EUGENE — About 30 minutes after his Oregon Ducks teammates walked out of practice Monday, Ty Griffin emerged with defensive backs coach John Neal.

Two days after moving from quarterback to cornerback, Griffin is trying to learn a position he has never played.

“He was going over coverage, showing me where I should be, how to break on certain routes and cover certain routes,” Griffin said of his tutorial with Neal.

With five other quarterbacks on the Oregon roster, Griffin made the switch to try to find a way to get on the field. After originally thinking wide receiver would be his best option, he instead made the move to defense for the first time since he played safety in eighth grade.

“We have a ton of receivers and we need some help on defense, so I thought that was probably my best move,” Griffin said.

Griffin, a redshirt sophomore who transferred last year from Georgia Tech, has drawn raves for his speed, and Neal is excited to see how that translates to defense.

“He just showed up in my meeting one day,” Neal said. “I was like, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ I thought he was stealing our stuff for practice the next day. But he’s very serious about it.”

Neal is putting in extra work with Griffin because he sees his potential at cornerback.

“What I was just telling him a minute ago is very few people in my career that have his kind of enormous ability I get to coach,” Neal said. “They stay at running back, they stay at wide receiver and it’s really hard to find that really special talent. This is a kid that’s 6 foot, he’s 200 (pounds), I don’t know what he runs. I just threw a pass to him and he turned his head around and caught it with one hand. I went, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

Griffin thinks he can learn his new position quickly enough to help the Ducks.

“I don’t know the defense yet, honestly,” he said. “I just got thrown in there on Saturday, so there are a lot of new calls and stuff. I’m working on calls and learning to play as a defensive back, getting low and stuff like that.”

Oregon has tried some offensive players in the secondary since the end of last season, including Charles Nelson, who worked at cornerback in the spring before returning to receiver for preseason camp. Nelson left practice Monday on crutches. Austin Daich moved from receiver to safety and remains on defense.

“He has to start running backwards,” Daich said of Griffin’s move to cornerback. “That is a bit of a challenge and seeing things from a defensive point of view. For him, analyzing everything forward and now you see things as they come. You have to understand what someone is trying to do to you and you have to tackle. That is a big transition as well.”

Griffin said making the move was tough because he played only quarterback during high school in Georgia as well as in his first seasons at Georgia Tech and Oregon.

“I have played it for so long, but at this point my only focus is on defensive back,” Griffin said. “I like playing quarterback, but I am excited to play defensive back and I look forward to getting on the field on the defensive side.”

Griffin is also returning kicks in practice, but he said at this time there are no plans for him to get snaps at wide receiver.

For now, Griffin is focusing on cornerback, and Neal said he got about 50 plays at that spot on Monday.

“I’ve got to be careful; he’s got to learn stuff,” Neal said. “There’s a lot of concepts and the learning can slow people down. How do I get him so he’s comfortable … like when he knows where he’s going with the football as a quarterback he was terrifying. He’s the fastest quarterback I’ve ever been on the field with and I coached against Michael Vick. Michael Vick is fast, Marcus (Mariota) is really fast, but this guy has that 4.4-plus speed possibly. He’s really strong. I’m excited, obviously, but I have to be realistic and it’s hard to say much more than that at this point.”