Oregon Football honors Spencer Webb on first anniversary of his death
In the late hours July 13, 2022, news started to come out about the death of Oregon tight end Spencer Webb. He passed away in a cliff-diving accident that day just 22 years of age, a few weeks before the Ducks started their football season.
One year later, Oregon paid tribute to Webb with a video compilation on its Twitter page.
“In loving memory of our Teammate. Our Friend. Our Brother,” the graphic at the end of the video said.
Spencer Webb was a beloved figure in Eugene during his career with the Ducks. After his death, the program and other Pac-12 teams paid tribute to him. Teams across the conference painted the four-yard markers yellow to honor his planned number change from 18 to 4. Additionally, coach Dan Lanning said the Ducks found ways to honor Webb in practice and before games.
“It takes interaction outside of football,” Lanning said at Oregon’s 2022 media day. “I can’t commend our players enough for handling extremely tough situations in really unique ways. There’s work to be done. There’s not a day that goes by that our program doesn’t remember Spencer and there won’t be a day going forward that we don’t remember Spencer. Like I said, we start every team meeting off [by] recognizing him. It’s the first thing we do. And that’s not going to change.”
Webb joined Oregon in 2018, but redshirted that season and then only played one game due to injury during the COVID-19-impacted 2020 campaign. He was gearing up for his redshirt junior season at the time of his passing.
In two seasons, Webb had 31 receptions for 296 yards and four touchdowns.
After Webb’s death, his girlfriend Kelly Kay announced she was pregnant with his child. However, Webb’s family said it wants proof that’s the case and provided reasons why in a lengthy statement in May. Kay gave birth to the child on March 30.
“Our family has tried to focus on our grieving process since the passing of our brother, son, and nephew,” the statement read, in part. “We grieve both individually and as a family, trying to cope with this tragedy. In the first hours after Spencer passed, and only a few days after they met, Kelly began talking about the possibility of being pregnant. Since Spencer isn’t able to handle this situation himself, we have tried to navigate this sensitive space as a family.
“That being said, our family has doubts and concerns regarding the paternity of this child for a multitude of reasons. Until this point, we’ve remained silent in hopes that a DNA test would confirm Spencer as the father. Unfortunately, Kelly has been unwilling to compromise regarding the matter in which the DNA test is collected. Due to the inability to agree on a suitable DNA collection process, we wanted to put together a statement and timeline to help provide the family’s perspective on these circumstances.”