It hasn’t been often that Oregon football head coach Dan Lanning has had to get his team ready for a bounce-back game. 

In his four year tenure at Oregon, his teams have lost just seven games. Of those seven games, only four came with a game just the next week. In other words, Lanning hasn’t had to coach many real “bounce-back” games during his tenure. 

Given the Ducks’ 56-10 thrashing at Rutgers, that didn’t seem to be the case. 

Going into the week, however, doubt surrounded the program as it regarded whether the loss proved a weakness in the Ducks as a whole or it was just a group of mistakes that compounded on themselves. 

“I don’t think you look at the game and say everything’s broken,” Lanning said at his Monday press conference that week. “We lost to a really good team. We were tied in the fourth quarter and didn’t finish the game. Did we play our best game? No. But what success looks like, it looks like improvement.”

That improvement had to come during Rutgers week, as the middle of the season offers no respite for top squads in power conferences. The Ducks couldn’t afford to play down to the Scarlet Knights and cruise to an easy victory; they had to dominate. That’s not because of any statistic they didn’t accomplish, but because of the identity of the program.

On Tuesday of that week, senior wide receiver Malik Benson noted it wasn’t stats the team was chasing, but more what has been repeatedly referred to as the “Oregon standard.”

“(We need to) go out there and do what we do,” Benson said. “The Oregon offense, explosive plays and things like that. What I want to see is everyone doing their 1/11th and everyone doing their job. Once everyone does their 1/11th, we can’t be stopped.”

Benson also spoke about Ducks quarterback Dante Moore, whose two late interceptions against Indiana proved costly in the loss. 

“We ask quarterbacks to be the superhero and the Superman of the show. Everybody’s going to have a bad game, but if it’s about the quarterback, they either congratulate him or put the blame on him,” Benson said. 

Moore, who had been criticized for his performance in the clutch against Indiana, stood out in New Jersey. 

750 yards of total offense, 335 passing and 415 rushing, while also having the ball for five minutes less than the opponent likely helped put Moore’s name back into the good graces of those around the sport. 

“When you have a tough week and a loss, you just have to take it as a lesson. I feel like when we attacked last Monday, (Lanning) had that confidence and trust in me still. As a player you love that, when your head coach has full 100% confidence in you,” Moore said to GoDucks after the win at Rutgers. 

Moore himself posted a statline to prove that point a little bit further. The redshirt sophomore completed 15 out of 20 pass attempts for 290 yards and four touchdowns through the air. He also used his speed to his advantage for 49 yards on three attempts and avoided getting sacked, which happened six times against the Hoosiers the weekend prior. 

The Ducks converted on eight of 11 third downs, and a large part of that can be attributed to Moore’s elusiveness in and around the pocket –– something he failed to display against Indiana. 

“It was a tough loss; Indiana’s a great team, but we made sure this week we learned from our mistakes, pushed through the week Monday through Friday and I feel like the whole week we did a great job,” Moore said to GoDucks.

Moore’s ability to shrug off the loss and bounce back as aggressively and efficiently as he did against Rutgers is part of the reason his teammates have elite confidence in his ability to execute. Moore is a natural leader, and his approach to this bounce back game can be demonstrated by how he spoke to his team in the huddle. 

“As an offense, I told them, ‘We need to smile and get back to the rhythm of play,’” Moore said to GoDucks. 

Even after an early turnover led to Rutgers taking a 3-0 lead, Moore remained composed and focused on the job at hand. After all, he can only control his “1/11th,” as Benson would say. 

As much as Moore’s, and some of his teammates’, stats jumped off the page, the team echoes each other that the stats aren’t what matter. 

“We’re not chasing stats; we’re chasing a standard,” Lanning said to GoDucks after the win at Rutgers. 

That standard outdid itself. Going forward, the standard doesn’t change and the team will still be laser-focused on what comes next, and never what just happened. They’ll watch the film and clean up what needs to be cleaned, but that’s about as much rumination that goes into what happened. 

The Ducks continue to linger on the future. But, as uncertain as the future may be at times, Lanning and his team control what they can control and move forward as if nothing happened –– even after a major loss and especially after a major win. 

“In football, rent’s due every week. As great as this win was, to see us accomplish to our standard what we want to be able to do, we gotta come into work next week again. It’s never gonna be easy,” Lanning said to GoDucks. 

It’s clear that the fuel gained from losing a big game at home has not been exhausted at this point in the season. It’s only midway through the season, but the perspective forced on this team by that loss paid off against Rutgers and will only continue to pay its dividends as the Ducks go forward. 

“It’s really not about what you’ve done for me lately, (it’s about) right now,” Lanning said to GoDucks.