For just the third time in program history, Oregon received the No. 1 national ranking in college football after it went on the road and shutout Purdue 35-0, advancing to 7-0. When asked about their new ranking, head coach Dan Lanning had two words: “Who cares?”
Anyone who knows Lanning the slightest bit was nowhere near surprised at that response. Lanning has lost a grand total of five games in his two and a half years in Eugene. Since the conclusion of his first season, the Ducks have only lost to one team. One thing Lanning will never do is dwell on success. It doesn’t matter if they go into a hostile road environment to beat a Top-15 team or blow out an opponent by a four-touchdown deficit. Dan Lanning’s motto will always be, “We are not satisfied. We are not done.”
The most highly anticipated matchup for Oregon this year was its Week 7 game against the Ohio State Buckeyes. Ohio State has spent a lot of time in the past decade as a Top 3 team. All along, those two were expected to be the top two teams in the Big Ten this year, and everyone knew that game would come down to the wire. It did exactly that and Oregon pulled away with a one-point victory.
“It’s never about the team that wants it the most,” Lanning said. “It’s never about the team that just has great emotion. It’s about the team that executes. So I am filled with great excitement. I’m really proud of our guys, but I’m also really excited to, you know, figure out what we can go attack and improve, because the team we are today, October 12, is not gonna be the same team we are in December.”
Before the Ducks traveled to Michigan to face the defending National Champions — the Michigan Wolverines — Lanning was asked about the team’s mentality of not caring about their No. 1 ranking, why it’s so important and how the players had handled it.
“I just don’t think we’ve ever measured ourselves based on what other people think…At the beginning of every year, everybody asked me, ‘What’s success look like?’ And to me, it looks like us playing our best football at the end of the season. So that’s our goal. It’s to put ourselves in position to play our best football and focus on the process, not the result.” Lanning said.
The first thing Dan Lanning will always look for after a game is ways to improve. The work he and his players put in during the week is what allows them to win so consistently. Any Ducks player, coach or fan will say that the first two games of the season did not meet the team’s standard, even though they came out on top in both.
They obviously had some adjustments to make after losing a lot of guys to the NFL Draft last offseason and bringing in a bunch of new faces from the transfer portal, but once they got to Week 3, they looked like a different team. One of the main pieces that needed to adjust was the offensive line, who struggled a lot early in the season to protect Dillon Gabriel.
“Yeah, it’s called work, right?” Lanning said. “You gotta go, you know, take your medicine, figure out what you’re not doing well, and find ways to improve it, and I think our coaching staff and our players have really taken a notice in that and taken ownership of what it means to improve.”
Oregon might not have a national championship at the moment, but that could end very soon. Under Lanning, a coach with experience on two SEC teams who is always searching for improvement no matter how big a win may be, they will go far. The Ducks are well on their way to 12-0, and once they get there, Lanning will be the first to say they are not done.
