The I-5 Thoughts: The silence of a successful Oregon Ducks Pro Day

On Bo Nix's strong performance, Troy Franklin's GOAT status, Casey Rogers' moment and Jackson Powers-Johnson may need a lawyer.

EUGENE — Oregon’s Pro Day is never loud. 

There’s always some whooping after nice plays, and claps from parents occasionally echo throughout the Oregon indoor practice facility. But mostly, talking is reduced to a hum as former Ducks lock in for their final audition before judgment day. 

And every few years, this place gets dead quiet. 

It happened in 2015 for Marcus Mariota and in 2020 for Justin Herbert. And by the time Bo Nix began to work out in front of the dozens of assembled NFL brass on Tuesday, it had happened again.

Everyone was watching.

You could hear the rain pour on the roof of the Moshofsky Center as Nix ripped crossing routes into the gloves of Tez Johnson. You could hear Troy Franklin’s cleats tear through the turf as he chased down 50-yard bombs flicked from his former quarterback.

You could hear Bucky Irving grunting and his knees pounding like pistons as he decelerated into flat routes. You could hear cameras fire, notes scratched down and a whole lot of, “he’s looking pretty good out there” amongst the assembled media.

After throwing passes to Johnson, Franklin, Traeshon Holden, Gary Bryant Jr., Terrance Ferguson and Irving, Nix shook hands and slapped backs with many of the NFL representatives who came to watch him throw — he even took some pictures with kids.

And then he was gone.

The two-year Oregon starting quarterback was whisked away for national media duties. When local media had finished talking with players like Brandon Dorlus, Jackson Powers-Johnson and Franklin, they were told that Nix would be in meetings with teams for the rest of the day.

I think he would have said it went well, though. You can probably find the interviews he did with the bigger organizations. I just know he looked crisp.

And it was quiet.

Here’s a few other thoughts from Pro Day:

Troy Franklin takes his flowers

For more than a decade, we Oregon writers have always had a nice little story in our back pocket for when things got slow.

Hey, did you know it’s been forever since Oregon’s had a true No. 1 receiver?

Those were fun, weren’t they? We used various changing goalposts to devalue the productive play of receivers like Johnny Johnson III, Dwayne Stanford and others, just because they weren’t the bonafide go-up-and-get-it type of receivers who put up video game numbers.

And then Troy Franklin had to come and ruin that for us.

Because, yeah, do you know how long it’s been since Oregon’s had a true No. 1 receiver? About two months. And after a career that saw Franklin set Oregon’s career touchdown reception mark at 25, the Bay Area product acknowledged on Tuesday what some already say about his time in Eugene.

He thinks he’s the best to ever do it here.

“Most definitely,” Franklin said. “My stats show that. The plays I made. And just everything I’ve done for the program, so most definitely.”

Dear Nike, please don’t sue…

The first time I interviewed Jackson Powers-Johnson, we talked about fishing and how excited he was to become an Oregon Duck.