Will Oregon’s offense tailor-made for Dillon Gabriel pay off?
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Paolo Uggetti, ESPN
EUGENE, Ore. — It’s a midsummer day in July, and Oregon‘s present and future at the quarterback position are fittingly passing each other inside the brightly lit hallways of the Marcus Mariota Performance Center.
Dillon Gabriel and Dante Moore dap each other up and go their separate ways. Gabriel, the 23-year-old from Hawai’i who has been in college since 2019 and is about to play for his third program. Moore, the 19-year-old who was born in Cleveland, played high school football in Detroit and is suiting up for his second season on his second team.
Despite being at different stages of their career, Gabriel and Moore found common ground in what appealed to them about Oregon — a place where they had seen a quarterback like Bo Nix become the best version of himself while winning.
Gabriel’s journey is a peculiar one. He went from Oahu to UCF before making his way to Oklahoma and eventually, back toward the Pacific. It made him one of the longer tenured players in the sport and one of the most experienced. Over the course of six seasons, Gabriel has thrown 1,831 passes for over 16,000 yards. For reference, Oklahoma State‘s Alan Bowman — who has been in college since 2018 — has thrown for 6,000 fewer yards.
“It’s hard to find that type of experience,” offensive coordinator Will Stein said. “Everywhere he goes, he wins. He won in high school, he has won in college. He’s played in the biggest settings in college football.”
For Stein and head coach Dan Lanning, the option to bring in Gabriel was a no-brainer. His Hawaiian roots and experience watching former Oregon great and Hawai’i native Marcus Mariota was a bonus. For Gabriel, however, his first decision following his most productive season yet while at Oklahoma was whether or not to go to the NFL. As Gabriel explained it, once he decided to forego the draft, he wanted to make a different move. Oklahoma had been great for him, but with his offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby leaving to take a head-coaching job at Mississippi State and the Sooners being a younger team, he decided to find a new home.
“It wasn’t the best timing,” Gabriel said of Oklahoma. “But when it came to Oregon, I’ve never been so decisive and clear of what I wanted. When I was on the phone with them, I was already envisioning myself there.”
The Ducks are 5-0 this season as Gabriel is well on his way to another season of over 3,000 passing yards while being the most efficient quarterback in the country. However, Oregon has also shown it’s not quite operating at the level that it did with Nix last season. Though they are back at No. 3 in the AP poll, the Ducks dropped after struggling to beat Idaho and Boise State early in their first two games. Key statistics like red zone conversion and explosive plays from scrimmage are down from 2023, too.
“We can be better,” Lanning said after the Ducks’ win over Oregon State. After taking down UCLA, he reiterated the notion. “I see all the things we can get better at,” he said when asked about the win.
With No. 2 Ohio State coming to Eugene this week for what could be the biggest matchup in the new-look Big Ten this season, Gabriel is about to lead Oregon on a stretch of games that includes at least three ranked teams and another rival in Washington as it hopes to not just reach the College Football Playoff for the first time under Lanning, but also put itself in a position to win it all. As Lanning has said before, those are the expectations in Eugene. It’s part of why Gabriel transferred teams for one last ride.
“I had clear goals for myself and that’s winning a national championship and putting myself in the best spot to do so,” Gabriel said. “You get all you want here — the offensive fit, the surrounding cast and the team and a coach who believes and that chance to win the national championship.”
THE THREAD THAT is attempting to connect Nix to Gabriel and eventually to Moore is Will Stein.
Former offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham may have been part of what brought Nix to Eugene, but after he left for the Arizona State head-coaching gig, Stein was able to seamlessly pick up where he left off and help Nix put together a Heisman-worthy season in 2023.
You don’t have to spend too much time talking to Stein to realize that he’s a football-obsessed mind. Stein is pragmatic about how to run an offense and though that doesn’t mean he isn’t flexible with his approach, it does bring about a palpable confidence to what he does. As he put it, Gabriel has bought in since Day 1, because he knows this is an opportunity to run a “pro-style offense that will translate to the next level.”
“And we’ll run an offense that has been successful at every stop I’ve been at,” Stein said.
As soon as Oregon received a commitment from Gabriel, the former co-offensive coordinator at UTSA went back and watched all of Gabriel’s previous college games to see what schemes he thrived in, which ones he didn’t and how they could fit into the offense that Stein had already established in Eugene.
