With less than a week remaining until the start of the 2025 MLB playoffs, our baseball insiders are ready to break down the biggest questions, latest news and notable October buzz across the industry — even before the final 12-team postseason field is set.

What is the boldest prediction we’ve heard from an MLB exec? How confident — or concerned — should fans of last year’s World Series participants, the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, be? Will the Toronto Blue Jays and Milwaukee Brewers turn stellar regular seasons into deep playoff runs? And which under-the-radar players and teams are scouts raving about? Here’s the latest intel our MLB experts are hearing as Jeff Passan, Buster Olney, Jesse Rogers, Jorge Castillo and Alden Gonzalez empty their notebooks.

What is the boldest prediction you’ve heard from an MLB exec or scout?

Passan: The Seattle Mariners are going to win the World Series. Perhaps at this point that does not register as bold, but let’s not forget the Mariners are 49 years into their existence and they’ve yet to make a World Series, let alone win one.

Three weeks ago, this would have been laughable, as Seattle had lost 15 of 21 and found itself 3½ games behind Houston. Now, the Mariners have a three-game cushion, plus the tiebreaker in the AL West, and are in possession of a first-round bye.

The home-field advantage would be decidedly advantageous to the Mariners, who are 48-27 at home. Lining up their excellent front-line starting pitching and giving some rest to well-worked regulars — especially Cal Raleigh — could do the Mariners good. And with the highest-scoring offense in the big leagues in September and a bullpen that has some of the best stuff in baseball, the Mariners have the ingredients to conquer a wide-open AL and hang with the star-studded rosters in the NL.

Olney: We always hear how the bullpen and bench are difference-makers in the postseason, and one evaluator sees a clear delineation between the Padres’ bullpen and the rest of the field. The Mariners’ have played well down the stretch, but their relief corps is taxed; the Dodgers will be MacGyvering to make their bullpen rubble work; the Phillies will be without Jose Alvarado; the Yankees’ group can be wildly inconsistent. The San Diego bullpen, on the other hand, is solid, even without Jason Adam.

Is that evaluator, then, ready to say the Padres will win the World Series, or even the National League? “Are you f—ing kidding me?” he replied. “I don’t think we can count anybody out this year. Even the Tigers — they’ve got [Tarik] Skubal.”

How much faith does the industry have in the Blue Jays and Brewers turning potential No. 1 seeds into World Series appearances?

Olney: The feedback I’m getting is that execs see reasonable paths through October for all of the contenders with perhaps the exception of the Astros, who are wrecked by injuries to Yordan Alvarez, Jeremy Pena and Josh Hader.

As the case is made for the Blue Jays and Brewers, there is a consistent theme: these are teams that get guys on base, put the ball in play and pressure defenses. One evaluator said: “The Brewers just don’t play bad games — they might lose, but they are in every game.”

Rogers: There’s belief in both teams, but nobody is ready to declare either the favorite even as a potential top seed. Bo Bichette‘s injury came up in conversation as a detriment to the Blue Jays’ chances, and the latest pitching injuries were reasons to look elsewhere when it came to the Brewers. And this was the discussion among insiders before Brandon Woodruff was placed on the IL on Sunday.

Another talking point is that whichever team ends up with the best record in each league will do so by just a handful of wins — not enough to declare anyone the odds-on favorite next month.

Do MLB insiders think the Dodgers will turn it on in October again, as they did last season?

Gonzalez: They seem mixed. There are some — both inside and outside the Dodgers — who will tell you this group is deeper and more talented than the one that won it all last year. That their rotation is far superior. That their bullpen has the ability to be just as good, even if that hasn’t necessarily been the case during the regular season. That their lineup is probably still the best in the sport when it’s clicking.

But then there are those who continue to point out the obvious: Dodgers manager Dave Roberts will go into October not knowing who to turn to for the final three outs of a game on any given night. It has gotten so bad — with Tanner Scott struggling, Blake Treinen reeling, Michael Kopech a mess, Kirby Yates unreliable, Brock Stewart hurt and few others outside of Alex Vesia stepping up — that Roki Sasaki is genuinely being considered for a high-leverage role. Just as much of a concern is the status of catcher and middle-of-the-order hitter Will Smith, who sustained a hairline fracture in his right hand near the end of arguably his best offensive season.

Passan: Everything Alden says is correct. And yet the absence of another team stepping into the vacuum the Dodgers have created allows them, in the minds of many, to maintain their status as the favorite.

Shohei Ohtani has been the best hitter in the sport in September, to say nothing of his 14⅔ shutout innings this month, including five hitless in a Sept. 16 start against the Philadelphia Phillies. Mookie Betts, who has not looked like Mookie Betts for much of the season, looks like Mookie Betts again. His home run stroke is back, and he’s tied with Juan Soto for the MLB lead in RBIs this month with 21.

