EUGENE -- Oregon's receivers are so inexperienced that UO coaches, searching for contributors, are looking at every option.



Like the prep quarterback from the high school so small it didn't always have enough players to practice 11-on-11. The one who moved a state away to learn a position he'd never played. The one whose first trip to UO wasn't because on an official visit, but rather to take part in the university's academic orientation.



The one who few would have given a chance this fall to see the field -- his official UO bio is blank, after all -- until star wideout Darren Carrington's July dismissal threw the position's depth chart into flux.



The one who took a most unusual route to UO. His name is redshirt freshman Alfonso Cobb.



After practice earlier this month, Cobb paused to think about it all.

"I've got a pretty interesting story," he said.

'A PURE ATHLETE'

Not many recruits come out of Federal Hocking High School in Stewart, Ohio.



Not to Oregon. Not to anywhere.



Federal Hocking sits in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in the state's southeastern corner, a 20-minute drive to the West Virginia border. The school district has one traffic light in its 195 square miles. And even then, athletic director Kirby Seeger said, it's just a flashing light at a four-way stop.



"Used to be coal and oil country," Seeger said. "Business isn't necessarily booming in our town."



Federal Hocking, with around 300 students, also doesn't produce high-profile recruits. Its football team often dressed fewer than 20 players for practices. A few have gone on to Division III basketball, Seeger said, but a Football Bowl Subdivision player -- let alone in the Pac-12 -- might as well be a unicorn.



It was against this backdrop that Cobb showed up at Federal Hocking as a freshman in 2012, his coaches scratching their heads at the kid in the heart of Ohio State country constantly wearing Oregon Ducks gear. Cobb, said his aunt, Ann Harvey, was "obsessed" with UO since childhood.



"I loved how fast everything was and how bang-bang, two plays we're already on the 20-yard line ready to score," Cobb said. "I just loved the whole hype around Oregon football."



Cobb, called AJ by friends and family, quickly stood out for other reasons than his favorite team. Success came easy: Homecoming king, honor roll, a quarterback, defensive back and guard who once dropped 37 points during his senior basketball season. Seeger calls him a "pure athlete."



"Thin as all get-out back then, but very competitive," said Craig Moore, the high school's offensive coordinator in 2012. "A kid I could always count on, and a kid that helped me grow as a coach."



During his three seasons coaching Cobb, Moore installed a no-huddle spread offense with read-option to take advantage of Cobb's talent. Not that many recruiters took note. As the Lancers struggled, a few offers from Midwest Division II schools trickled in.



Moore sensed he'd never accept.



"A lot of classmates stick around, hang out," said Moore, who now coaches at nearby Hocking College. "He's always had his mindset on getting out and traveling and going to Oregon."



In September 2016, he got to Eugene. But not before making a calculated pitstop in Indiana, to learn a position he'd barely played, to impress a program that didn't know his name.

NEW STATE, NEW POSITION

Dre Muhammad likes longshot odds.



A 5-foot-10 receiver out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, all 26 of Muhammad career receptions at Indiana came during his senior season in 2011. When he confided he wanted to play in the NFL, friends arched eyebrows.



"A lot of people said, 'Are you sure you want to do that?'" he said. He got a cup of coffee with the Oakland Raiders camp and bounced around the CFL. That was enough. He went into coaching receivers at AWP Sports Training, a facility in his hometown.



In May 2016, after graduating early from Federal Hocking, Cobb showed up to AWP, a four-hour drive from home, and told Muhammad his own long-shot dream of making the team at Oregon.



"I'm not a guy you can tell me I can't do something," Muhammad said. If I desire to do it, I'll do anything I can. So when he told me that it was just like, OK, let's just make it happen then.



"I think that's why it was a great relationship. I want people to have realistic expectations but reality is based on your work ethic. If he desires to improve, then reality can be whatever he desires it to be. He was willing to work."



Cobb needed a lot of it. How to see the field from the perimeter, instead of the backfield; how to position his body. It was not unlike teaching fundamentals to his youngest AWP clients, Muhammad said -- 8-year-olds.



"I thought, 'Oh, playing wide receiver won't be very hard,'" Cobb said. "Once I started I realized there was a lot more technicality to it and you can't just go out there and run around. He helped me with that all summer."



