EUGENE — Eight tight ends are listed on the Oregon football roster for the upcoming season, but only one with any game experience, sophomore Jacob Breeland.

Just where that leaves Bend’s Cam McCormick is unknown as preseason camp is underway. But the redshirt freshman from Summit High School appears brimming with confidence and ready to compete for playing time at the position.

The 6-foot-5-inch, 241-pound McCormick said that during the summer all the tight ends worked hard and pushed each other to improve.

“I think that’s what it really comes down to, just the little brotherhood that the tight ends have together, and just a family that we all know we have each other’s backs,” McCormick said earlier this week at Autzen Stadium just before the start of preseason camp. “I love the guys. I call them my brothers. We go through tough times together — around the field sweating and getting at each other, but at the end of the day we’re there for each other and we’ll do anything for each other.”

Former Oregon tight ends Pharaoh Brown, Johnny Mundt and Evan Baylis all graduated after combining for 65 catches, 828 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns in 2016.

Breeland returns after catching six passes for 123 yards last season, averaging 20.5 yards per reception. He said he plans to be the starter at tight end but added that he expects competition during camp this month.

“We’ve all gotten a lot stronger and bigger, so we’ve all gotten a lot more confidence,” Breeland said of the Ducks’ tight ends. “I’m hoping I can just go out there and prove that I can be the starter.”

The 6-5, 237-pound Breeland, of Mission Viejo, California, said that he has been impressed with McCormick’s improvement during spring practices and summer workouts.

“He’s gotten a lot better,” Breeland said. “He’s gotten a lot more confident, I think. A lot more confident with just the way college football … how fast it is and how big people are. I think he’ll do great during the season, too.”

Six of the tight ends on the Ducks’ roster are from the state of Oregon, including McCormick, senior Ivan Faulhaber (Eugene), junior Taylor Stinson (Happy Valley), sophomore Ryan Bay (Tigard), sophomore Drake Brennan (Grants Pass), and freshman Jalontae Walker (Milwaukie). Sophomore tight end Matt Mariota, the younger brother of former Oregon quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota, is from Honolulu.

McCormick, an all-Intermountain Conference tight end and defensive end for Summit in 2014 before suffering a season-ending knee injury early in his senior year in 2015, said he learned a lot from three Oregon senior tight ends during his redshirt season and has grown close to the current crop of tight ends in Eugene.

“It’s really exciting,” McCormick said. “Just coming off last season, and learning everything from the last three tights ends that left … what I got to take from them was really good. I’m really just excited to see where the season leads for all the tight ends and what we can become as a group.”

New Oregon coach Willie Taggart, hired away from South Florida last December after Mark Helfrich was fired in the wake of a 4-8 season, did not use tight ends heavily in the passing game of his “Gulf Coast offense” — a sort of spread run-pass option — with the Bulls.

Neither of his top two tight ends caught more than two passes in any game last season. Still, Oregon quarterback Justin Herbert was quoted saying during spring practice that the Ducks’ tight ends provide “such a mismatch that we need to use.”

The website oregon.247sports.com notes that “Breeland and McCormick possess the best receiving talent of the returning tight ends and could find time in two tight end sets.”

McCormick had a difficult start to the Taggart era when in January he was hospitalized for several days, along with two other Oregon players, after intense strength and conditioning workouts. The players reportedly complained of muscle soreness and showed other symptoms of potential exercise-related injury.

McCormick said he is fully recovered from that incident and that he trusts completely the Oregon coaching and training staff. He added that the experience taught him to “know his limits,” but he declined to comment further.

Since that incident, the Taggart era has been mostly a positive experience for McCormick.

“It was a little hard at first, just bringing in a new coach was kind of like a shocker, but over the course of time it’s been a lot better, and it’s really good,” McCormick said. “He (Taggart) just kind of brings the energy, the juice. He gets everyone excited to be here and I think that’s what we need, just to be excited to come play football and do something that we all love, and we have one shot to do it.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0318,

mmorical@bendbulletin.com