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With apologies to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, it’s Dwayne Stanford who’s been “a rock” for Oregon’s offense in preseason camp. That was the term UO coach Mark Helfrich used Saturday to describe Stanford’s performance through a week of camp. A junior who started 13 games in 2014, Stanford has been a dependable target for Oregon’s quarterbacks entering the team’s first major scrimmage of camp on Tuesday morning. “He’s running the right routes, blocking the right guys, helping out the quarterbacks,” said Jeff Lockie, who quarterbacked Stanford and the rest of the first-string offense through the first week. “Definitely a guy you can rely on every day.” Last season, Stanford caught 43 passes for 639 yards and six touchdowns. He started all but two games on Oregon’s march to a College Football Playoff National Championship appearance, following a year lost to a knee injury in 2013.
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Bright Ugwoegbu (pronounced oog-way-boo) is a prototypical college linebacker when he’s wearing his No. 47 uniform. He’s lean (6-foot-1, 217 pounds) and fit. A multisport athlete at Seven Lakes High School in Katy, Texas, he’s athletic, runs well, loves to hit, and is making a strong case for a starting role in a position where opportunity abounds due to graduation and other circumstances. “After having a good spring and being in the mix right now, my goal is to hopefully become a freshman All-American, to be a leader on the defense and contribute in any way that I can,” he said, speaking while cooling off after a recent practice. An all-district honoree and top-100 Houston Chronicle prospect following his senior year at Seven Lakes, he has a big future on the field and it would not be surprising to see him in the starting lineup with the Beavers host Weber State at 5 p.m. Sept. 4 in their 2015 opener on the Pac-12 Networks.
