Dan Lanning Vs. Rematches

Anthony Brown never lost to Ohio State, for what it's worth.

Photo from the opening kickoff, c/o Peter Vos.

Has anyone here ever been “pantsed” before?

I have.

I was standing in the Beaverton High School parking lot, in front of a car filled with people, when my buddy—let’s call him Sam—snuck up behind me and yanked my shorts down to my ankles.

But there was one problem: He didn’t just grab my shorts.

In one swift motion, Sam had managed to grab ahold of my boxers, too.

I was exposed to the world just long enough to feel a cool breeze—and for my self-confidence to shrivel a bit in the process.

And that’s pretty much how the Rose Bowl felt.

Oregon got punched in the mouth in front of the whole country by their new conference rival on the biggest stage yet.

In my preview, I thought about what it would feel like for Oregon to lose this game, and I said that: “It would certainly feel like the emptiest of all our Rose Bowl losses.”

Turns out, “emptiest of all our Rose Bowl losses,” might have been the understatement of the century.

Because I never once pondered how shocked I would be to see the Ducks start the game down 34-0; or how demeaning it would feel to get out-gained on offense 500 to 276 (not to mention our -23 rushing yards); or how I’d have to sit there with a dumbass look on my face as I watched the number one team in the nation show up late to the biggest game of the year for the second year in a row.

What went wrong?

Sure, Oregon suffered key injuries to Evan Stewart and Jordan James.

And yeah, Chip Kelly finally realized that he can essentially play Madden with Jeremiah Smith.

But in terms of the things that were fully within our control, the most disappointing element that was revealed in this game was the Ducks’ complete lack of a backup plan (or just a plan, for that matter).

And Dan Lanning owned up to that fact immediately—which is good, seeing as how he has made “having a plan” his entire personality.

He admitted that he, “didn't get [his] team prepared,” and if this was the first time he had failed to implement something new ahead of a marquee rematch like this, then it would simply be unfortunate.

But like I alluded to before, this wasn’t the first time!

When you look at this game and last year’s Pac-12 Championship game, it’s clear that Dan and his staff have fallen victim to a Hold Steady™ state of mind in these scenarios.

They’ve treated the second games just like any other game, when it clearly isn’t.

In sports, everyone always says that playing a team twice—let alone beating them twice—is one of the hardest things to do, and that clearly isn’t just a cliché, it’s the Bald Faced Truth, as our friend John Canzano might put it.

This is an oversimplification and probably not completely fair to our staff, but it sure felt like they came into the Rose Bowl thinking: “Hey, we beat them before by doing this, so let’s just do that again.”

But Ohio clearly refused to be stupid enough to let us sit back in defense all over again while their all-world wide receivers settled for dinks and dunks.

Newsflash: Chip Kelly is famous for being one of the most innovative offensive gurus to ever touch the sport of football and his dolphin brain was bound to try something new.

And for our offense, we had zero creativity in the run game and somehow thought we could just shock them with our downfield passing game again.

With or without Stewart, did we seriously think the Buckeyes were just going to forget what we did to their secondary on October 12th?

“There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again.” - Ryan Day, probably.

Look, I also believed that our best was good enough to beat those guys—and there’s a world where it could have been.

But the Ducks came out flat and without any kind of championship-caliber adjustment or counter-punch, and those issues have now cost Oregon two must-win games in back-to-back years.

It’s clear that in just his third year as a head coach, Dan is still going to make mistakes. Duh.

He took some huge leaps forward this season by fixing his late-game decision-making and his ability to win big games, so he’s certainly proven he can evolve.

But he just has more growing to do.

And although he has recruited insanely well from high school and the transfer portal, those young guys still need to develop and stack on top of each other in order to build the kind of roster depth that can withstand injuries and poor performances from multiple star players.

On top of all that, Ohio is unfortunately still one of 3 or 4 unique programs in college football that can become a deadly buzzsaw whenever they’re firing on all cylinders, and it might take multiple decades of winning Big Ten championships before Oregon cements itself into that tier.

But despite the bummer ending, this season was still pretty awesome.

We won the best conference in our first season, and all these guys played their asses off until the bitter end.

Dillon Gabriel was running around in his socks and desperately trying to make plays happen in the Rose Bowl. He was sacked eight times and still managed to throw for 29/41 for 299 yards and 2 touchdowns.

His effort was even more heroic when you consider that Ohio knew that we were only going to pass the ball for the rest of the game, and he still managed to put up numbers.

DG’s career at Oregon was short and sweet, but I’ll remember him as one of the most reliable human beings to have ever taken a snap in green and yellow.

And he connected with Traeshon Holden countless times, who managed to have himself a banner day in Pasadena, too. But his time as a Duck also came to an end with bittersweet tears in the tunnel.

And then there’s Tez Johnson.

Two years went by way too fast with Tez—who is easily an all-time Duck—and I’ll always remember him from two distinct moments: 1) His trademark victory backflips, and 2) him waiting patiently to congratulate Will Howard after his postgame interview.

His heart is so much bigger than any of his measurable attributes, and it has carried him to greatness.

Hopefully, it will carry him to the Denver Broncos roster.

And of course, Dan was probably the coach that defined the entire college football season in so many ways.

I’ve criticized him a bit here in this blog today, but he’s obviously the only guy that should be the leader of this program, and I still know he’s the one that will take us to the promised land one day.

But that day will just have to wait.

I think a lot of folks who’ve read any of my other traditional, We Lost™ eulogies have come to expect some kind of refrain about how, “losing is just the price of being Duck fan,” and, “aw shucks, we was just proud to be there,” but I don’t really feel that way right now.

We weren’t just proud to be there. We were built to win there, and we didn’t.

Ditch Rich, as an entity, was created around a sentiment that I’ve repeated many times here before: We are the losers.

Damnit if this season didn’t feel different, though.

Every single week felt like a new kind of arrival on a bigger stage, but it turns out that it was all probably just a step, and not the step.

We ended all of that excitement on a true stinker, and it’s going to stink at least until we open the 2025 season against Montana State in 236 days.

Not that I’m counting.

Go Ducks.