Dan Lanning critical after Ducks' Wednesday practice

Oregon coach Dan Lanning said the Ducks' practice Wednesday was focused on “third down and red area," and he did not sugarcoat that the team’s performance was not to their standard.

“We have high expectations for ourselves than how we performed today, certainly last week,” Lanning said. “Our biggest opponent right now is Oregon.”

One other thing that Lanning wasn’t coy talking about was the coverage issues from last week and the measures he’ll take to fix them.

“In a situation where you have to play deny-the-ball defense, we have to count on somebody to be able to cover their man,” Lanning said. “If they can’t cover their man, we have to put somebody else in that can.”

After too many missed tackles to count last Saturday against Georgia, practicing wrap-ups where it’s most needed to make a tackle (red zone) is what Lanning hopes makes a better team performance against Eastern Washington.

“We’ve done a lot of tackling,” Lanning said. “We have to be willing tacklers. We have to be contact-tough.”

Defensive linemen Casey Rogers and Sam “Taki” Taimani also shared their thoughts Wednesday and spoke heavily about the team’s mentality after the Georgia loss and how they’ve gone about addressing the mistakes they made.

“Obviously it affected us, but our bond is so good that we just pick each other up,” Taimani said. “That wasn’t what we wanted to put on display but I know this week, with the way we’re working it’ll be a good week for us.”

“We want to fix this,” Rogers said. “That’s not Oregon style of football, so we’re ready to show our style and get this thing turned around.”

One thing that was brought up by Taimani was the distractions and outside noise that student-athletes face on social media. He seemingly understood the frustrations that some members of the Oregon fanbase might have.

“Our fanbase means everything to us,” Taimani said. “We understand that it’s upsetting to them too.”