In September, Dodgers hitters are tied for second in home runs and third in wOBA. The offense is a mammoth, even without Smith, and for all of the pitching questions Los Angeles carries, what resides in that clubhouse is enough talent to overcome them. This is the value of a deep team. There’s still enough to win another ring.

Do those in the game think the Yankees will make another deep October run?

Castillo: Yes, because the American League is wide open and the Yankees just might have the most talented roster, top to bottom, in the field. A National League front-office executive recently said he believes the Yankees are the favorite to win the pennant again because of their blend of talent, experience and ability to inflict damage on opposing pitchers. The Yankees lead the majors in runs scored and home runs. Their starting rotation has the second-lowest ERA in baseball since the trade deadline. Their bullpen is filled with relievers with real track records. The pieces are there for a run.

Olney: I think that’s easily envisioned, not only because the Yankees played in the last week of October just last year, but because the field is so wide open. But there are two problems cited constantly by evaluators with other teams.

No. 1: “They are a terrible defensive team,” said one AL coach, and he’s hardly alone in feeling that way. The Yankees push back on that notion, but that is certainly a perception. And No. 2: Their bullpen performance this year has been so erratic. The closer’s role has been passed around — what, a half-dozen times? — and Devin Williams‘ performance can range from pure dominance to total meltdown.

I bet if you gave truth serum to those in the Yankees’ organization, the general sentiment would be that they have no idea what to expect from this group in the playoffs.

Who do those in the game think could be this October’s most dangerous teams?

Rogers: The Mariners aren’t exactly flying under the radar anymore considering their recent win streak and series win in Houston, but some believe their pitching staff is just starting to peak, while others simply think they have prime-time players such as Randy Arozarena who have October upside. And that’s the word heard most often with the Mariners: They have tons of upside.

In the NL, the Chicago Cubs are starting to garner sleeper status. One executive mentioned that although their strengths don’t wow you at first glance, there’s no weakness to any part of their game. “If it’s the Cubs and Brewers in the division series,” he said, “can you pick a winner?”

Gonzalez: A current player who has been around awhile was trying recently to describe what it’s like being on the field at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia for a playoff game and couldn’t. The noise, he said, is deafening, unlike anything he had experienced anywhere else. His point was that the Phillies’ home-field advantage in October is more real than anybody else’s. And if there’s one team outside the reigning-champion Dodgers and the MLB-leading Brewers that sticks out in the minds of evaluators and players this coming month, it’s that one.

Even with Zack Wheeler out, the Phillies’ three lefty starters — Cristopher Sanchez, Ranger Suarez and Jesus Luzardo — are good enough to get it done. Their closer, Jhoan Duran, is considered almost impossible to hit. And then there’s the lineup littered with stars who have experience on the big stage and know this might be their best opportunity to win it all. The Phillies’ roster might be too expensive to be considered under the radar, but in what many consider to be a wide-open field, they’re the ones that come up in conversation most often as the most dangerous.

Who are some under-the-radar players with industry buzz as potential postseason stars?

Passan: None of the Reds’ elite young talent has postseason experience, and facing the Dodgers would be one hell of an introduction for shortstop Elly De La Cruz, right-hander Hunter Greene and left-hander Andrew Abbott. The latter two provide a whale of a one-two punch, especially in a best-of-three series, and if the Reds can hold off the Mets and Diamondbacks, the pitching matchups against Los Angeles would be tantalizing, regardless of whom the Dodgers choose among Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Emmet Sheehan and Clayton Kershaw. The first five have combined for a 1.69 ERA in September.

How Toronto chooses to use rookie Trey Yesavage in the postseason will be fascinating to see. The rare player to spend time at Low-A, High-A, Double-A, Triple-A and the big leagues in the same year, the 22-year-old right-hander, chosen 20th in the 2024 draft out of East Carolina, followed a dominant debut against Tampa Bay with a pedestrian outing against Kansas City. He has a mid-90s fastball that plays well high in the zone and a splitter that’s a gnarly complement.

Yesavage probably won’t start, but Toronto could piggyback him with a starter, slot him in a bulk role after an opener, deploy him as a multi-inning leverage weapon or have him eat an inning at a time. Whatever Toronto does, Yesavage, who has worked out of the bullpen in the minor leagues in anticipation of this, will be ready.