“It’s hard to put a label on what we do because we kind of do a little bit of everything. … We like to look complex, but we’re really pretty simple,” Stein said, describing his offense as one that can be nimble to different personnel groupings, formations and different quarterbacks. “Going back to the Chip [Kelly] days, which is high octane, high tempo, limited formation spread. We’re really not that, like we have that ability, we do a lot of that, but when you get down to the core of what we are, we’re as pro style as anybody else.”
The one thing that is certain inside Stein’s system is this: His offense gives the quarterback plenty of freedom, but also the responsibility of getting the offense “in good plays and out of bad plays.” It’s why filling that void left behind by Nix with a player like Gabriel and planning for the future with Moore was so crucial.
“He knew how to tailor the offense around Bo,” Moore, who was initially committed to Oregon before flipping to UCLA, said of Stein. “He adjusted it. He tailored it to him. Dillon, he comes in and says he likes this, he’s going to tailor it around him. Me coming in too, he’s going to tailor the offense around you.”
Nix, Stein said, was a phenomenal processor of information, giving him the ability to handle all the pre-snap motions, scheme changes and protections. To maintain that level of competence on that side of the ball, they needed someone who could jump in and process things quickly, someone who had already seen a lot before.
“It’s like talking to that graduate-level student, you know, compared to freshman,” Stein said of a player with as much experience as Gabriel. “He’s seen a lot of defenses over his career. He has played in big moments, but there’s still a process to it. His command of the offense has to be of the utmost importance for us to function at a high level.”
Stein said that some of the initial learning may have been outside of Gabriel’s comfort zone. But his willingness to learn — through repetition and trial and error — meant that as the first game of the season approached, they had now installed the offense three separate times, and both of them felt as comfortable as they could have on such a fast timeline.
“I’ve been in the McDonald’s menu where you may have the number one, but there’s more to memorize,” Gabriel said of the different offensive approaches he’s encountered. “But then I’ve also been in the Bible verse era, they tell every single person what to do, but you’re able to be much more clear on communicating every single thing. So it’s just a mixture. Whatever gets the job done.”
Whether it’s a playcalling style that’s more intricate or one that’s simpler, Gabriel has experienced it all. In Eugene, Gabriel said, learning the offense has been complex but not unfamiliar. If anything, it’s similar concepts with different terms, and he knows that the elaborate nature of the offense is also what allows him to have more control over it.
So far, the results have been both undeniable — five wins, an average of 458 yards per game and 35 points per game — but not quite an encore of last season, where Nix and Co. averaged 531 yards and 44 points per game while boasting the eighth best red zone touchdown conversion rate in the country. This year, the Ducks are 45th in that stat.
Still, it’s hard to nitpick Gabriel’s production (1,449 yards, 11 touchdowns). Like Nix last season, Oregon’s offense has produced the most efficient quarterback in the country. Gabriel’s 77.8 completion rate tops all quarterbacks so far this season (Nix finished at 77.4 last year), even those who have nearly half the passing attempts he does.
“Dylan’s been extremely efficient,” Lanning said after Oregon’s win over UCLA. “It’s all him. He’s the one making every play. None of these coaches get to go make any of those plays.”
For all the talk about Stein’s scheme or Gabriel’s experience, even Moore’s potential, Lanning’s rhetoric during most postgames is a reminder that none of it matters without execution. Without being able to conjure up another year of eligibility for Nix, getting a quarterback who has executed at a high level for five full seasons now like Gabriel was the next best thing. And now, with Moore in the system as a sophomore and former No. 2 overall recruit, Oregon is hoping it can have a longer runway to develop a quarterback in their image.
“I think after his freshman year [Moore] realized that maybe the decision he made wasn’t what he wanted to do originally,” Stein said. “We wanted to make his original dreams to play here come true. And when you can add and improve your team at a spot that you feel is like a positional need in the future, you do it. It’s just like free agency in the NFL. We have the opportunity here to do that.”
TEZ JOHNSON IS smiling.
Oregon has just handled UCLA 34-13 at the Rose Bowl and Gabriel is sitting to his left after throwing for three touchdowns — two of them caught by Johnson. Gabriel’s 10 incompletions in the game are the most he has had all season to this point. The week before against Oregon State, Gabriel started the game 15-for-15.
When Johnson, who witnessed Nix’s development into one of the best quarterbacks in the sport while in Eugene firsthand, is asked what he has seen from Gabriel so far this season to give him confidence in the Ducks’ offense going forward, he does not hesitate.
