregon WR Devon Allen hurdles to Olympic Trials

When the Ducks open the season Sept. 3 vs. UC Davis, everyone at the trigger of the offense except for head coach Mark Helfrich will be experiencing their first Oregon gameday in their respective roles.

But there are reasons why that doesn’t worry the Ducks. They are as follows: Heisman Trophy candidate Royce Freeman and a deep running back corps; wide receivers Charles Nelson, Darren Carrington and a deep receiving corps; Pharaoh Brown returning to a veteran tight end group; and a relatively young offensive line that might have be the most promising unit on the roster.

“It's a good situation,” Helfrich said of Oregon’s three-man quarterback competition. “It's a healthy situation. They don't have to do everything. It's more just kind of concentrating on their deal.

“They don't have to do the sideways, fadeaway, Steph Curry over the set for the 3-pointer. Just dump it in to somebody and get out of the way.”

***

Asking the quarterback to play the role of facilitating “point guard”, as Helfrich puts it, is an acknowledgement of the wealth of Oregon’s talent at other offensive positions, not an indictment of a paucity of talent at quarterback.

Ducks give fans a glimpse of QBs in spring game

Had Jonsen not suffered a season-ending turf toe, he might have finished 2015 as starting quarterback Vernon Adams’ backup. Before departing for the head coach position at Central Florida, Oregon offensive coordinator Scott Frost raved about what the Ducks were getting in Wilson, who they had flipped from Nebraska. And Oregon’s competitors for Prukop’s graduate transfer pledge were Alabama (where he took a visit), Michigan and Texas.

The person most responsible for honing that talent will be Yost, who learned how to coach quarterbacks under Gary Pinkel beginning in 1997 and has done that nearly his entire career except for the past three years, when he coached inside receivers at Washington State.

When Oregon was making staff changes after Frost’s departure, Helfrich asked Yost if he would be interested in a role in the Ducks’ offense. Yost said, “If it’s quarterbacks, I would.”

Helfrich put Yost on the phone with Lubick and offensive line coach Steve Greatwood, and a week later Yost and Helfrich talked quarterback development philosophy for two and a half hours. Yost was hired in January. “If I had to write a job description,” he said, “this is what it would be.”

Like Frost, Lubick went from coaching receivers to coordinating the Ducks’ offense. But unlike Frost, Lubick is retaining his receiver duties while Yost assumes Frost’s quarterback coaching and passing game coordination duties. Both Yost and Lubick suggest it’s been a seamless transition.

“I had always heard good things, and now that we’ve got him, I can see that all those things were right,” Lubick said. “I tell him, ‘Don’t hold back, Dave, anything you think we can do better, yell it out there. There’s no such thing as a bad question.’

“Just having him up in there with situational type stuff, on QB technique, I defer to him all the time.”

Yost has been similarly impressed by Lubick. “He has tremendous ideas for the passing game,” Yost said. “He has a great deal of knowledge how to attack coverages with routes and route concepts. It’s just a matter of, what can the quarterbacks handle in that way?”

***

The answer to that question is one that people outside the program, inside the program and even inside Oregon’s quarterback competition are seeking.

Oregon decided this offseason to remove from position contention the only two quarterbacks on the roster who had more than a year’s experience in the program, Jeff Lockie and Taylor Alie. Neither had excelled in injury relief of Adams last season, and though both are assets to the program in different ways, neither can match the talent or potential of Jonsen, Prukop or Wilson.

Jonsen used his redshirt year to study the playbook, learn how to make reads in Oregon’s system and smooth out his throwing motion. Though he still must make improve his decision making in game situations, he has a combination of knowledge and physical skill to be successful for the Ducks.

Prukop ended his junior season at Montana State figuring he would continue his decorated career with the Bobcats in 2016 and work with private coach George Whitfield in the offseason. But three things that happened in December – the dismissal of Montana State head coach Rob Ash and his coaching staff in Bozeman, the completion of his undergraduate degree and a conversation with Adams about the viability of graduate transfer route made him consider playing his final season elsewhere.