Castillo: Cal Raleigh — rightfully so — has attracted the shine in the Pacific Northwest this season, but the Mariners need their other All-Star position player to deliver in October if they’re going to play for the franchise’s first World Series title. And Julio Rodriguez has delivered since the All-Star break. Another slow start marred the center fielder’s overall numbers, but Rodriguez is slashing .295/.333/.570 with 17 home runs in the second half. His .903 OPS and elite defense registers as MVP-level production. Rodriguez was around for the Mariners’ last trip to the postseason in 2022, but the charismatic 24-year-old will have a chance to cement himself as one of the game’s superstars with a deep October run.

The NHL, especially in the salary cap era, is usually defined by change and upheaval — familiar contenders turning their rosters over, while new powers emerge in their place.

That’s why it was so striking to see the same two Stanley Cup finalists — the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers — in back-to-back seasons, the league’s first Cup rematch since 2008-09, and only the second since 1983-84. Add in Florida’s appearance in the 2023 Final as well, and the NHL hasn’t had fewer unique finalists over a three-year span (just three different teams) since 1954-56, when only the Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Canadiens reached the Final in those three years.

This run of Panthers-Oilers dominance won’t last forever, and it almost certainly won’t survive past 2025-26 if Connor McDavid doesn’t re-sign with Edmonton after his current contract ends at the end of the year. But for now, ESPN BET’s preseason odds again list Florida (+300) as the East favorite and Edmonton (+400) as the West’s top pick, suggesting that another rematch is the likeliest outcome.

Of course, that’s only true until it’s not. So the question becomes: If it’s not Florida and Edmonton yet again, who’s next in line to face off for the Cup?

Let’s dive into the most plausible challengers from each conference, just waiting to skate through if the Panthers and/or Oilers slip up, plus a couple of up-and-coming teams who could crash the party as well.

Note: All odds below courtesy of ESPN BET.

EASTERN CONFERENCE

Odds to make Final: +360 | Win Cup: +800

Why they haven’t broken through yet: It’s an excellent question that the Canes are still trying to answer. Despite making the postseason seven straight years, Carolina’s 44 playoff wins have never led to a Stanley Cup Final appearance — giving them the most victories amassed in such a stretch without getting there at least once, topping Toronto’s old record of 41 from 1998 to 2004.

Along the way, the team has made the Eastern Conference finals in two of the past three seasons, but couldn’t score enough to avoid a Florida sweep in 2023. And their goaltending, always a huge concern, couldn’t stop enough Panthers (most notably Sam Bennett) in 2025.

Why 2025-26 could be different: Carolina will once again ride with Pyotr Kochetkov and Frederik Andersen in net, which is reason enough to wonder if things will be different from last year (when they combined for a .823 SV% in the Eastern Conference finals loss to Florida). But new forward Nikolaj Ehlers ought to provide an offensive charge, while trade addition K’Andre Miller and prospect Alexander Nikishin give this blue line — usually a big strength anyway — more youth and upside, especially if Miller can recapture his 2022-23 form after a downturn in recent years.

Otherwise, the Hurricanes are counting on their familiar puck-possession system to finally add up to victory against a Florida core that returns mostly intact from last year. We’ll see.

Odds to make Final: +650 | Win Cup: +1400

Why they haven’t broken through (recently): Tampa Bay certainly has broken through before, winning two Cups — in 2020 and 2021 — and reaching another Final in 2022. And just when it seemed like that dynastic run was winding down, the Lightning rebounded in 2024-25, with their best goals per game differential since 2018-19 (+0.91).

But, as in the 2019 postseason, that regular-season success didn’t translate. The Lightning were bounced in the first round by Florida in five games for the second straight year, a huge reversal from the old days of Bolts domination in the cross-state rivalry.

Why 2025-26 could be different: First and foremost, the Lightning continue to boast one of the league’s most talented cores, which offers reason to think they can get back to seriously contending for the Cup again. They lost little of consequence over the offseason — defenseman Nick Perbix was the only real departure — though they also added little, and a team that was the NHL’s fifth oldest in 2024-25 isn’t getting any younger.

Someday Nikita Kucherov, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Victor Hedman and Jake Guentzel will slow down. But until then, this team still carries the potential to go toe-to-toe with Florida, even if the past two playoff results aren’t what Tampa Bay has experienced previously in that rivalry.

Odds to make Final: +850 | Win Cup: +1600

Why they haven’t broken through yet: So much depends on the availability of Jack Hughes. When Hughes last played more than 62 games in a season in 2022-23, the Devils ranked No. 4 leaguewide in goals per game; with him missing 20 games in each of the past two seasons, New Jersey’s ranking in that metric fell to 12th in 2023-24 and then 20th last season.

