Oregon Football: Where do Ducks go after missing out on Jarek Broussard?

Former Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year Jarek Broussard committed to Michigan State on Sunday, so where does Oregon football go from here?

Dan Lanning has had a busy offseason with Oregon football thus far and it’s about to get really crazy with National Signing Day approaching this week.

The new head coach has had to deal with attrition as well as addition. He’s lost a number of players to the transfer portal, but he’s also brought in a handful of players.

The position that has taken the biggest hit, however, has been the running back room. The Ducks have lost Trey Benson to Florida State, Travis Dye to USC, and CJ Verdell to the NFL draft. Sean Dollars even entered his name into the portal for a minute before rethinking that decision and returning to Oregon.

Lanning looked to have addressed this mass exodus in the running back room with a potential transfer in Colorado’s Jarek Broussard who was on campus last week.

Broussard, a former Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year, looked like he could be a strong lean toward Oregon in order to remain in the conference and out west where he’s already familiar with plenty of playing time headed his way, but Michigan State got a visit from him this past weekend and Mel Tucker closed the deal.

So where does Oregon go from here with only two running backs currently on the depth chart in Byron Cardwell and Dollars?

Next steps for Oregon football in the backfield

Oregon only has two running backs with any sort of experience on the roster and now that Broussard is off the table and there aren’t really any worth targeting in the portal right now, the Ducks have two options.

One is making sure that four-star Jordan James signs with the Ducks on National Signing Day. He’s currently committed to Georgia but he’s been trending toward Oregon for weeks.

The other option is waiting a few months to land a transfer running back with more likely to enter the portal after spring ball. The portal backs right now aren’t exactly the cream of the crop so if Lanning can be patient and realize that there will be more entering in the coming months, he could land a stud.

Of course, Lanning could do both of these. I could see the Ducks landing James on signing day at the very least and then just scouting the portal to see if there’s anyone worthwhile.

Missing out on Broussard isn’t the end of the world. A backfield with Cardwell, Dollars, and James would not be too shabby.