Oregon's first-year football coach met with media Thursday and offered some news and notes prior to the start of preseason camp Friday.

Thursday was "report day" for the 2018 Oregon football team. The Ducks were issued new equipment for the season, measured for new heights and weights, and sat down for a series of meetings on NCAA rules compliance and other topics.

All of that was in preparation for the first day of preseason training camp, scheduled for Friday morning on the practice fields adjacent to the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex. In advance of that, first-year UO head coach Mario Cristobal met with media for about a half-hour Thursday, to take their questions at the onset of camp.

A few key takeaways …

1. The first summer of work under new strength and conditioning coach Aaron Feld and his staff paid quick dividends. Quarterback Justin Herbert turned heads last week at Pac-12 Media Day with a bulked-up frame he said was close to 240 pounds, and it sounds like he wasn't alone.

"The bodies have changed," Cristobal said, "and not so much the cosmetic, beach muscles, but more than anything the amount of functional strength that has been developed, increasing our mobility, our flexibility, our ability to redirect. … We expect tremendous results."

But the offseason strength program does more than build up players' bodies, Cristobal stressed. It builds invaluable bonds of team chemistry; the UO coach went so far as to call it "the secret sauce to the program. Because it creates your culture."

A subtle but telling indication of that culture: Cristobal said players are quick with "please" and "thank you" in interactions with staff – not just coaches but athletic trainers, nutritionists, sports science personnel and the like. And they're keeping the locker room in immaculate condition.

"Because they understand how appreciative they need to be," Cristobal said, before joking, "and because they know we'll throw their stuff out if they leave it out. But that's part of the culture – having gratitude, being appreciative."





2. It sounds like Oregon fans can expect a little more frank discussion of their team from this head coach than some others in recent years past. For one thing, Cristobal said the Ducks won't shy away from acknowledging big-picture goals.

"God forbid we should ever shy away from wanting to play for championships," he said. "If you do, you're in the wrong place; this is the University of Oregon. But there is a process to get there. Taking a peek at the scoreboard, or taking a look at a result, or thinking about the fourth quarter when we're still on series two, quarter one, is not going to get it done. …

"If you trust the process and you grind and work at the process, eventually the process is going to love you back. It's going to take care of you. And we have a high trust factor in that."

Cristobal also said that, "if there's ever an injury, I'm always going to do my best to get you the information."

To that end, he said graduate transfer Tabari Hines may miss a few days to open camp following a minor procedure on his knee. Cristobal said Hines is expected to be available for the season opener, Sept. 1, and cleared full-go soon after.

But, players who missed spring drills such as center Jake Hanson , linebacker Sampson Niu and safety Nick Pickett , all are ready for action Friday, he said.





3. Cristobal was asked what positions most need some shoring up during August, and he mentioned wide receiver, defensive line and the secondary.

The addition of graduate transfers Hines at receiver and Kano Dillon at tight end helped address some concerns about those spots. And Cristobal sounds bullish on junior receivers Brenden Schooler and Dillon Mitchell , as well as the potential of second-year guys Johnny Johnson III , Jaylon Redd and Daewood Davis .

"You're looking at guys that have a lot of talent," he said. "The nature of football is, when you're doing it right, as you develop guys, it's their turn. So we'd like to see guys step up there."

On the other side of the ball, "I don't think you can ever have enough great defensive linemen," he said, and the secondary might be "a couple bodies short – but not from a talent standpoint. (Overall) we're pretty close to where we need to be."

4. Some of those concerns about receiver and defensive line depth stem from the absence of players who were on the roster in the spring, but aren't as of Friday.

Receiver Jalen Hall , who enrolled in spring and participated in a practice before leaving to address personal matters, won't be on hand for the start of camp, Cristobal said. And defensive lineman Malik Young , a backup last season after transferring into the program, was denied in his petition to the NCAA to be eligible for one final season with the Ducks this fall.

Sophomore outside linebacker D.J. Johnson also had a petition to the NCAA denied, and thus will have to sit out this season under standard transfer rules. He had appealed to be declared immediately eligible this fall.





5. The camp roster distributed to media Thursday included the array of returning veterans and anticipated recruits, while also listing a number of non-scholarship players newly on-hand.

In a change from last season's philosophy, which favored a smaller roster, the Ducks will have close to the NCAA's preseason camp limit of 105 players. That should lead to more robust scout-team rosters once game preparation begins, but some of the new additions have a chance to contribute beyond that.

"The walk-on program here is going to be a very big part of what we do at the University of Oregon," Cristobal said. "Once you have a locker in there, it doesn't matter whether you walked on or you're a five-star athlete. We don't just bring in anybody, even if they are a walk-on and paying their own way. We scout and we recruit every single player on this roster, including the ones that have come as walk-ons.

"We have a couple guys that are pretty significant, prominent track athletes, in the 10.3, 10.4 range (for 100 meters), that increase our team speed right away. And we have some big-body linebackers and edge rushers that we feel are going to have the opportunity to compete."

Bonus: Cristobal opened his press conference – the point of which was to discuss the approaching football season – by shining some light on the rest of Oregon's fall sports. He noted that the soccer, volleyball and cross country programs "are already grinding" as they prepare for their own seasons.

Cristobal also welcomed his newest fellow UO head coaches, those hired in the last few weeks including Melyssa Lombardi in softball, Derek Radley in women's golf, Courtney Nagle in women's tennis and Chelsea Gamble in lacrosse.

"As an athletic department and a university community, we're very family oriented," Cristobal said. "We make sure we're always supporting each other, always highlighting great things. … There's a lot of exciting stuff going on in the other areas of the athletic department."