Along with that offensive slide, the team fell out of the playoffs in 2023-24 — costing coach Lindy Ruff his job — and lost in Round 1 to Carolina in five games a year ago, a disappointing end for a team that was third best in goal differential and third youngest (a promising combo!) back in 2022-23.

Why 2025-26 could be different: Hughes’ return to health at the start of 2025-26 camp has New Jersey eyeing a return to the potential of a few years earlier. The Devils have scored 3.13 GPG over the past two seasons with Hughes in the lineup, versus 2.93 without him, which would be the difference between 12th and 21st in the league in 2024-25.

To help them score even more, the Devils added Evgenii Dadonov this summer. Russian right wing Arseny Gritsyuk might be an interesting pickup as well. If they can resolve their contract impasse with Hughes’ brother Luke, the Devils could challenge for the East — but they’ll need to figure out how to solve a Carolina team that bounced them in 2023 and 2025.

Worth a flier?

Odds to make Final: +1200 | Win Cup: +3500

Ottawa finally broke its seven-year playoff drought in 2024-25 with a young core starring Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stützle, Jake Sanderson and Shane Pinto, who were all 25 or younger a year ago.

The Senators are still learning how to win, but they’ll return that same young core — plus good young defenseman Jordan Spence — to see if they can improve further after last season’s 19-point upgrade in the standings.

Odds to make Final: +2800 | Win Cup: +5000

The Habs have made real progress in recent seasons — three straight campaigns of an improved goals differential — culminating in their first playoff berth since 2021. Nick Suzuki‘s 89 points were the most by a Canadien in nearly three decades, and Cole Caufield‘s 37 goals were the most by a Montreal player his age since 1989-90.

With that young duo leading the way, and an upgraded roster that added defenseman Noah Dobson and forward Zack Bolduc, Montreal may finally be on the verge of something big.

The rest of the East

Toronto Maple Leafs (+1000 to make Stanley Cup Final)
Washington Capitals (+1400)
New York Rangers (+1600)
Boston Bruins (+3300)
Columbus Blue Jackets (+3300)
Detroit Red Wings (+3300)
Philadelphia Flyers (+3300)
New York Islanders (+4000)
Buffalo Sabres (+6000)
Pittsburgh Penguins (+6000)

WESTERN CONFERENCE

Odds to make Final: +450 | Win Cup: +800

Why they haven’t broken through (recently): The Avs had one of the best teams in hockey history when they won the Cup in 2022, seemingly portending a run of future success in the same style the team enjoyed during the ’90s and 2000s.

Instead, they fell victim to the familiar attrition that champions face during the salary cap era, between injuries (Gabriel Landeskog) and departures (Darcy Kuemper, Mikko Rantanen, Nazem Kadri, Andre Burakovsky). Colorado has remained among the league’s better teams, but its goal differential has declined for four seasons running now.

Why 2025-26 could be different: Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar aren’t slowing down. They’ve collectively posted 438 points over the past two seasons, the most in consecutive years by any forward/defenseman duo in more than three decades.

With that kind of talent at the core — bolstered with the return of trade deadline acquisition Brock Nelson and the veteran additions of Brent Burns and Victor Olofsson — the Avs may have another run in them despite losing to the Dallas Stars in consecutive postseasons.

Odds to make Final: +450 | Win Cup: +850

Why they haven’t broken through (recently): The Golden Knights were better on paper last regular season (+0.68 goal differential per game) than they were when they won the Cup — still the only team to beat Florida in its past 12 postseason series — in 2023 (+0.52).

But the playoff offense that once carried them has vanished, dropping from 4.00 goals per game in that Cup run to just 2.44 since, capped by back-to-back shutout losses to Edmonton in the second round last spring. The talent and depth have still been there, but the results have not quite followed.

Why 2025-26 could be different: The main reason for optimism in Vegas is that the Knights reeled in the biggest fish of the 2025 offseason, acquiring star winger Mitch Marner in a sign-and-trade from Toronto in late June. Marner has averaged 29 adjusted goals, 65 adjusted assists and 94 adjusted points per season since 2020-21, making him one of the most dangerous offensive threats (particularly among setup men) in the league.

While we’ve seen players take time to adjust to new systems and teammates, Marner will ease into his new situation alongside talents like Jack Eichel, which is a scary pairing to think about in the playoffs (where Marner’s struggles have tended to be overstated).

Odds to make Final: +475 | Win Cup: +1000

Why they haven’t broken through yet: Why, indeed? Much like Carolina, the Stars keep slamming into a wall just shy of the Cup Final: Dallas has piled up 29 playoff wins over the past three seasons — the most by a team in a three-year span without reaching the Final — and all it has yielded is back-to-back losses to Edmonton in the conference finals.

