Oregon Ducks spring practice: Terrance Ferguson keeps getting better

The senior tight end has records in sight and a national championship he wants to win.

Eric Evans photo/GoDucks.com

The Oregon Ducks have had flashier guys at the position.

They’ve had athletic freaks — players from the country, the city and one guy from a walnut farm who have turned tight end into one of Eugene’s most reliable outputs of professional talent. Johnny Mundt, Pharaoh Brown and Juwan Johnson are tight ends on NFL rosters right now. Ed Dickson played nine years in the league before retiring in 2018. Evan Baylis played for multiple organizations and Jacob Breeland was well on his way before an ACL injury in 2019 derailed his career. We knew what Spencer Webb could do. 

Oregon may not officially be Tight End U — Travis Kelce might own that trademark — but the Ducks have been something slightly less catchy: Very good at the position for a very long time.

Considering all of that, it’s time to start putting some respect on Terrance Ferguson’s hierarchy within Oregon history.

Read more about Brian and why his support is so important to us here.

See, Ferguson is relatively soft-spoken. He doesn’t post much on social media and his interview sessions are often filled with answers such as this one, when he was asked on Thursday about offensive coordinator Will Stein’s desire to feed him the ball more.

“He does a good job of getting the ball into playmakers’ hands and I’m honored for him to say that about me,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson may play the humble card, but his productivity is just about a matter of fact here in his final spring with the program. The 6-foot-5 senior from Littleton, Colorado has 91 catches to his name. He caught 17 passes as a true freshman, 32 passes as a sophomore and last season became a reliable target for Bo Nix with 42 catches for 414 yards and six touchdowns. He’s caught passes in 37 of his 39 career games, caught multiple balls in 12 of Oregon’s 14 games last season and while he may not be out there hurdling dudes akin to Colt Lyerla, he’s no stranger to turning heads.

Stein certainly remembers this play from the Pac-12 Championship game, when Ferguson’s one-handed snag jolted life back into a sleeping Oregon offense.

“I need to get him the ball more,” Stein said. “He's a fantastic receiver.”

And when Ferguson says he returned to Oregon for his senior season because he has stuff to work on, Oregon fans should start licking their chops.

Ferguson committed to Oregon during the pandemic, a period his high school coach said was transformative in developing the player into the No. 12 tight end in his class. The Ducks were recruiting him and fellow four-star Moliki Matavao at the same time, with Matavao committing just a few weeks before Ferguson did.

“He’s one of those athletes that used his quarantine time to get better,” Heritage coach Tyler Knoblock told me then. “He’s had all this extra time and he’s been training and running way better than he did last year, and he was already such a scary deep threat.

“The Oregon coaching staff came in and did a great job of explaining that they still wanted him (after Matavao committed) and that they felt like they’re just different enough that their strengths will play after each other. He’ll thrive off of it, no question.”

Matavao now plays for UCLA. Ferguson is 33 receptions away from breaking Dickson’s career mark at Oregon.

“He’s busted his absolute tail," Oregon coach Dan Lanning said. "It has put him in a great position to be a great player for this program. He's one of many who made the decision to come back, but he's the guy who's putting in the work too. He's lowered his body fat percentage, he's increased his muscle mass. He's a leader on the field the way he runs in and out of drills. It's been really, really impressive." 

Ferguson said he’s working this spring on making his routes crisper and getting out of his breaks faster. He wants to be more aggressive at the point of attack and continue to be the leader of a positional group that includes fellow senior Patrick Herbert and early-spring star Kenyon Sadiq. He also said he wants to win a national championship. If that happens, it’ll start being a whole lot harder for Ferguson to remain humble about his time in Eugene.

“You guys are the ones who tell me when I’m even close to those [records]. I didn’t even know I was remotely close to those,” he said. “I’m just blessed to be able to play here.”

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor

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