Kenny Dillingham explains his vision of Oregon's offense; "we want to be a pro-style offense that plays fast"

Kenny Dillingham made it clear on Saturday that Oregon’s offense is going to look vastly different than it did a season ago.

Dillingham, now a little over four months into his tenure as Oregon’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, is taking over a Duck offense that has a plethora of weapons, one of the more experienced offensive lines in the country, and a talented trio of quarterbacks vying for the starting job.

Now, he’s in the early phases of assembling those pieces into a unit that will need to be drastically better than it was a year ago under Mario Cristobal and his staff.

While meeting with reporters Saturday for the first time since he joined Dan Lanning’s staff, Dillingham was asked about the base principles and philosophies of his offense, and what Oregon fans can expect to see.

“We want to be a pro-style offense that plays fast,” Dillingham said. “So what that means is we want to put our athletes in the best position to win one-on-one situations. But we want to be able to do that. But we want to be able to do that at different variations of tempo.

“So, whether we’re playing super fast. … We’re trying to be able to create a variation of tempo, while also creating matchups via one-on-ones based on our personnel groupings.”

Dillingham elaborated further and delivered an answer that will be music to the ears of those who are hoping for a more dynamic attack than the Ducks deployed under Cristobal and former offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead.

“I think for us, this system is built for playmakers,” Dillingham said. “We are going to put our playmakers in space. If those playmakers are… up front, we’re going to run the football. If our best playmakers are on the perimeter and can win one on ones, we’re going to give them opportunities.

“In years past, we’ve thrown the ball for over 4,000 yards in this system, and we’ve run the ball for over 4,000 yards in this system. So this system is adaptable to the people we have on our team. We’re going to adapt it to those players.”

Dillingham said it’s still too early in the spring for him to make a hard-and-fast evaluation of where the Ducks’ true strengths are, as there have only been a handful of practices in pads.

However, he did say that his system’s success will not be dependent on having a dual-threat quarterback. After a follow-up question, he noted that there will be instances where Oregon’s quarterbacks operate under center but did not clarify how frequently that will be the case.

“We’re gonna be able to read players on the field based on who’s back there,” Dillingham said. “Whether we wanna read safeties, we wanna read linebackers, or we wanna read ends. It’s all predicated on who’s back there taking the snaps.”

Dillingham was asked how his players have adjusted to his scheme after playing in a system last season that was notably run-heavy and geared toward beating opponents up front.

“I think they’re excited,” Dillingham said. “I think they’re excited to not get loaded boxes. There’s nothing wrong with the mentality of running the football; there’s been a lot of teams throughout the test of time who win a lot of games saying, ‘We’re gonna run the ball and that dude seven yards off the ball is gonna have to tackle me, and if you don’t make the tackle, we’re gonna go for 50.’

“There’s nothing wrong with that philosophy. It’s just not the philosophy I have. I wanna try to put our players in the best position to win one-on-ones with guys as far away from them as possible in the run game. If those guys get too close, we’re gonna have to get out of that play and try to put ourselves in a better play with better numbers, better angles, and better grass.”