Some historic franchises with similar near misses eventually broke through, but the lingering question for the Stars is whether their current group can ever take the final step.

Why 2025-26 could be different: Mikko Rantanen will be with the team for an entire season, which can only help after the Finnish winger became the best player in NHL history to skate for three different teams in the same campaign (Avalanche, Hurricanes, Stars) a year ago.

Otherwise, the Stars also shuffled the deck a fair amount over the offseason, firing coach Pete DeBoer — bringing back former bench boss Glen Gulutzan — and undergoing the biggest net loss in goals above replacement of any team. That may not seem like cause for optimism at all, but the Panthers could tell you that sometimes a drastic shakeup in identity is exactly what a team needs to finally get over the hump.

Worth a flier?

Odds to make Final: +1000 | Win Cup: +2000

It might seem wild to think the Kings, of all teams, could dethrone the Oilers in the West — seeing as L.A. has now lost to Edmonton in four straight postseasons, becoming just the fourth team in any of the big four men’s leagues to drop four consecutive playoff matchups to the same opponent (without a head-to-head win preceding the streak).

However, the Kings remain intriguing for their mix of youth and experience. And not for nothing, their offseason additions included Corey Perry, whose team has made the Cup Final in five of the past six seasons.

Odds to make Final: +2000 | Win Cup: +4000

It isn’t very hard to get excited about the Mammoth as the next potential West contender. This was the league’s seventh-youngest roster a year ago — led by Clayton Keller, Mikhail Sergachev, Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther, all 26 or younger — and the team improved its goal differential for the third consecutive season.

Adding to that foundation, Utah traded for talented forward JJ Peterka and signed veteran defenseman Nate Schmidt and forward Brandon Tanev during an offseason that was a net positive on talent added. Dating back to its Arizona days, this franchise has made the playoffs just once (2020) since 2012, but brighter days are on the horizon in Utah.

The rest of the West

Winnipeg Jets (+1200 to make Stanley Cup Final)
Minnesota Wild (+1700)
St. Louis Blues (+2200)
Vancouver Canucks (+3000)
Nashville Predators (+3300)
Calgary Flames (+4000)
Anaheim Ducks (+5000)
Seattle Kraken (+10000)
Chicago Blackhawks (+15000)
San Jose Sharks (+30000)

EUGENE, Or. — Inside the Marcus Mariota Performance Center, history dangles from wire hangers.

The glitz and glamour surrounding Oregon football is not immediately apparent. This is a practical place — a dimly lit, long hallway inside the second floor of the equipment room furnished with gray built-in closets — created not as a way to showcase, but rather to store the very thing that has become synonymous with the Ducks: their vast array of fabrics, colors and prints.

Among a sea of roughly 800 jerseys, there’s nearly every shade of green — from neon to emerald to forest to army. Here, black or white never look boring, and the yellow used over the years ranges from a Gatorade-colored hue to Cal gold. Splashes of pink, gray, brown, orange, chrome and blue complete the synthetic rainbow.

On this Saturday afternoon following Oregon’s win over Oklahoma State, football equipment administrator Kenny Farr thumbs through pages of dri-fit material and mesh as if flipping through a scrapbook. Every jersey has a story, every color and design a reason for existing at the time as well as an inevitable association that depends on something the style cannot control.

“Some of our best uniforms we’ve ever worn, we lost the games,” Farr said. “It’s hard to mention those, because they looked good, but we didn’t win the game. So it kind of goes down as a jersey I’ll try to forget about and move on to the next.”

Farr isn’t the man behind the jerseys, the designs or even the final decisions of what combinations make it out onto the field. But over the past 15 years, Farr has become a key cog in the enterprise that is Oregon’s uniforms. His role is part manager, part craftsman, part custodian and collector, as well.

“Kenny is the Godfather of Oregon football uniforms,” said Quinn Van Horne, one of the senior designers of Oregon’s latest generation of uniforms.

Throughout the past two and a half decades, as Oregon has cycled through nine different versions of its uniforms, nearly 50 iterations and countless more combinations, the fascination over its attire and the ripple effects it has caused inside and outside the program continue. While some teams have rarely wavered from their classic designs and colors over the years, the Ducks have pushed the envelope, creating a unique energy around their ensembles that attracts players and prompts other schools to try and emulate them.

“We don’t have the tradition that Ohio State or USC or Notre Dame or some of those blue bloods have,” Farr said. “So how do you counteract that? Well, you just go full steam ahead the other direction. Our tradition is to be untraditional; we’re going to always push the edge.”

BEFORE THERE WERE so many permutations of Oregon jerseys, before the well-oiled system that produces at least one new uniform every season and a brand-new set of designs every three years was set in place, the concept began with a simple question.