Cobb had heard about AWP from his aunt and uncle, Ann and Eric Harvey, who lived in Fort Wayne and whose daughter, a Bowling Green soccer player, had trained at the facility. He wanted to go because high-performance training facilities are about as common in southeastern Ohio as stoplights.

Given a blessing from his mother, Cobb lived with his relatives the summer before his freshman year at UO, paying for expenses with the money he earned delivering food to suites at the stadium of the local Class A minor league baseball team.



"He has a serious refusal to lose," Seeger said. "And a refusal to do anything but succeed in what he wants."



On nights without baseball games, he'd ask his aunt and uncle to use their car. Where was he headed? Catching passes at AWP, sometimes until 10 p.m. He wore yellow cleats. That's one of Federal Hocking's school colors. And also Oregon's.



"You couldn't tell by his size by the beginning of his senior year he'd be the one to take the D-I jump," Moore said. "But the gains he made after he graduated early were huge."



In September, Cobb boarded a flight to his dream school, and hoped it was all worth it.

TRYOUT BRINGS GOOD NEWS

One of the first stops Cobb made in Eugene, during his orientation to the university, was Autzen Stadium. Cobb laid down at midfield, doing an artificial turf version of snow angels. The Harveys still have the photo.



"He was like, "it would be a dream for me to be here,'" Eric Harvey said.



Then, they tried to catch a glimpse of practice, looking through the bushes ringing the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex practice fields, Harvey said. A few days later, Cobb was on the fields himself. UO walk-on tryouts, held yearly during the first week of the fall academic quarter in late September, are brief affairs. Everyone runs a 40-yard dash, and the most promising are then put through a few position-specific drills.



Then they wait.



"I was a wreck," Cobb said. "I had a lot riding on this."



A half-hour later, a recruiting coordinator sent him a text to fill out the paperwork necessary to join the team. By the end of the week, Oregon would lose to Colorado to fall to 2-2, a moment former coach Mark Helfrich equated to a train wreck.



Meanwhile, Cobb was still pinching himself. All that Oregon gear he wore as a kid? Now he had the official stuff.



In Indiana and Ohio, good news traveled quickly.



"Ecstatic," Muhammad said.



"It was a dream, you know?" Eric Harvey said. "When he told me he made the team I just started tearing up."



Like all FBS programs, Oregon fills out its roster with walk-ons after reaching its 85-scholarship limit. But most are either invited or arrive from local programs. The 6-foot, 174-pound Cobb is among few who traveled to UO from far away without a guarantee of a roster spot. He calls it "putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself." Not that he has to look far for examples of players whose turned similar risks into playing time: Former linebacker De'Quan McDowell was on the field in 2015 within months of arriving, unheralded, from a community college in Iowa. He, too, used his work ethic to take advantage of a position with a thin depth chart.



"It takes a certain kind of person and a certain kind of will to do that and to overcome how hard it is," said linebacker Kaulana Apelu. "AJ is awesome. He's done a great job with that and he's just a hard worker. That's what I admire about him. He just does everything he's asked to do."

Alfonso Cobb is part of an inexperienced receiving corps for the Ducks. The position is one of UO's biggest concerns entering the 2017 season.

OPPORTUNITY AT RECEIVER

When Cobb returned for winter break last December, Oregon had let go its coaching staff, and Moore noticed a change in his former player's mood, too, after redshirting his first season.



"I think the excitement has died down," Moore said. "He's not just there to be a walk-on. He's there to be a scholarship kid who gets on the field."



Cobb wouldn't admit to raised expectations early in preseason camp, saying that his job is to make the receivers better.

"Just being here is incredible" he said. "I like to take pride in that."

But a path to playing time exists. Seven of UO's 14 listed receivers are in either their first or second years on campus, and the only senior is Charles Nelson. Only one out of last season's top six pass-catchers returns.



Cobb is aiming to fill that void.



"He's gotten a lot better from spring to fall camp," receivers coach Michael Johnson Sr. said. "He's got good hands, he runs decent routes and he's just looking for an opportunity. Being a walk-on kid, those opportunities come few and far between but when you get those opportunities you have to make the most of them. I think he's done a good job of that."



Cobb knows all about taking advantage of opportunities, of course.

He just so happens to have been thinking about this one all his life.

-- Andrew Greif

@andrewgreif

agreif@oregonian.com