Oregon looks like they're going to land another great class even with Donte Williams at USC upping their recruiting. Wiltfong put in Oregon crystal balls today for Jaylin Davies, Keanu Williams, and Xavier Worthy. There's some chatter that they're now back in it for Korey Foreman and JT Tuimoloau. People call Cristobal a bag man and meathead, but it seems like that combination works since they're definitely now the most talented team on the West Coast.
Their defense is absolutely loaded this year. Deommodore Lenoir, Thomas Graham, Mykael Wright, Jevon Holland, Justin Flowe, Noah Sewell, and Kayvon Thibodeaux are all future draft picks. They have a ton of other quality players like Mase Funa, Austin Faoliu, and Jordon Scott. Their offense actually doesn't seem to be that talented this year with the glaring exception of the best OT in college football, Penei Sewell. Their receivers and backs seem to be mostly good, but I can't see any of the upperclassmen in those groups being high draft picks. I think CJ Verdell could be, but he's always injured so it's hard to tell. I'm not sold on Tyler Shough at QB, but he could live up to his ranking. Joe Moorhead will certainly try his best to do that. Their o line as a unit seems like it could be just average this year despite Sewell just because they lost four starters. The guys projected to replace them are all upperclassmen though so that should prevent the line from being bad.
The one position they've kind of struggled to recruit is RB. They have a few four stars now on the depth chart, but they've yet to land a guy who any of the top schools would have taken in the past three classes (with the exception of Sean Dollars, but I view him as more of an APB).
USC should win the South while Oregon wins the North. That game will be interesting this year because it's strength vs. strenght and weakness vs. weakness. Even though USC's offense is now good, I think Oregon's defense can contain them. Also, I think USC's defense will be improved this year because they return a bunch of starts from young and improving players. I think that unit can easily contain Oregon's offense just like vice versa. I'm not sure why I wrote so much about Oregon, but I'm pretty sure I predicted them to win a title under Cristobal in a longform post last year, so I guess it's par for the course.