“How do you make a duck look cool?”

Rick Bakas was working for Nike in the mid-to-late ’90s under a subdivision called Team Sports, dedicated to apparel for professional and college teams.

Bakas, alongside a team of fellow designers who were overseen by Nike creative director — and father of Quinn — Todd Van Horne, had just redesigned the Denver Broncos’ uniforms. The success of that redesign, as well as the momentum Oregon created after its appearances in the 1995 Rose Bowl and the 1996 Cotton Bowl (the first game in which Oregon wore all Nike) led to founder Phil Knight and a cadre of Oregon alumni, including longtime Nike designer Tinker Hatfield, tasking Van Horne and his team with a mission: remake the Oregon Ducks.

As he did nearly every year, Bakas attended the Detroit Auto Show in search of inspiration. There, painted across the chassis of a concept car, Bakas found the key that unlocked everything: a type of paint called ChromaFlair, which gave off a sheen that changed colors.

“I was eating a sandwich out there by the lake, and I was feeding some bread to a mallard out there,” Bakas said. “I was looking at its head, and I was like, ‘That paint looks like this mallard’s head.'”

Bakas brought some of those green swatches of the ChromaFlair paint back to Oregon, took them into a studio and pulled out the darkest and the lightest possible versions; those became the core colors of the concept he and the team presented to Knight.

“It’s amazing how much that helped keep that futuristic feel as we got into the ‘O’ design,” Bakas said. “The project really gave us a chance to marry the two together where we could think about the entire head to toe, how everything was going to look.”

Van Horne believes that even though the color-changing helmets were one of the most important elements of the redesign, they wouldn’t have been complete without the iconic “O” — its inner outline shaped to replicate Hayward Field, Oregon’s track and field stadium, and the outer one mimicking the outline of Autzen Stadium.

The creator of that “O” logo remains in dispute — Van Horne credits Hatfield with the idea, while Bakas says it was his own — but there is no debate about its impact. When the Ducks walked out onto the field to open the 1999 season sporting new colors, with the brand-new “O” on their green ChromaFlair helmets, the paradigm of uniforms shifted.

“The players loved it,” Bakas said. “They were coming from yellow and green with a duck on loose-fitting jerseys. What we gave them was super futuristic, and they absolutely ate it up.”

FARR’S OFFICE PHONE had been ringing. Oregon had just lost 42-20 to Ohio State in the 2014 national championship while wearing a uniform combination that had not yet been featured that season — white jersey, black numbers and lettering, gray pants and a white helmet with silver wings.

“It looked great, but we didn’t win the game,” Farr said. “I had about 15 voicemails on my line the next morning, the next couple of days, of people blaming me, ‘We should have worn green! Why didn’t we wear green?’ And in my mind, I’m thinking, ‘We could have worn any color. I don’t know if we were going to tackle Ezekiel Elliot any better.'”

While it was head coach Mike Bellotti who welcomed the original redesign, it was not until the arrival of Chip Kelly in the late 2000s and through 2012 that Oregon’s sartorial flair truly matched its fast and furious style of play. More uniform combos and a 46-7 record under Kelly supercharged a frenzy, not just around the team’s on-field success, but also around its next iterations of uniforms.

“Winning on a national stage helped so much,” Van Horne said. “That’s when we really dialed up the notion of looking different every game and different combinations and working with the athletes on scripting [uniforms] and even scripting the fans.” It all led to the notion of a uniform release as an event that both Oregon fans and even college football enthusiasts speculated about. The result was an insatiable desire for a wow factor to go with every drop.

“Fans’ expectations are so high for something new and cool, like you’re going to have some groundbreaking uniform that’s never been done before every single game,” Farr said. “But that’s not reality. I would say the last probably six or seven years is really where I got the sense of there’s some weeks where some fans are disappointed because they’re expecting us to have a helmet or a jersey with LED lights in it, and we didn’t do that.”

Farr has found that sometimes, more is less, and most Ducks fans will notice small splashes just as much as they will fixate on what they think of a certain jersey-pant combination.

Sometimes, the splash can be a custom cleat, like the Ducks did last season for the Rose Bowl, or what they’re doing against Penn State this week with exclusive glow-in-the-dark cleats, gloves and accessories. Often, Farr looks to the helmet — the only piece of the outfit he can customize on a weekly basis — as a way to add something new, even if it means an inordinate amount of work for his staff of one assistant and roughly 16 students.

