Crash course: How Vernon Adams won the Oregon QB job in two weeks

George Schroeder | USA TODAY Sports

EUGENE, Ore. — By 6:15 each morning the past two weeks, Oregon offensive coordinator Scott Frost and quarterback Vernon Adams were together in the Ducks’ football facility, undertaking a crash course in Oregon’s offensive system.

Apparently Adams passed.

On Friday, when he was listed atop the Ducks’ depth chart, it wasn’t exactly unexpected. Since he decided last winter to graduate early from Eastern Washington and transfer to Oregon, it has seemed a foregone conclusion that he would start. The Ducks think — they hope — he might star.

A couple of days ago Frost teased Adams, telling him, “You must be a lot better at learning football than you are at math.”

The reference was to the math class Adams had to re-take over the summer in order to graduate. And to the spectacle, earlier this month, of Adams taking one last final exam — and then of everyone associated with Oregon collectively holding their breath, waiting for the results.

That’s what we’ll all do now, with Oregon and Adams set to begin the most interesting experiment of the 2015 college football season. The expectations here remain crazy high. Despite the departure of Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota, who left early for the NFL Draft and was the No. 2 overall pick by the Tennessee Titans, Oregon expects to be in the hunt again for the College Football Playoff.

The huge overarching question is how the Ducks can possibly replace Mariota, who was arguably the best player in school history. The potential answer is a transfer from an FCS-level school who’s been on the team for all of two weeks.

And just to raise the level of difficulty a little more — and the oddity, too — consider that the depth chart announced Friday showed Matt Hegarty, a graduate transfer from Notre Dame, starting at center. Like in most other systems, quarterback and center are the most pivotal positions in communication and decision-making.

“We’ll see where the whole thing shakes out,” Frost says, “but I’ve been extremely impressed in their desire to learn and their ability to pick it up quickly.”

The Ducks insist they’ve got plenty of talent around the quarterback — maybe more than they’ve ever had, they say — but they also know something else.

“The honest truth is Marcus bailed us out of three or four games last year with his play,” Frost says. “I don’t think with the guys around him the quarterback has to be Superman to make it go, but you never know how the season is gonna go.”

Frost has tried to impress upon all the quarterbacks: Don’t try to be Mariota. But yeah, there’s pressure. Mariota’s No. 8 Titans jersey hangs prominently along with Oregon gear in area stores. Frost ordered a Titans ballcap online and occasionally wears it.

“They’re coming into a tough situation, following a guy that was the best player in college football,” he says, adding that he’s told the quarterbacks, “If you make a bad throw or have a mediocre game, people aren’t used to seeing that from the kid that played last year. But you’ve got to block all that out and be the best player you can be.”

Once Adams finally arrived, it was pretty apparent how the quarterback competition would go. Jeff Lockie, a fourth-year junior who was Mariota’s backup, led the team during the offseason and was very good in the Ducks’ spring game. Helfrich describes Lockie as “a point guard. He’s John Stockton. He’s just working it around” — the theory, again, being that all that’s necessary is to get the ball to playmakers like running back Royce Freeman or any of a bevy of talented receivers and watch them go.

But in Adams, the Ducks hope they have another playmaker.

At maybe 5-11, he was not offered a scholarship by any FBS programs out of Bishop Alemany High School in Mission Hills, Calif. Only Eastern Washington and Portland State offered scholarships at the FCS level. But at Eastern Washington, he was a two-time All-American, twice runner-up for the Walter Payton Award, the FCS level’s top individual honor. In three seasons as a starter for the Eagles, he threw for 10,438 yards and 110 touchdowns.

“Every game, he was the best player on the field,” Oregon receivers coach Matt Lubick says.

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Oregon’s coaches first noticed Adams when he shredded Oregon State’s and Washington’s defenses in 2013 and 2014, respectively, upsetting the Beavers and almost getting the Huskies, too.

“All of us were going, ‘Man, this kid is pretty good,’ ” Oregon coach Mark Helfrich remembers.

They’re still saying it after two weeks of working with Adams. And that’s what it’s been: work. With Mariota a year ago, Frost’s installation of the offense was very quick. Much of the teaching focused then, he said, on “next-level stuff.” By contrast, he’s been teaching Adams the elementary principles of Oregon’s offensive system. And because Adams joined camp late, he’s been playing catch-up every day, beginning with those 6:15 a.m. meetings and ending very, very late.

“I think he sleeps with his playbook,” Lubick says.

When Oregon's other quarterbacks were ready to install segments 4-6, for example, Frost and Adams were going over 1-3. Some of the concepts were similar, of course — including in some cases the same terminology. And while trying to finish up his coursework last spring at Eastern Washington, Adams used HUDL, an online game film program, to study Oregon’s offense.

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“Obviously if we’d have gotten him earlier, he’d be even farther along,” Frost says. “But I’ve been blown away by how fast he can memorize this stuff and understand it.”

As important, the Ducks say they’ve been impressed with Adams’ attitude.

“I always knew he was a guy who could come in and definitely play,” Lockie says. “But he’s proved he loves this game and he loves learning, and he’s willing to put in the work to learn. That’s reassuring for everyone in the quarterback room.”

Most important, Adams’ natural ability has shown through in practices. The combination was apparently enough to win the job with only two weeks in the program.

“He’s got a natural presence about him, whether it’s his own charisma or his experience or that little ‘X-factor,’ ” Helfrich says. “You can tell he’s played and been successful.”

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What comes next should be fascinating. In the short-term, we’ll get the spectacle of Adams starting next week against the team he just left. Oregon has not made Adams available to media since he joined the team, citing a policy that newcomers must play in a game first. But he told USA TODAY Sports last February the opening-weekend matchup vs. Eastern Washington was “the suckiest part of this whole thing. … It’s just gonna be so weird.”

While saying they understand what Eastern Washington must be feeling, several people associated with the Oregon football program have compared Adams’ transfer to Mariota’s decision to leave draft with a year of eligibility remaining. “I’m not mad at Marcus at all,” Helfrich says. “We love that guy to death.

The analogy makes some sense. Except Oregon doesn’t open the season against the Titans.

After that odd quirk in the schedule comes the Ducks’ first real test, and maybe one of the biggest of the season. Though you’d never get anyone from Oregon to admit it — they’re fully into one game at a time — that looming date might have meant as much as anything in determining when to choose a winner in the quarterback competition. One way or another, Oregon at Michigan State on Sept. 12 could be a very early defining moment in the playoff conversation.

Which means for Oregon and Adams, the crash course will continue.

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