Stanford Football Week 1 questions surround Oregon’s starting quarterback

The Stanford Cardinal are rapidly approaching the 2020 season opener on the football field. As they prepare to travel to Eugene, Oregon, to face the Oregon Ducks, one of the biggest questions that not only the Cardinal but also the national media are trying to answer, is who the Ducks will be trotting out at quarterback when they open their 2020 campaign.

Justin Herbert is now the starting quarterback for the Los Angeles Chargers and as such, the former Duck leaves behind four years of starting quarterback experience from the Ducks roster.

What is known is that the Ducks are going to be starting either Boston College transfer Anthony Brown or sophomore Tyler Shough. While we don’t know who, we do know a bit about each player so far. Here’s what we do indeed know.

Shough was a four-star prospect, and the state of Arizona’s No. 1 overall player in the class of 2018. He’s played in four games in his career, all last season, logging a 2019 statline of 12-15 for 144 yards and three touchdowns passes. At 6’5, 220 pounds, he’s in a similar mold and player type than that of Herbert.

Brown, on the other hand, is extremely experienced and started at quarterback for three seasons at Boston College. He finished his BC career going 373-683 for 4,731 yards and 40 touchdowns against 20 interceptions. He also added 509 career rushing yards and four more scores for the Eagles over his time in Chestnut Hill.

That’s what we do know, but what we don’t know is which of those two will play first, how much they’ll play and if we’ll see both of them in some capacity in Week 1.

And according to Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal, we probably won’t know until game time. He said in a conference, and transcribed by our friends over at Duck Territory, that naming a quarterback isn’t important for him, nor his team.

“Naming one, I think that’s more important for the outside world than it is internally,” said Cristobal. “Our guys watch our guys perform. Right now we have tremendous confidence in two guys.”

Cristobal also spoke about Shough and how he has run with the first-team offense mostly this offseason, but Brown has been right behind him.

“That being said, Anthony has done and [has] had a great camp,” said Cristobal. “He is right there pushing, and is going to continue to push, and we will allow him to push.”

There you have it, at least we know what’s going on as best we can regarding this situation.

If I had to guess, I’d expect we see Shough to start, with some sort of expected plan to see Brown on a predetermined drive, like drive No. 3 or the first drive of the second half. Some sort of situation like that.