“I see confidence, poise, trusting his teammates,” Johnson said. “And when you got a quarterback like that, it’s always comfortable. … As a receiver you love that because you don’t have to really think of too much. His job is already hard as it is, so we try to make it easy for him.”
Though the scores and the win column tell one story, it hasn’t been all easy for Gabriel and Oregon. The shuffling — by design — of the offensive line early on in the year didn’t seem to put the Ducks in the best position to succeed as Gabriel was sacked seven times in the first two games.
But against Oregon State, Lanning put Iapani Laloulu at center and shuffled the rest of the line around him, sticking with the unit throughout the victory. Since the shift, Gabriel has not been sacked once in the past three games.
It took Nix a full season to reach his full potential inside Oregon’s offense. Much like Gabriel, the best version of the combination between the two parties didn’t happen right away. But if Gabriel and Oregon want to turn this season into something more than just Gabriel’s last and another close call for Lanning, any learning curve must be erased.
There has been marked improvement from Oregon’s offense from its first game to now, but with the undefeated Buckeyes and the stingiest defense in the nation looming, there will be no margin for error.
Oregon has trusted Gabriel with ushering the unit in the footsteps of one of the more productive quarterbacks the school has seen. The first five games were about getting acquainted with what the offense looks like on the field and setting the tone. The next five will determine what kind of season Oregon will have. What may seem like pressure to some is easy for Gabriel to embrace, in this environment more so than most.
“They have complete confidence in me out there and it’s empowering,” Gabriel said. “If s—‘s f—ed up, you want to make it right, you know? The freedom they give me allows us to make it right.”
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Kristen Shilton, ESPN NHL reporter
There are division rivals a team can’t wait to face. Others, not so much.
Take the Washington Capitals for instance, who’ve already seen enough of their Metropolitan Division rivals in New Jersey.
“Thankfully, we’re done with the New Jersey Devils this year,” Capitals’ coach Spencer Carbery joked in late December. “They’ve got a great team. We had some good battles against them. They’ve got a real good team, a well-rounded hockey team.”
Theirs was an evenly matched series in the end — with New Jersey the overall victor at 2-1-0 — but Carbery’s relief in being free of the Devils (for this regular season, at least) is testament to how strong their rivals up I-95 have been this season. Washington is leading the Metro after all, but the Devils are hot on their heels battling for second place.
New Jersey is coming off a brutal 2023-24 campaign that produced a 38-39-5 record, and missed playoff berth for the 10th time in 12 seasons. One year prior, the Devils had been the league’s Cinderella story, surging through their season (at 52-22-8) to make a powerful playoff push, and advancing past another major Metro rival — the New York Rangers — in the first round before falling to the Carolina Hurricanes in the second.
The Devils’ abysmal follow-up to that feat led to layers of fallout within the organization — including coach Lindy Ruff’s firing — while raising red flags about the club’s readiness to be true contenders. GM Tom Fitzgerald had tinkered long enough; when would we start seeing consistent results?
Well, we’re about to find out. New Jersey sits fourth in the Eastern Conference at 25-15-4, and is firmly on track towards the playoffs as the season’s season half approaches. But will the Devils stay on course, and are they built to last? Other teams have been through setbacks and eventually flourished. There’s a blueprint out there to go from zero to (postseason) hero.
What would that look like for New Jersey? And which past success stories could they use as a roadmap to reach such status?
The great ones, it seems, all start with good bones.
PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE. Perseverance is, too.
The Colorado Avalanche needed both to become a behemoth.
Let’s go back to 2016-17. Colorado finished last in the league that season, with a 22-56-4 record while allowing the most goals against and scoring the fewest. It was the worst season on record for the Avalanche since they moved to Denver in 1995, and the second worst season in franchise history overall.
So how did Colorado go from hot mess to making seven consecutive playoff appearances and winning a Cup in 2022? Glad you asked.
It started with establishing a strong core and building from there. Colorado was rooted to Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Gabriel Landeskog and Erik Johnson. Then GM Joe Sakic added critical pieces to the group like Cale Makar, Samuel Girard, Bowen Byram and Devon Toews. The Avalanche’s nucleus rounded carefully into form.
Then there was picking the right coach. When Patrick Roy abruptly resigned in 2016, Sakic tapped rookie NHL head coach Jared Bednar as successor. And yes, Bednar’s first go-around ended with the Avs as bottom-dwellers. But since then, he has soundly stabilized Colorado from behind the bench.
