Darren Carrington will be a special player for the Ducks. No, strike that, if you saw his toe-tapping reception at the Husky two-yard line Thursday, you know he’s already a very special player, a super star in waiting. It makes sense; Carrington comes from a football family. His father, Darren Carrington II, played safety nine years for the San Diego Chargers. Football is in this kid’s blood.
With injuries to starters Bralon Addison and Keenan Lowe, Carrington has gotten the opportunity to show why he was a highly recruited four-star player out of Horizon High School in San Diego. He’s responded with 15 catches for 256 yards coming off the bench, the best of any non-starting receiver for the Ducks. He averages an excellent 17.1 yards per reception and his longest catch of the year went for 64 yards against the Michigan State Spartans. He also amassed 79 yards in five catches against Washington.
Oregon Wide Receiver, Darren Carrington
Carrington is a member of the cadre of ambitious young Duck receivers. Some analysts opine that the Ducks will become more run-oriented once Marcus Mariota moves up to the NFL, but with Addison, Stanford, Nelson and Carrington catching the ball, Scott Frost will continue to exploit the passing game to keep the offense screaming up and down the field.
Saddled with injuries during redshirt year, Carrington has expressed some frustration with his slow progression up the depth chart, but he’s practical in his approach. “I would say there maybe was frustration, but I mean who doesn’t want to play when you’re in a great program like this?” Carrington said after the Husky game. “It’s all about waiting for your time and waiting for your opportunity. Whenever the opportunity presents itself I try and run with it.”
Carrington is making the best of his opportunities, showing the coaches and the fans that he deserves to be on the field, to be a vital part of the Oregon offense. Oh, and that toe-tapper against Washington, it wasn’t a fluke. Rumor has it that he does that all the time in practice and every time he steps on the field, we can expect something special.
Top Photo by Craig Strobeck
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Raised in the Central Oregon mill town of Prineville beneath deep blue skies and rim rock, I attended the University of Oregon and during my collegiate summers, I worked in a lumber mill and also fought range fires on the Oregon High Desert for the Bureau of Land Management. After graduating from college at the University of Oregon, I swung from being budding hippy to cop work. I’m still wondering about how that came about. I was a police officer with the Port of Portland and after leaving police work, I obtained an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Vermont College. I live in Portland, Oregon with my wife, my daughter and a spunky bichon frise named Pumpkin. I’ve had short stories publishing in two Main Street Press anthologies. Harkness is my first novel.