Drew Mehringer Discusses the Growth of His Tight End Room

Oregon tight end coach Drew Mehringer met with media Monday evening to discuss the team and Fall camp so far. The returning position coach has seen a lot from his room the last few seasons and enters with one of the most exciting tight ends in college football, Kenyon Sadiq.

Mehringer talked about his growth and the room in general ahead of the season.

On Jamari’s Weight Loss:

“I think Jamari (Johnson) is obviously a gigantic human being. I think when he was in high school, he was 265, somewhere in there. And he was, I think he would tell you he was too big at that time. And some of that’s just being immature and undisciplined. And he’s done a really, really good job changing his body composition.”

On Adding More Weight:

“Yeah I think that he could but I think he’s (Jamari) trying to do it the right way. We’re trying to do it the right way. I think it’s definitively helped him become more agile, more athletic out there on the field. You can see he runs really really well, he changes direction well. So I’ve been excited for it. I think you never kind of know with a player exactly what their body composition should be right. It’s kind of a working process and so we knew that his body fat percentage needed to go down and we knew that his muscle mass needed to go up. I mean that part that part’s easy to figure out and so we’ll see where it goes from here.”

On the Young Guys?

“I think that, you know, any any organization has an obligation to continue to develop their their young players. You didn’t bring them here so, you know they could be emergency situations or band-aid situations for the upcoming season. I think that we have a really great room in there. I think we have a really talented room. And, yeah, Kenyon, you know, Kenyon’s in year three. You know I thought obviously, like T-Ferg had a great career here. You know, it seems like he’s doing well in L.A. And then Patrick is seemingly doing really well in Jacksonville. So, you know, I think for a lot of those guys, you look at that and you’re like, man, how long is it going to take me to get my chance? Right. And then you see Patrick Herbert, had to sit for two seasons for injury. And then even when he came back his third season, he was really our fourth tight end in the game. Then he played really, really well, I thought, for us, for those last two seasons. We’re saying, hey, if you’re good enough, you’re old enough but you got to go out and earn it. And guys like Kenyon have worked really hard for two seasons for this opportunity. You know, Roger played really well for us as a freshman last year. So if you’re a freshman that can get out there and play, great. You’re, Jamari, you’re a transfer, like get in there and mix it up. And so guys like AJ, Cade, Zach Grace, Zach played in a bunch of games for us this past year. You know, Vander’s coming along, right? Been really excited about it. They’re a really, really good group. They’re great to coach. I’m thankful for the leadership that we’ve had in that room from, from Terrence and Patrick, and it’s kind of carrying over.”

On Roger’s Growth/Return:

“I think that I was a person that had three knee surgeries, and your first time coming back and playing live football, there’s a bit of like a tentative feeling, right? Like, is this going to hurt? Is this going to happen again? And the cool thing about Roger (Saleapaga) is, Roger doesn’t seemingly care. He is 1000 miles an hour, full go. I said, “hey, you know, we might have to like modify some of your reps. And he said, I don’t want any of that. So it’s really cool to watch a kid that went through what he went through and come out and is running around, like nothing happened. And he’s grown a lot. He’s put on a bunch of weight.
He’s 245-plus, at the moment and doing really well. There’s always some movement pattern things that you got to clean up post post injury. And so some of that stuff. But the same player that we saw play as a freshman, I think it’s almost like it never happened other than he’s got a knee brace on right now. And how long he’ll wear that, I’m not sure. If it was up to Roger, he’d never wear it again, and how long he’ll wear that, I’m not sure. So, he’s doing great. Still making some plays, making the same plays that we saw him make as a freshman, continuing to grow.”