When Oregon released their running back depth chart ahead of their week one opponent Bowling Green two weeks ago, a new name popped up on the depth chart.

That person's name was situational. Our we should say the name of a group of people was situational.

Since then situational has remained second on the depth chart for the Ducks and is there this week ahead of their week three opponent. For Oregon running back coach Jim Mastro, this is precisely how he wants his position group to be early in the season.

"Competition is awesome," said Mastro. "It keeps practicing, tempo up. They know to play, they got to produce. Competition is the greatest thing you can have in the room."

Senior running back Tony Brooks-James has started the first two games at running back, which was to be expected going into the season. After a somewhat average performance against Bowling Green week one, Brooks-James' carries and production went up. He rushed for his seventh career two-touchdown game while adding 107 yards rushing on 21 carries.

Redshirt freshman CJ Verdell scored a touchdown for the first time last week and boasts an impressive 6.5 yards per-carry-average on 24 carries going into week three.

True freshman running back Travis Dye boasts the team's best yards-per-carry average at 8.6 and showed he should get a few more carries last week when he burst through the Portland State defense for a 49-yard touchdown run untouched.

Sophomore Darrian Felix and senior Taj Griffin have also shown big-play ability in their limited snaps through the first two games as well. Felix ran for 38 yards in the opener on just eight carries while Griffin popped off an 83-yard touchdown on a screen week one.

"They are all doing things really well," said Mastro. "We will kind of see as we go along. You'd like to narrow it down, but you never know."

This week against Portland State will resemble a workload that resembles either of the Ducks' first two games. Mastro expects to split the carries evenly as best he can early, and then ride the hot hand.

"They are all doing things well, said Mastro. "They are practicing hard. It's hard to take a kid's playing time away when he is doing everything you ask of him to do. It's a great problem to have."

Eventually, the Ducks will need to pare down the running back depth chart and ride with two or three backs. Mastro knows the Ducks can't sustain success at the level they want with just one.

"I've said for years that you can't have just one. If you want to have a good balanced rushing attack and a good rushing attack, you have to have more than one guy," said Mastro. "Right now we feel like we have five or six that we feel comfortable with."

Oregon's running backs are also having to learn a new system under Mastro. Seniors Brooks-James and Taj Griffin have spent their entire careers playing within Oregon's spread offense, which in year's past was designed for zone-reads and stretching plays horizontally. Under head coach Mario Cristobal and Jim Mastro, the Ducks are deploying a pistol offense that requires Oregon's running backs to run more downhill. Dye and Verdell both came from high school offenses that ran a version of the pistol, which both players have said helped them transition to the new offense.

"We are asking him to run a little bit different than they did in the past," Mastro said. "It's not as much feast or famine. We don't want a lot of tackles for loss. We are more downhill between the tackles, 10, 12, 14 yards. We'll bust the big ones, but I think it's a different mentality."

The job over the next week or for however long it takes is to identify who Oregon's primary ball carrier will be this season. To do that, Mastro knows how he'll reach that decision.

"Production. The guy that is hot," said Mastro. "CJ was hot in the second half last week, so he played a little bit more."

We'll get a better look at who can become the hot hand at running back this weekend when the Ducks play San Jose State at home. Kickoff is set for 2 p.m. PT, and the game will be broadcast on the Pac-12 Networks.