EUGENE, Ore. -- Justin Herbert was such an Oregon honk growing up, he practically quacked. Herbert played high school football here. He sat in the Autzen Stadium stands cheering on Chip Kelly and LaMichael James during the glory days.

For Duck's sake, his grandpa was an Oregon wide receiver.

If Herbert was any more Duck, he'd have wings.

Still, the local football program almost screwed it up on his recruiting visit.

"When I showed up, my name tag was spelled wrong," Oregon's quarterback confided to CBS Sports.

That day, "Herbert" was spelled "Hebert." Who could blame him if he was resentful? It had missed Oregon's radar that Herbert would have crawled to the program Phil Knight built. Among Herbert's offers were Montana State, Northern Arizona, Portland State and Eastern Washington.

"I didn't really tell them," Hebert said of the misspelling. "It was actually funny. I came here late my junior year with a couple of [my high school] coaches. I told them, 'They have no idea who I am. This isn't going to work out.' I think I still have the name tag."

The slight could have been tragic for Oregon. Herbert goes into this season as possibly the No. 1 quarterback prospect in the 2020 NFL Draft. He is certainly the quarterback toast of the West Coast, perhaps the biggest reason No. 11 Oregon -- and by extension the Pac-12 -- have a chance to get back on the national radar.

Not to mention Herbert giving Oregon fans everywhere the warm and fuzzies by staying for his senior season. USC's Matt Barkley might have been the last Pac-12 locally born-and-bred quarterback to stay for his senior year when all the indicators said, "Go to the NFL! Now!"

That was seven years ago.

"I dreamed of going to play at Oregon. This is all I ever wanted to do -- one more year of this," Herbert said.

There is the added built-in incentive for all of the Oregon seniors. Mario Cristobal is their third coach. They should get credit -- no, make that validation -- for sticking through not only that upheaval but a 4-8 freshman season that ended with Mark Helfrich's firing. Willie Taggart came and went quickly, leaving after one season in 2017.

"On that 4-8 team, the quarterback was a freshman," Cristobal said. "So were 3-4 offensive linemen. They were puppies. They were fighting their butts off. You could tell the potential there."

The offensive unit that will take the field Saturday night against No. 16 Auburn at AT&T Stadium has grown up. Oregon's offensive line is one of the best in the country. Herbert is trying to rebound from a dip in production that can be attributed to both injuries (four receivers have been hurt since early August) and a startling 52 drops last season by his wideouts.

But if you want you want the details of what is incentivizing Herbert's additional year, you'll have to get past the name tag.

Why, he was asked, was a fourth year at Oregon worth more than a $30 million NFL contract?

"That's something I had trouble with -- making that decision," Herbert said. "Growing up, I kind of [thought] the NFL wasn't my end goal. I played football because I loved football."

The support system for Herbert this year is amazing. Herbert confided in Peyton Manning while at the Manning Passing Academy this summer in Thibodeaux, Louisiana. Oregon senior associate athletic director Jeff Hawkins has been working the camp for a quarter century.

"Peyton would only talk to him if he had not made up his mind," Hawkins said. "I never asked Peyton, nor did I ever ask Justin what the conversation was about. [But] I think Justin knew all along he was staying. There are just some things, in my mind. He's never beaten Stanford. He never won a Pac-12 championship."

Manning is the living, breathing, hall-of-fame authority on the subject. He famously delayed his NFL career one year for his final season at Tennessee in 1997. A consensus All-American campaign ended with 11 wins and an SEC championship … but no national title.

"I asked him if he would have done anything different," Herbert said of Manning. "He said he wouldn't. For me, it came down to these past three years despite not winning as much as we would have liked to the first year."

The 4-8 freshmen improved to 7-6 in 2017 and 9-4 in 2018. A day after Christmas, the school announced Herbert would return.

"It's in his blood," Cristobal said. "This is his dream. He just feels we're scratching the surface."

Hawkins has already taken the unprecedented step of calling agents -- instead of the other way around -- to determine who is interested in representing Herbert.

He has developed what he calls the "Herbert Matrix." It's a spreadsheet showing the top quarterbacks of the last 20 years along with the agents and advisors that represented them.

"Justin makes the decision," Hawkins said. "What we try to do is formulate. We reverse engineered it."

The whole process reflects a healing of the Oregon program. When Taggart jumped to Florida State after the 2017 season, Cristobal was elevated from co-offensive coordinator/offensive line coach, at least keeping some kind of continuity.

"I fell for it hook, line and sinker," said Cristobal of the Northwest.

That's significant for the Cuban-American Miami native, former Hurricane offensive lineman and national championship assistant at Alabama.

The program certainly looks ready for a resurgence. Last year's win at Cal was the first on the road in the Pac-12 for Oregon since 2016. Philosophically, the Ducks have an SEC look, built from the inside out at the line of scrimmage.

Cristobal landed a top-10 recruiting class that included national No. 1 recruit Kayvon Thibodeaux, who could begin his career Saturday starting at defensive end against Auburn.

It doesn't end there. Cristobal is so enthralled with the Willamette Valley that he now calls home that he's ready to offer fishing tips.

"Right behind this tree line right there, we caught 76 trout," Cristobal said pointing from his office to a body of water beyond the practice fields.

Wait … we?

"We had an official visit," Cristobal said. "We had to take the fishing license out of his [daily] entertainment fee," allowed by the NCAA.

That visit can't work out better than Herbert's did for the Ducks. At a school where a misspelling didn't matter, you might say Herbert has made a name for himself.