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After just his one and only season in Eugene, Vernon Adams Jr. takes home the award as newcomer of the year. Adams did so by quite a margin as his time in the green and yellow proved to stick in fans memory as he claimed almost half of the vote. Coming in second was men's basketball player Chris Boucher with close to 33% of the vote. In third place came fellow men's hooper Tyler Dorsey and then in fourth came women's basketball player Maite Cazorla. The good news for Oregon fans is that all of these remaining three players will be back at Oregon next season with a great chance to compete in the "Player of the Year" category. Check out the voting breakdown below.
This year, however, belonged to the quarterback transfer from Eastern Washington. Coming in late to fall camp, Adams made his impact immediately by starting against his former team of the Eastern Washington Eagles. Even with a broken finger, the Ducks almost knocked off College Football Playoff participant Michigan State University in East Lansing. There's no telling how good this team could have been with a healthy Adams all year, and on the flip side there's no telling just how bad this team would have been without Adams after watching the lackluster offense without him at quarterback.
In route to winning newcomer of the year, Adams put up 26 passing touchdowns compared to just six interceptions, while doing so on a 65% pass completion percentage. Following in the footsteps of Marcus Mariota was certainly not easy for anyone, but Adams did so as well as anyone could have hoped for. Now time to hope that this time next year we're writing another "newcomer of the year" award write-up for Dakota Prukop or Travis Jonsen. In the meantime, here's to wishing Vernon a speedy recovery from yet another concussion he suffered in practice for Montreal.