With the help of Montana State’s administration Prukop sent a contact release form to winning FBS programs that without a returning starter or clear heir to the role, and when it looked like there was interest in his services, he went to speak to his position coach, Tim Cramsey.

“I said, I submitted my release form to a couple schools and Oregon hit me back right away,” Prukop recalled. “He was like, Are you serious? And I was like, Yeah. And he gets on his computer and he pulls up the offensive roster they have right now and was like, Look at all these dudes they have coming back.

“He looks at me and says, Whether I stay here as the (offensive coordinator) or as the head coach, if you have a legitimate offer from Oregon, I'm not going to let you stay here. If you have a scholarship offer from Oregon for this fall, I'm not going to let you be the quarterback here next year.”

Prukop has been on campus since January.

Wilson, whose Del City (Okla.) High School class graduated this spring, is the most recent quarterback to arrive. He earned his diploma January 15 and enrolled March 25, just in time for the spring term and spring practice.

Less than a year earlier, Wilson had been committed to Frost’s alma mater. But Frost had liked what he had seen of Wilson from afar, and he watched the quarterback in a scrimmage during the 2015 spring evaluation period. They spoke for about an hour after the scrimmage, Wilson said, and even though he didn’t back off his Nebraska pledge, Frost persuaded him to schedule an official visit to the Ducks the next fall.

Oregon coaches say getting prospects to make the trip to their campus is one of the biggest keys to a successful recruitment, and Wilson provides another example of that. “I came out here in September and loved it,” he said.

***

The trio’s only public audition came in Oregon’s spring game, when Jonsen showed great touch and offensive command but an occasional puzzling throw. Prukop showed run-pass skills but also some uncertainty. Wilson showed a strong arm but a sense of timing very much in development.

Helfrich guaranteed that all three would be “light years” improved by preseason camp, and Yost is confident in that, too.

“We made a decision we were going to focus on these three guys to bring along as fast as we could,” he said. “It’s like dealing with three freshman quarterbacks.

“Dakota brings experience, but all these things are new. You see massive jumps in his improvement almost daily. He made a lot of strides in his 14 (spring) practices.

“Travis, coming in last year, Coach Frost had done a great job with him. His basis in the offense was very strong. He’s very fluent in the offense, and that helped him. He’s really worked really hard on becoming a much more efficient passer. There’s at least three times a practice you say wow, he can make some big-time throws.

“Terry being here early, it’s been great. There’s days his head is spinning, but as he slowed down the installation, you can see the progression. We tell him make mistakes, don’t be hesitant. He’s been great. It will be really interesting to see him when we start two-a-days.”

Yost has impressed on all three quarterbacks his three-tiered process to quarterbacking. The first step is mastering the offense, knowing what every player is supposed to be doing on every play, knowing the protections and having your footwork down. The second step is recognizing what the defense is giving you and responding to it. The third is having your reads so down pat that you can attack the defense no matter what it’s trying to do; think Yost’s former pupil Chase Daniel in his final two record-setting seasons at Missouri.

Prukop and Wilson are working to get past tier one by preseason practice, and though Jonsen may be at tier two, he could be more consistent.

No matter their developmental stage, all three espouse a togetherness that Prukop, for his part, says is unique in spectrum of quarterback competitions. They give each other tips. They snap the ball to each other. Practice films show them fist pumping when their peers make a play.

But only one will start the first game of the season. The Ducks won’t set a deadline to decide who that is going to be, nor will they be rigid in their approach.

“That has to take place naturally,” Helfrich said. “You can't force it. The only thing you can do, which is completely fair, is put each one of them in their best situation. You're giving each guy a chance to be confident and to play freely within themselves.

What will be the biggest factor in determining Oregon’s next starter, according to Helfrich?

“Just touchdowns and taking care of the ball.”