Game 5 uniform for @oregonfootball: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕄𝕦𝕞𝕞𝕪’𝕤 ℝ𝕚𝕟𝕘𓂀💍

– ⚫️⚪️⚫️ for the 3rd year in a row, 6th time ever

– 2nd yr in a row that the black lids make their szn debut in week 5

– 1st 🦆 uni to 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 feature glow in the dark cleats, gloves, accessories#GoDucks pic.twitter.com/DbENrpW1Cv

— Jonah Henderson (@JonahNHenderson) September 25, 2025

When Oregon faced Wisconsin in the 2020 Rose Bowl, and Farr had to reuse a uniform combination, he opted to tweak the chrome helmets with green tonal wings that he painted on to match the face mask. As the famous San Gabriel mountain sunset struck its pose during the game, the helmets reflected it perfectly.

“It ended up being one of the best things I’ve ever done,” Farr said. “Then we won the game. So, it’s iconic right around here. But if we would’ve lost the game, people would be like, ‘Ah, we didn’t have a new uniform.'”

Farr is now used to that pressure, in large part, because he knows it’s not his vision that ultimately matters. In fact, Farr has, in the past, been overruled on a design he didn’t love only to see it shine.

“We wore one at Washington, I want to say four or five years ago, where it was a yellow helmet, yellow gloves and yellow cleats, but it was all white,” Farr said. And I was like, ‘This is looking stupid, and this is going to look terrible.’ We got on the field and people thought it looked great. So they like to give me a hard time about that.”

In the end, the final fit comes down to those who actually wear the jerseys.

TEZ JOHNSON WAS playing the part of lobbyist to no avail. The Oregon wide receiver, four of his teammates and Farr all gathered early last year to make the all-important decision: What were the Ducks going to wear for 2024, and when?

Farr had already received samples of every one of the five base uniforms that made up the “Generation O” class of kits from Van Horne Brands — helmets, jerseys, base layers, socks, cleats and gloves — and had them ready for players to see.

With five to pick from, players have to get creative. Farr does, too. When EA Sports’ college football game made its return last year, Farr was able to get EA to preload all of Oregon’s uniform combinations from its latest set onto the game so current players could try different blends they might be able to replicate in real life.

Johnson was adamant: Oregon should wear an all-black combination against Washington in the season finale. His teammates disagreed. The black getup was their best look of the year, and it should be worn earlier, specifically against Ohio State.

“It was very hotly debated for way too long,” Farr said. “The rest of the guys kind of overrode his vote. He was upset about it — I was like, ‘That’s all part of why you’re on the committee, but you’re only 20% of the vote, man.’ I totally leave it up to them.”

Farr has conducted this meeting for several years now, as a way to democratize the process. Every year, Farr selects a group of players, typically upperclassmen who have shown interest, to form a committee made up of an odd number so there’s never a tie. Over the course of two to three hours, players debate their choices, weighing things like opponent, where the game falls in their schedule and even weather.

“It’s got to be guys that are opinionated and not afraid to voice their opinions, because that’s what you want, you want a healthy dialogue,” Farr said. “For the players that are part of it, it’s kind of a badge of honor.”

Once players have finalized their choices with Farr’s assistance, he will lay out the scripting in a look book and show head coach Dan Lanning before the spring game for approval. Finalizing the looks well in advance of the season helps Farr organize the high volume of inventory he has to line up. Going off-script is rare, but not impossible. Two years ago, with undefeated Colorado visiting for a highly anticipated matchup, the Ducks changed to a different uniform combination.

Now, with the postseason potentially adding four extra games on top of the conference championship, Farr & Co. have to think beyond the regular season and a single bowl appearance. In the first season of the 12-team College Football Playoff last year, once Oregon knew whether it would be the away or home team, Farr texted committee members to get them thinking about their options for a quarterfinal look so Farr could get a combination set and organize the inventory in time

When you have one set of uniforms for three seasons of games, a repeat, especially in the playoffs, is almost inevitable. Even if players love a particular combination and want to run it back, Farr will always try to find a way to add a special twist.

“My whole argument is let’s not be different, just to be different,” Farr said. “We don’t have 12 helmets, 12 jerseys or 12 pairs of pants. It’s the different combinations and tweaks you can make that keep the looks unique.”

THE DUCKS MAY not have a different uniform for every game, but the fact that it feels like they do, or that it feels like they could if they wanted to, is a unique feature of Nike’s influence.

According to Farr, while Nike sponsors many programs across the country, it tiers schools, and that determines access to perks such as special releases and custom apparel, with Tier 1 being the highest — that is, unless you’re Oregon.

“[Nike] always told us,” Farr said, “we were Tier 0.”

“When I got to Oregon, I thought the practice jersey was the game jersey,” said wide receiver Evan Stewart, who transferred from Texas A&M. “It’s just different here. You look good, feel good, you play good.”

