EUGENE -- After head coach Jim Harbaugh drew headlines for climbing trees outside of a recruit's house, and sleeping over at another's, Michigan took national signing day hyperbole, creativity and buzz to a new level Wednesday by having celebrities introduce commitments during a ceremony that featured, at one point, 71-year-old former MLB manager Jim Leyland sharing a stage and a "dab" with Atlanta-based hip-hop group Migos.

For better or worse, things were more or less calm at Oregon as the national letters of intent rolled in.

As usual, the football program's official Twitter account welcomed the newest Ducks with a canned tweet. Again, in a conference room on the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex's third floor, coach Mark Helfrich wore a dark suit and went down the list of Oregon's 19 signees and rattled off praise, self-aware of his usage of buzzwords like "culture" and "potential." Per tradition, current players competed in an annual conditioning contest earlier in the day. There was no reinvention of the wheel by design.

"I love that guys can see us at practice or see us deal with guys that we don't recruit one way and then on February 4th change," Helfrich said. "That's never going to happen. There's just not a lot of reality in some of those (recruiting tactics), in my opinion."

But Helfrich spent time Wednesday defending its track record with recruits against schools like Pac-12 North rival Stanford and fending off the perception that Oregon closed this recruiting cycle quietly before it could seep into the fanbase -- and future classes -- as reality.

"I was chuckling to myself of the narrative was we had a failure of a class because we lost a guy from the Southeast to a powerhouse in the Southeast, right? That's interesting," said Helfrich, who also said any negative recruiting regarding Oregon's quarterback development came from media, not recruits themselves.

"We also have multiple guys that were offered by Alabama, were offered by Ohio State, were offered by USC. Those are colossal failures by somebody, right? No. It's how this all works out and no, we are received very well."

For Helfrich it may have business as usual in another unpredictable recruiting cycle, but for those who pay even cursory attention to recruiting and its unofficial first-Wednesday-in-February national holiday, the energy and attention paid to Wednesday's announcement in Eugene was a noticeable difference -- one of few -- from years past.

ESPN echoed the review of many national recruiting outlets when it called the 2016 recruiting efforts "a little bit of a disappointment" owing to how Oregon lost three commitments while gaining two in the last seven weeks.

One year after Oregon coaches charged into recruits' living rooms armed with a Heisman Trophy winner, Rose Bowl victory, College Football Playoff national championship game appearance and an intact coaching staff, they hit the road last month introducing two new coordinators in Brady Hoke and Matt Lubick, a new quarterbacks coach in David Yost and on the heels of a 9-4 year whose six-game winning streak to close the regular season ended with a thud in the Alamo Bowl.

For the first time since 2008, the Ducks finished lower in January's final Associated Press top-25 than it did in Rivals' recruiting ranking from the previous February.

Ask any coach and they'll say judging the success of any recruiting class takes at least two years. And in a vacuum Oregon's class, whose No. 28 ranking by Rivals doesn't factor in highly coveted graduate transfer quarterback Dakota Prukop, isn't dramatically lower than past groups. Since Chip Kelly's first class as head coach in 2010, Oregon has averaged a 17th-place finish in Rivals rankings, but rankings of 26th (2014) and 22nd (2013) are sprinkled among them.

Yet the Ducks were expected to use 2014's on-field success as a springboard to fill not only its primary needs at quarterback and linebacker -- which it did with three and seven players, respectively -- but be in the mix for athletes like Dillon Mitchell and Tristen Wallace, elite recruits UO signed despite offers from Alabama and Ohio State, and who could push UO higher in recruiting rankings that, love or hate them, are reliable predictors of the staying power of national championship aspirants.

"Yeah, we'd like to be the number one ranked recruiting class in the world, sure, absolutely we would," Helfrich said. "But we also want to get the right guys for our culture, our fit, all those things. We turned away multiple four-star guys, multiple five-star guys that have signed with other people and will not qualify. ...

"If you compare us and Stanford since about 2008, we've won the most on the field, we've had consistently lower recruiting rankings than a couple other teams, won more on the field and sent more to the NFL. That's probably the better measure."

Oregon picked up late commitments from linebacker Keith Simms (Bethesda, Marylan) and defensive tackle Wayne Kirby (Pocatello, Idaho) in the final days, but rather than flip top recruits from other programs as in past years, it lost Army All-America running back Vavae Malepeai to USC on the last day and couldn't steal away upper-crust recruits such as Nigel Knott. Oregon pictured its recruits in glowing, neon uniforms, but from fans and analysts the energy toward the class was sapped on signing day, particularly after Malepeai's move.

"That's life in the big city," Helfrich said. "There are guys that decommitted and went somewhere else and guys that decommitted and came to us."

The reaction from Oregon fans and national recruiting experts is nothing new to some of UO's long-standing commitments, who saw similar attitudes from their fellow recruits last fall as Oregon started 3-3.

Communicating via a group text message, the recruits traded responses that were often telling about the varying levels of commitment.

"People either wouldn't respond or they'd say weird stuff in the group text about 'Oh, Oregon's not doing good in this part of their game plan,' or, 'They're not doing this,' or, 'This certain school is getting better recruits,'" said Brady Breeze, a safety who joins La'Mar Winston as 2016 UO recruits from Portland's Central Catholic High School. Breeze committed to Oregon 18 months ago. "They'd say little things like that that would make you think, maybe this guy is going to decommit? And then a few of them eventually did.

"Your word should be your strongest oath."

And so the recruits who stayed with Oregon seem in lockstep with Helfrich in that they don't accept the general conclusions about this class but will almost assuredly use it as motivation.

As some looked at the class with skepticism, its members think they'll surprise in ways they perhaps didn't Wednesday.

"I think that the guys that have stuck around know we're going to be something special and the people who doubt us will be surprised when we do get over there and prove we're better than people think of us," said Cam McCormick, a tight end from Bend's Summit High School. "We realize that we can do this."

-- Andrew Greif

agreif@oregonian.com

@andrewgreif