Then it was about key trades and free agent signings. Sakic brought on Nazem Kadri, Andre Burakovsky, Artturi Lehkonen, Valeri Nichushkin, Toews and others — including a No. 1 netminder in Darcy Kuemper to backstop Colorado on their eventual Cup-winning run.
All in all, it took years for Colorado to peak. But the climb was clearly worth the cresting views. And the Devils are attempting to follow a similar blueprint.
The Devils have a solidified core, with headliners Jack Hughes (already in his fifth NHL season), Nico Hischier, Jesper Bratt, Luke Hughes and Simon Nemec.
Fitzgerald has expanded the Devils with other key skaters — he signed Dougie Hamilton in 2021 and continued bolstering the blue line with free agents Brett Pesce and Brendon Dillon this offseason. The offense got a boost from Fitzgerald signing two-time Cup champion Ondrej Palat and trading for Timo Meier. His best work was trading for goaltender Jacob Markstrom from the Calgary Flames in July, finally giving his team the consistent goaltending it lacked in recent years.
The GM is confident after letting go of Ruff — and his interim replacement Travis Green — that he’s invested in the right coach with Sheldon Keefe. The Devils hired Keefe just days after he was fired by the Toronto Maple Leafs in May after four seasons there. New Jersey is only the second NHL head coaching gig for Keefe, but the transition to New Jersey has been fairly smooth — and generally well-received, based on early returns.
Piece by piece, Fitzgerald — like Sakic — has tried creating a roster to stand the test of time, where players align in a coach’s system designed to take New Jersey over the top.
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Jacob Markstrom makes a brilliant save for the Devils
Jacob Markstrom makes a nice save in the third period for the Devils.
It’s not easy. Health has been an issue for New Jersey; last season, Hughes was limited to 62 games, while Hamilton was out for all but 20 (after he posted 74 points in 82 games the year prior), Meier was sidelined for 13 games and Hischier was gone for 11. Injury absences are among the inevitabilities that every team must simply endure. Much like a few growing pains.
Colorado found that out, too. Once they were back in the postseason field, the Avalanche failed to get past the second round for four consecutive years before the Cup victory. New Jersey might need the same postseason learning experiences — something most of the roster doesn’t have yet — to be properly seasoned for a Cup Final run.
Because scaling that mountain requires a steady ascent, and Keefe believes his approach will provide New Jersey will the correct footing.
“Our vision is to win the Stanley Cup, and that’s very clear,” Keefe said during his introductory press conference. “To win the Stanley Cup, you have to make the playoffs, and it’s about establishing a process we’ll adhere to on a daily basis and ultimately see the sustained, high performance that will lead us to have an opportunity to compete for the Stanley Cup.”
Barring a second-half collapse, the Devils are on their way to seeing spring hockey return to The Rock. But how well positioned is New Jersey to make the most of what opportunity awaits when they arrive?
FITZGERALD HASN’T LOOKED FAR for inspiration in retooling the Devils.
His goal was to recreate New Jersey in its own image, with a strong offensive skill set that would also have fans “reminiscing of the past Devils teams of being heavy [and] harder to play against.”
He’s referencing, of course, that star-driven golden age of New Jersey hockey which included three Cup wins from 1995-2003. Whether Fitzgerald is crafting a club with such capability will be reflected in — and determined by — New Jersey’s postseason performance.
The biggest overhaul Fitzgerald had to make on this quest to contend was in the crease. Last season, the Devils churned through five different goaltending options and never landed on a suitable starter. Fitzgerald eventually traded would-be No.1 Vitek Vanecek (and his .890 save percentage) to San Jose and brought in Jake Allen to finish out the campaign. The Devils finished with the fifth-worst goals-against average (3.43) in the league.
The GM was aggressive in patching that particular hole when he acquired Markstrom from Calgary for a 2025 first-round pick and defenseman Kevin Bahl. That move projected to shore the team up where they most needed support — and Markstrom has delivered in fine form. The veteran is tied for the second-most wins among goalies (20-8-3) with a .911 save percentage and 2.20 goals-against average. And Allen is proving to be a fine backup (.901 SV%, 2.76 GAA).
That tandem gives the Devils peace of mind in goal that they haven’t enjoyed of late. However, the goalies can’t be all that makes New Jersey a tough out like Fitzgerald wants them to be. And the Devils’ recent skid is a prime example of what happens when the team’s offense dries up — and defensive details take a hit.