While players get to test upcoming fabrics and jersey materials that may not come out until 2028 (Oregon has been in the current Nike Fuse chassis that just came to the NFL since 2019), Nike gets to use Oregon athletes as wear test subjects (often it’s the uniform selection committee who gets first dibs) who provide feedback on the products. And while the Van Hornes and Nike are technically behind the designs, part of their process is getting input from players.

“Sometimes we don’t talk to players about what you want to look like,” Quinn Van Horne said. “It’s, ‘Hey if Oregon was a car, what kind of car would it be? What’s your favorite superhero movie? What kind of music are you listening to? When you walk out on the field, what do you see and what do you want to picture? What do you want to feel like?'”

It’s this system that will constantly evolve as players with different perspectives cycle in and out of the program that Todd Van Horne believes will keep Oregon’s well of uniform ideas stocked for years to come.

Perhaps nothing embodies that mindset more than the fact that Oregon commits to having at least one entirely new, never-before-seen uniform design each season.

Dubbed the “energy moment,” this sixth uniform combination has, over the years, run the gamut and largely been led by players. From a bright pink helmet with black jerseys in 2013, to a pan-Polynesian heritage-themed “Ohana” uniform in 2020, to a “Stomp Out Cancer” jersey in 2017 designed by cancer survivors as well as working on a “Heroes” bright yellow fit with Lanning’s wife Sauphia (who is eight years cancer-free after being diagnosed with osteosarcoma) last season, the energy moment jersey is where Oregon and Nike often flex their muscles. A Stormtrooper look? Yes. A Lewis-and-Clark-inspired combo? Why not?

“While we want to do some throwbacks and some throwbacks need to be done, it’s like, what’s the next thing?” Farr said. “How are we going to evolve?”

There’s another committee that Farr oversees of younger Oregon players who are part of the idea process for what the energy moment jersey will be in 2026 and 2027. This year’s edition had to be approved by Nike 18 months before it saw the field against Oregon State; it featured a charcoal black and gold look with white helmets dubbed “Shoe Duck” that honors Knight.

“We talk so much about when Oregon comes out with a really big uniform, we’re extra stressed,” Quinn Van Horne said. “We really want to make sure they win, because we know what a win does to cement a uniform and its foundation.”

For Farr, the Van Hornes and Bakas, being part of establishing or furthering Oregon’s aesthetic identity is important and an inextricable part of Nike’s history over the past 25 years. But the goal, from the beginning, has always gone beyond that.

“We intentionally said it, we’re doing all this to win a national title and the uniform [redesign] was part of that too,” Bakas said. “That’s the Nike mentality — you want to be the best. The goal was to win a national championship, and the wheels were set in motion back then. The intent was there, but I didn’t think it would take 30 years or 25 years to get to this point. I thought we would’ve won one by now.”

THE BUILDING THAT houses them may be named after him, but inside the hallway of hanging jerseys, you won’t find any sporting Mariota’s name.

Players who finish their senior season at the school are given a framed jersey before their last home game. Because the jerseys are technically state property, should a player want any of his other Oregon jerseys back, the price is $50 — plus shipping and handling.

Mariota bought all of his once he made it to the NFL. Not everyone else has, though. It’s why even though that closet holds close to 1,000 jerseys, there are still 600 to 800 more sitting in storage on the floor below.

“There’s guys that have left after their five years, and maybe your freshman year was the full reset, and then three years in you got another full reset,” Farr said. “So we’ve had guys that have, at the end of their career, had 40 or 50 jerseys.”

After years of simply taking old jerseys and selling them at a school surplus sale, Farr decided on a different approach. When the performance center was built in 2016, he took the jerseys from storage in rail cars to this room, where he organized them in alphabetical order. You never know who is going to swing through Eugene one of these days wanting to reunite with their polyester past.

“For every Marcus, there’s 119 other guys on that team that maybe weren’t the star player, or maybe when they graduated they couldn’t afford to buy all their jerseys,” Farr said. “So maybe they forgot about it or whatever the situation is, and they’ll come back and they’ll just ask me, and I get to tell them ‘Yeah, here they are.'”

Farr got to do just that as recently as the game against the Cowboys this season.

Cornerback Jaylin Davies was a freshman at Oregon in 2021 before transferring to UCLA for three seasons, eventually landing with Oklahoma State. Davies and Farr greeted each other after the game on the field. Though Davies had only recorded a few snaps as a freshman, he wanted his piece of Oregon history.

“You still have my jersey?” Davies asked Farr.

“I do,” Farr told him. “Call me after the season is over.”

Farr was happy to oblige. After all, that’s one more jersey he can take off a hanger and send on its way, just in time for another to take its place.