Oregon ran through its first practice of fall camp Wednesday afternoon.
The practice was closed to media, but head coach Dan Lanning spoke to reporters afterward.
Watch the full interview here and scroll down for a complete transcript of his comments.
Opening comments ...
"Good and bad in Day 1. The good, everybody's excited to be out there, everybody wants to get to work. The bad, we've got a lot of things that we can work on, right? But I'll say this, I think our guys are hungry to go work on those things. Not a lot of execution errors. We've got to get in football shape, and the only way you get in football shape is playing football. So we pushed at a high level today, we've got to come out and push at a high level again tomorrow. We've got to be elite when it comes to our recovery and things we do away from the field, but overall positive and we're going to keep moving in the right direction."
Was Dante able to go today?
"Yeah, Dante was able to go. Jerry Mixon's the other person who was in ... thank God they're both healthy. Jerry had a little laceration they were able to stitch up, both those guys are going to be good. They're both good."
Question about using the Monarc Seeker throwing machine to shoot out footballs to WRs and DBs ...
"You want great game reps. We haven't had it long enough to be able to tell you a ton, but at the end of the day we want to create game reps. We want to get as many reps as we can possibly get. That's something that allows us to get quick, effective reps -- you know the ball's going to be in a certain location and you can execute at a high level."
Nishad Strother and Junior Angilau both missed spring, how has it helped the OL getting them back?
"It creates more competition for us for sure, and you want to be healthy up front. At some point you're going to have some other guys that are going to be involved in the threshold for us being able to play, and both of those guys are guys that are going to push to be playing a lot. So having those guys out there creates great competition and makes our team better."
More on Nishad ...
"Yeah, you watch his film. You watch his film, it stands out and you just talk to him as a person, what his goals are, what he wants to achieve -- he comes from a great family. But ultimately he's a driven guy that has some goals in front of him, and I thought he was a good fit from a character standpoint and certainly a talent standpoint."
Beyond Bucky Irving, what are your thoughts on the RB group as a whole?
"I think we have a great running back room. I think we've got multiple guys in that room that can push to play a lot of snaps. Obviously, Noah's got a lot of experience, Jordan's got a lot of experience as well for us. We want to use as many guys who can play for us at a high level."
How does the center position look and was that the source of any execution errors today?
"No, no, it was actually pretty clean. Bryce (Boulton) had a couple errant snaps today, but overall from what I was able to see our execution there was good. We certainly put an emphasis on it."
What did you see today that you were most happy about?
"I'm just excited to be out here on the grass. I think every one of our players is as well."
Have you ever seen a WR wear No. 99 before?
"Not that I can think of."
When you have the transfer receivers with experience are the expectations different in terms of mental errors?
"We have the expectation for anybody to come in and be able to play. It's certainly easier for a guy that has experience, but we have some young guys too, they have the resources in front of them to execute at a high level and if they learn it they're going to help us."
Some of the linebackers put on weight this offseason, how do you see that translate?
"Yeah, ultimately, I didn't think we had enough knock-back tackles last year. We got to be a team that can have knock-back tackles and not lose yards after contact. You start doing that by getting bigger and stronger in the weight room, and I think our guys challenged themselves to do that."
What is your SWOT analysis, how does it apply to fall camp?
"It's really just going through your strengths, weaknesses, what are the obstacles in front of you, what the opportunities and what are the threats? For us, that was really an offseason study, but you could argue we do a SWOT analysis every day after practice too. We're going to go in here and watch this last practice, figure out what we did well, figure out what we didn't do well enough, what's going to get in the way of us doing that, what are the opportunities we can take advantage of that we didn't. It's kind of the same process every day, it becomes part of your process."
How do you get everyone on the same page from veterans like Bo to guys going through their first camp?
"Your veterans have to serve as some of your coaches, right? They have to help bring guys along too and that's certainly an expectation for us -- these guys that have been through this, they've got to be able to pull some young guys along with them. The guys that are running around like they're chickens with their heads cut off, they've got to figure out where we're going. And that's a process, but they're doing a good job of picking it up."
After crosstraining in the spring, do you want to have guys dedicated to one spot?
"We'll always train guys at multiple positions because at some point we'll have to play guys at multiple positions. On game day, we're going to try to make sure we put guys in the best position for them to be successful and for our team to be successful, but to only train a guy at one spot, in my opinion, is a chance to put yourself in a bad position."
Are your team goals more day to day, week to week?
"You've got all of them, right? You've got goals that last for an entire season, you've got a goal for a day -- what am I going to improve on today? I think you just have to be really open and honest about what those look like, but yeah, you have long-term goals, you have short-term goals and you have to be able to assess and change them."
What was a goal for today you saw executed in practice?
"Play fast, right? We want to see play fast. I saw that in moments and I saw moments that it wasn't as good, so it's something we can continue to improve on."
On why they're practicing in afternoon ...
"A lot of things they set up for us -- I like having the ability to have meetings and walks in the morning and have an install fresh on your mind before you go into the afternoon when you're on the field. I think having the heat up is good for us early in the season when we can train in harder environments. You play games in the afternoon and at night, right? So doing that early benefits us, and later on when we get into our class schedule we'll transition back to morning."
What about Bryce Boettcher makes him a guy who can slide down a level and play inside?
"He likes to hit. He's a good tackler, right. I think his best attributes are those attributes you like to see in a linebacker. It's going to be a transition process for him, but he has good speed, he gets to the ball, plays with a certain level of toughness so having him down there I think helps us."
We've seen a couple guys move from safety to linebacker, why does that make so much sense?
"Well, I think you put your guys in position where you think they can play at a high level for you. Ultimately, you can't play linebacker the way you used to in college football. The linebacker that goes A-gap to A-gap doesn't exist anymore. You've got to be able to cover tight ends, you've got to be able to cover backs, you have to run sideline to sideline so that's a big piece of it."
Lots of talk about conference realignment, what are your thoughts on that?
"Yeah, I've been worried about practice today. I do not have time to read the nightly news. Maybe I'll catch up on it around midnight tonight"