The Devils have been focused on grooming Hughes and Nemec to carry their back end. Hamilton, Pesce and Dillon are meant to be guiding that process. Markstrom should provide ample confidence that what does get through has a good chance to staying out. That’s the way Fitzgerald drew it up, anyway.
“The fun part is building around the edges, building the complementary guys you need,” Fitzgerald said. “Now you’re putting together a contender, and you’re checking off all the different boxes that contenders have. The last thing I was worried about (entering free agency) was the offense on this team. It was everything else that we needed to build up and check boxes, and we’ve done that.”
The Devils haven’t been immune to setbacks, though. On a six-game stretch from December into January the Devils were a woeful 1-4-1, getting outscored 19-11. There’s been blame to go around — the top skaters (especially Hischier) have slowed at 5-on-5, the Devils’ bottom six isn’t producing at all and outside of the Jonas Siegenthaler-Jonathan Kovacevic pairing, there wasn’t complete defensive buy-in. Markstrom did an admirable job holding the Devils in just about every game, which is further proof of his difference-making ability. But again, he can’t do it alone.
And therein lies the Big Question for New Jersey: When their offense goes cold, is there enough juice defensively to keep them in contention? It’s a problem Keefe is intimately familiar with from his time in Toronto. When the Maple Leafs’ so-called Core Four (Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares) didn’t make it on the scoresheet, Toronto was generally headed for another L (particularly in the postseason). Is New Jersey doomed for the same fate?
“It’s hard to predict what the playoff Devils can look like,” one Eastern Conference executive said. “Can you compare this team to the one two years ago? Maybe. But they’ve arguably changed for the better since then. It does feel a bit like Toronto, though. Regular season success won’t matter if New Jersey can’t turn Hughes and those guys into playoff performers.”
WHAT ELSE CAN Fitzgerald do to ensure New Jersey’s best outcomes are still ahead? Turn his attention fully towards the trade deadline — where the Devils can’t be complacent in their approach.
The team would benefit from boosting its center depth, and a source confirmed the Devils’ interest in Montreal Canadiens‘ pivot Jake Evans as a potential target. Evans is having a career-best season in Montreal, with 10 goals and 23 points in 41 games, and he’d be an ideal addition to New Jersey’s third or fourth line. The Devils might also look at bringing in pending UFAs like Brock Nelson or Yanni Gourde as low-risk, bottom-six depth options.
The Devils could explore some insurance for their back end too, what with the club’s injury history there (Hughes and Pesce have already been sidelined by ailments this season). Cody Ceci — another pending UFA — is an intriguing veteran option with playoff experience.
Any changes would have to complement what Fitzgerald has done to date. The hard work of building New Jersey up is already done. It just hasn’t manifested in playoff success — potentially until now.
Colorado showed how to go from worst to first. New Jersey’s trajectory to this stage — let’s call it base camp — has mirrored the Avalanche’s past journey in multiple ways.
The NHL is a results-driven league, though. The Devils haven’t anything to show for themselves yet. But it feels like the door has been cracked on New Jersey’s time to contend, and usher in the franchise’s next winning era.
Are they ready for it? Let the (real) games begin.
CHICAGO — The Chicago Cubs and free agent Colin Rea have agreed to a one-year, $5 million contract, reuniting the right-hander with manager Craig Counsell, a source told ESPN’s Jesse Rogers on Friday.
The 34-year-old Rea made one appearance with Milwaukee in 2021 and then pitched in Japan during the 2022 season before returning to the Brewers. He went 12-6 with a 4.29 ERA over 27 starts and five relief appearances for the NL Central champions last year.
Counsell managed Milwaukee for nine years before he was hired by Chicago in November 2023.
Rea gives Counsell and Chicago another versatile arm for their pitching staff. The Cubs have Justin Steele, Shota Imanaga, Jameson Taillon and Matthew Boyd for their rotation, but Rea could push Javier Assad for the fifth spot or work out of the bullpen.
Rea became a free agent when Milwaukee declined its $5.5 million club option on his contract in November. The Iowa native was paid a $1 million buyout.
Rea was selected by San Diego in the 12th round of the 2011 amateur draft out of Indiana State. He made his big league debut with the Padres in 2015.
He pitched for the Cubs during the 2020 season, going 1-1 with a 5.79 ERA in nine appearances, including two starts.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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