Arizona linebacker Beau Jandreau committed to Oklahoma on June 23, a 6-1, 210 three-star from Hamilton High in Chandler.
Jandreau visited the Ducks on June 13. While not a premier prospect, the Oregon staff wants to add at least two linebackers this cycle with Bryce Boettcher entering his bonus extra-senior year, Kamar Mothudi, Brayden Platt and Dylan Williams becoming redshirt freshmen.
In the 2025 class they picked up just one, four-star Gavin Nix of IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, making it time to replenish. The lone commit at the position thus far is a good one, Ventura HIgh, Ventura, California's Tristan Phillips, 6-4, 217, a four-star and a plus-athlete, a Top 150 recruit.
The first thing you want to see in a linebacker highlight tape is the ability to sift through the blocking and blast the ball carrier, and Phillips has that kind of range and mobility, a hungry athlete who loves to hit. That innate desire and inner fire is crucial. It's a personality unique to the position, though great safeties are cut from the same cloth.
Still, Phillips needs a partner, a running mate, a Butch to his Sundance. Linebackers best come in pairs. Jeremy Asher and Rich Ruhl. Blair Phillips and Anthony Trucks. Casey Matthews and Spencer Paysinger. Kiko Alonso and Michael Clay.
To get that kind of chemistry in the linebacking corps, you've got to have twin terrors in the middle, two guys who survey the formation, slip in their mouth guards and nod to each other before the snap of the ball, ready to attack in unison, swarming to the football, dividing the spoils between them like two Vikings pillaging a coastal hamlet.
Phillips needs his opposite. Oregon currently tracks two of the best in Tyler Atkinson and Nick Abrams. Problem is, Atkinson is from Loganville, Georgia and is tight with the Bulldog staff, having visited Athens close to a dozen times. He came out to Oregon on June 6.
Atkinson announces in early August, just as August camp begins around the country. He told Chad Simmons of On3, "Georgia is the team to beat and the team setting the pace." Taking meat out of the jaws of Uga is a rare thing.
That leaves Abrams, who has good size at 6-2, 210, a four-star from McDonogh HIgh in Owings Mills, Maryland, the rich recruiting ground that brought the Ducks four-star cornerback Brandon Finney in the 2025 class.
Dan Lanning and the Oregon coaching staff have been fierce in the D.C-Maryland-Virginia prospect corridor, pulling down elite recruits like Finney, running back Dink Riggs and Ify Obidegwu from under the noses of the Terps and Nittany Lions, staking their new territory in the Big Ten. It's always good to rankle the opposition, sing lusty sea-chants from their bay as the night fires dim.
On June 24, Abrams earned linebacker MVP at the Rivals Five-Star Camp. Alabama, Georgia, Michigan and Oregon are in his final group.
After his visit to Oregon he said, “They didn’t really have to pitch anything. They showed me why Oregon could be my home. I definitely felt it.”
This is one the Ducks need to win. While five months remain until early signing day the stock of elite linebackers is dwindling with Talanoa Ili committing to USC, and Xavier Griffin projected to Alabama. An old linebacker himself, Lanning knows blood-thirsty brutes in the middle are the soul of a defense, its violent raging heart.