Don't look now, but Oregon is winning recruiting battles again
Four-star wide receiver Warren Thompson committed to Oregon on Monday, and with that, the Ducks now have nine four-star recruits on track to join the program in 2018.
If that number sounds like a lot, considering National Signing Day is still more than seven months away, it's because it is. In fact, the nine four-stars currently pledged to Oregon is one more than the total number the program landed in all of 2017.
Upon taking the head coaching job at Oregon in December, Willie Taggart vowed to make the Pacific Northwest an attractive destination for high school players once again, and so far he's delivered.
If Thompson's commitment holds, the Seffner, Fla. native - ranked 196th overall on the ESPN 300 - will become the first four-star wideout to head to the Ducks out of high school since 2015.
4-star recruits committed to Oregon for 2018:
| Player | Position | ESPN 300 ranking |
|---|---|---|
| Dawson Jaramillo | OT | 59th |
| Steve Stephens | S | 76th |
| Jevon Holland | ATH | 144th |
| *Isaiah Bolden | CB | 186th |
| Warren Thompson | WR | 196th |
| Jamal Elliott | RB | 201st |
| Adrian Jackson | OLB | 207th |
| **Braden Lenzy | ATH | 250th |
| Jonathan King | DE | Unranked |
*Flipped from Florida State
**Flipped from Notre Dame
Perhaps even more significant for Oregon is that it convinced Thompson to ditch the Sunshine State and turn down offers from Florida, Florida State, Miami, and several other prime schools to head to the Beaver State and the city of Eugene.
The Ducks haven't built a top-20 class since 2015, but at the moment they sit 14th on ESPN's class rankings. Five of their nine four-star commits hail from Florida or California, and only two are from Oregon, meaning Taggart has been winning in states he's not supposed to, even with his ties to the Florida area after his stint at South Florida.
It wasn't too long ago that Oregon was contending for national championships on the strength of a passing game that featured a dynamic quarterback and an abundance of athletic, explosive receivers.
The Ducks lost their touch in recent years under Mark Helfrich and sunk to the bottom of the Pac-12 as a result, but Monday's commitment is a strong piece of evidence that Taggart and his staff are slowly pushing Oregon back to the top.