Oregon came away with a dominant 63-19 win on Saturday at Autzen Stadium after a shaky start that included just the second interception of the season for Bo Nix. Once the Ducks settled down their offense took over accumulating nearly 600 yards en route to the lopsided victory over Cal.
After the game, Oregon head coach Dan Lanning met with reporters to provide his thoughts on the win and much more.
Read the full transcript of his postgame press conference below:
Opening statement
“Came away with the win, there were some moments in the game that I certainly wish we could have back and execute a little bit better. I think we put ourselves in some tough situations at times. Didn’t play to our standard of play in the first half, but I thought our guys came back and did a much better job from an execution standpoint in the second half and showed some flashes of what we really could be. I am really proud of some of the younger players in our program who got opportunities in this game to really highlight their talent. I thought we did well on special teams. Big kick from Ross James to flip the field. Awesome tackle by Zach Grisham, a guy who works so hard in our program that you guys maybe don’t know as well as we do, but guys in our locker room were thrilled to see him have a moment. How impressive was Ty Thompson when he came into the game and operated at a high level? I certainly don’t want this to go missed, but thoughts and prayers for Jaivian Thomas. He got hurt there and I’m proud of our medical staff and their medical staff for being able to give him care. We’re praying for great news for him. You never want to see players get injured in this game.”
On changes for a cutdown on penalties
“There’s a lot of them. I’ll have to go look at the film and see. You’re not always going to be able to execute on second-and-long when you put yourselves in those situations, so we’re going to coach it. We’re going to coach it really hard. We’ve had games where we’ve played really clean ball and we’ve had games like this, and it is certainly disappointing. We’ve got to figure out ways to emphasize it and eliminate penalties that should never exist and just play clean football. You get what you emphasize and obviously, we haven’t been emphasizing it at a high enough level.”
On Tez Johnson's effort
“Tez is a guy that battles every single moment he is on the field. I know that he wants that first play back just like all of us do, but those moments happen in football. When you see adversity hit and see guys go out and respond and react to adversity, I think it’s really important. He certainly wants to be coached hard. He demands the best for himself, and we’ll continue to challenge him and see him grow as a player.”
On what was seen from Tez Johnson and all of his targets in the game
“He was part of our plan to be able to hit some three-level routes, to be able to execute some stuff with him with his speed across the field, he’s a hard guy to cover. If you decide to go man, he creates matchup issues with the speed that he has. That’s something we want to continue to figure out how to use in the passing game to create a weapon for us.”
On the next-play mindset in the first half
“I thought our guys responded. Unfortunately, I think we hurt ourselves too much today. That is something we have to go out and coach. That’s a hungry locker room and they are certainly not satisfied. Last week has nothing to do with this week and this week has nothing to do with the next week. It is about what product we put on the field throughout the week. For us to continue to grow as a team and I’m anxious to see our guys do that this week.”
On Casey Rogers performance
“Thought our D-line in general had to have a dominant day. We were doing a lot with less because of some of the schemes that they run. Where they were running insert plays where we had to have a D-lineman win up front he got some elite pressure. That is a great example of a guy who works every day. He is the definition of a leader in the way he represents our program so I’m glad to see him have some success and impact the game.”
On the challenges of stoppage of play during injuries
“Our guys are pros and they understand the dangers of playing football at a high level, every one of us in our program feels for him and his family and teammates. We also know that there's a job to accomplish for us on the field and I thought our guys did a great job of hitting the reset button, paying respect to him but going out there ready to execute when they got the opportunity.”
Reaction to the CFP rankings this week
“No reaction, just win.”
On how vital it is to get Ty Thompson drives
“I think it is extremely vital to create opportunities for him, and when you let him out there to let him go operate, let him go execute the offense, and I thought he did a phenomenal job of protecting the ball. He presented tremendous touch on some of those throws. He put it where our guy could get it and no one else could, made some checks in the game based off our game plan, too. Really proud of the way he executed.”
On Mateo Uiagalelei not playing
“We probably could have used him today, but we were conscientious to him and didn’t want to push. He was able to warm up with the team pregame and think he could have played if we needed him to play but decided to go against that.”
On the first quarter and the impact that it had
“Disappointing, it was a disappointing first quarter for me. I’ve got a standard that I think we should play at, and it really doesn’t matter who we’re playing, and we didn’t play well enough there to start. It’s hard when you play good teams and put yourself in that hole, I think we have to learn from that. You have to learn from wins as you do from losses, we won the game today but there's a lot we can learn, especially earlier in that game we can execute better.”
On the annoyance of penalties on Oregon players
“That annoyed me.”
On players adjusting after a rough start
“It was similar to what Trevor brought up earlier about the next play. You can’t live in the past but that means you can learn from your mistakes, so when we make a mistake let's not make the same mistake. Good teams don’t make the same mistake, and we looked like we made a lot of different mistakes today. We have to eliminate that we have to get to the next play and make sure we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot. That happened too much today.”
On the defense limiting Cal’s run game and offensive strengths
“I thought we should have held them to less. Again, our standard isn’t based on everybody else. I thought our coaches had a good plan, I thought we didn’t execute it as well as we could have. Some of the tempo can create that for them when they go fast. We had moments where we had great knockbacks at the line of scrimmage, we had guys separating from blocks and we had moments when we didn’t, so we’re going to coach those. I’m not a stats guy, I don’t really get hung up on that. Some great plays can happen, and I want to see us tackle well, I want to see us get off of blocks, that’s our standard.”
On Camden Lewis' range and decision to put him out there
“I’d say that’s probably the edge. I just want to take a chance, you're kind of in no-man's land. You could go for it on fourth, it’s a longer fourth where you're probably not going to have a ton of success. You could potentially do a pooch punt or do a punt with Bo like we’ve done in the past. But that was a moment where it was like, ‘let's see what we can do.’ There's a lot of wind at moments in the stadium today, I think it flipped directions but wanted to give him an opportunity to put points on the board.”
On Tez's potential while recruiting him
“I probably recognized it more so in practice. We knew he was a talented player, definitely knew he was a talented returner, that’s something that showed up on his film before. Was glad to see that show up today, and he executed a high-level day. He’s got speed and he’s got talent, it shows up in practice and shows up in games.”
Addressing and limiting the mistakes made in the first quarter
“It only matters when it matters. We don’t want it to be the reason it hurts us so it's really important we fix those quickly. We’ve done a good job of addressing issues throughout the season where we say, ‘hey we need to fix this,’ so were going to do the same thing this week.”
On overcoming self-inflicted mistakes
“It speaks to what kind of team we are capable of being. Even though there were some things that were really positive, there are some things we can certainly get better at. We aren’t going to rest on the results. We aren’t a result-oriented team, we are a process-oriented team. I’m going to continue to focus on the process. Did a good job on third down, but doing a better job at third down is preventing third down. There are some things we can really improve on, and we will continue to focus on.”
On if anything Bo does surprises him anymore
“The throw he had to Tez Johnson, my heart stopped for a little bit. That was an interesting one where he was able to adlib and create something out of nothing. I thought that was a big-time play by him. I don’t know what he had today, six touchdowns, I mean that’s pretty impressive. Anybody who is watching Bo right now knows he is playing at a high level. He’s a competitor. He makes us different and certainly makes this team better.”
On creating the Dave Wilcox postseason award
“He was an exceptional player and the more I learn about Dave the more you learn about an exceptional human. It means a lot to this program. His son has played here, and family means a lot to them. What he has given to the name of football and to the University of Oregon is something we really cherish, and we want to honor in the future.”
