EUGENE – Oregon Ducks coach Dan Lanning opened up about his decision to put quarterback Dylan Raiola in the game to start the fourth quarter, with the game on the line vs. his former team the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
Oregon entered its Week 7 matchup against Nebraska, in desperate need of a win to keep its hopes of making the College Football Playoff alive. The Ducks beat Nebraska, 17-14, in Autzen Stadium with much thanks to a spark from Raiola on offense.
Entering the fourth quarter with a 14-6 deficit, the Ducks’ chances of bouncing back didn’t look optimistic. But after Raiola entered in place of quarterback Brock Thomas, a late touchdown and two-point conversion ended up being the difference.
“We had a great meeting on Thursday, and I kind of told (Raiola) at that point that this is where I'm laying out with my decision because at that point he's competing,” Lanning said.
“It's not like he announced to the team, ‘Hey, this is what we're gonna do.’ I kind of explained to him why, and he's 21. I said, ‘Man, I'm asking you to be have to have an experience and a callus of a 40-year-old, right?’”
“As a 21-year-old, that's really hard, but I promise this growth will be the best growth that you ever experience if you're able to handle this the right way, and he was really unbelievable about it,” he continued.
“And I think everybody will have self-doubts or thoughts in that moment of needs to be like this. And a lot of people don't necessarily get second chances; they don't get a second chance to go out there tonight and execute for us when he was ready. And proud that he was able to do that.”
Lanning addressed assessing changes, the ongoing quarterback competition in practice and how the season has challenged him in his postgame press conference.
Opening Statement:
“I know it's late, and there might not be very many people paying attention right now. But I think bigger than football, it's always worth recognizing the families in Bend that were affected by the recent school shooting. That's always a really sad, sad deal, and I can't imagine as parent going through something like that.”
“So sad to hear it. I hope it's something that, as a country, I'll continue to always get up here and speak on that before I talk about football because it's something we have to attack, and our youth are most important things in our lives.”
“I know anybody that has parents or that are parents shares that sentiment. So hopefully we attack it. I just want them to know that our thoughts and prayers with them, and to be honest, our thoughts and prayers probably don't do very much for those people that are affected. But they're there, and we care.”
“I mean, Nebraska is a really tough opponent. You know, Coach Rhule coached those guys extremely hard. They had a really good plan.”
“Especially, obviously, it was a defensive battle, right? Felt kind of like old school football. You know, for them to be able to score there in the end of the first half pulls a little bit out of your wings there. But our guys didn't flinch; they just responded.”
“Our defense, you know, ultimately played outstanding throughout the day. Even the plays that were made, they were contested. It wasn't easy. You know, the one you want back is the third down run, we can be much better there.”
“But I thought Coach Hampton did a great job having those guys prepared. I thought those guys never flinched wherever it was, and they got put in some tough moments again. You know, in this back-to-back weeks, where I thought the defense that they really showed up. You know, special teams for us to go three for three and field goals.”
“Obviously, every one of those mattered. We needed every one of them, and that was an elite job by Gage, RJ, Bailey, the whole field goal unit, especially against a really good rush team.”
“And them, you know, we thought they were you know dynamic in special teams, and it was going to be hard to really change the game in special teams. But we wanted to make sure we did good in field position, and then obviously the conversation pieces, offense, it wasn't good enough in the first half, you know. There's, there's certainly nobody in the nation working harder to try to find ways to do that.”
“I'll never make excuses. We have talented enough players for us to be better than we've been. You know, that being said, it is, it does look like a different group than what we started the season with. You know, you thought you're going to have Jeremiah McClellan, Evan Stewart, right? Dante Moore.”
“Like, there's some different pieces to the puzzle out there, and we're working really, really hard to shuffle it, figure it out. We did some things different this week that we've never done. It took us a while to find those things. I thought it kind of showed up a little bit in the second half with some of the wildcat runs, and I thought there were some good, good plans. We just didn't get to it soon enough, probably.”
“But ultimately, we got back to some OG staples for us and be able to run duo, you know, against those guys to create some positive runs. And then it came down to that last drive, and I just talked to our team about unbelievable teammates. There's some unbelievable teammates in that locker room. We talked as a coaching staff if we needed to make a change at quarterback. We felt like we wanted to go another series.”
“Brock wasn't necessarily making poor decisions. Obviously, the first series wasn't clean. I didn't throw it really well the first series. We were trying to get some early touches to Dakorien (Moore) some other guys like that, but that happens when you're starting in a stadium, in a tough environment. But the number one goal was to protect the ball.”
“You come out you know a half first series wasn't great, but there were some opportunities in there. And then second series, it just didn't click. And then obviously we had the takeaway, so we made the decision to go ahead and make a change.”
“And I went over to Brock and told him, ‘Hey, we're going to try to create a spark for our guys. Want to make a change here, but it's not necessarily anything that you did. It's just we need to do something different, right? We're not gonna keep doing the same thing.’”
“And Brock said, ‘I completely understand, coach. I love you. I want to do whatever's best for the team.’ And I just think that shows so much remarkable courage from a guy like that to be in that situation.”
“And it's got to be disappointing that moment to know, hey, I'm good with it. Let's do whatever we gotta do to win. And then the flip side of that is Dylan, throughout the game, was really remarkable in the first half with his communication.”
“With hey, here's what to expect. Hey, those plays that hurt you on defense, you're going to see those again in the second half. He's going to come back to it completely engaged at halftime. Hey, think about this pass, and then just ready for his moment. We got out there, and it didn't look exact. It was none of it was necessarily pretty.”
“It was a gritty, ugly win in a lot of ways against a really tough opponent that had a lot of success this season for a reason. But there was just a little bit more time left, and it came down to a two-minute, and it came down to us calling some of our two-point plays there at the end that we practiced.”
“You don't get a lot of time to practice those, but we put them in this week based on the coverages that we saw from Nebraska, and we're able to go execute. And the two-point play, Hudson Lewis catches that on two-point.”
“He didn't have that ball thrown to him a single time in practice. We didn't throw that route once in practice the entire week, so that's the first time he's caught at ever running that concept and be able to execute, put it in for two points at the end.”
“Obviously, mattered, and forced where they were in position where they had to at least get a field goal to be able to tie it. So, I'm really proud of our team, right? And there's some there's a lot of things to fix, and we're going to fix them. We're going to work to fix them.”
The Defensive Approach:
“Yeah, I think they're starting to come into who they are. I really find who they are, not what they were anointed to be before the season, but like, truly, what are we capable of, and what can we do?”
“I'm just impressed with a lot of the growth of the guys across the board, guys that can play winning football, and there's more and more guys that are really accountable and frustrated if they're if they don't do their job at a high level, right? They hold themselves to a really high standard, so that group's gotten better and better. I still don't think we've seen the best version of them.”
Why He Decided on Brock Thomas Starting:
“He protected the ball. I told Dylan the same thing throughout the week. Like, whoever, like why we lose last week? We didn't score. We didn't necessarily get yards, but he protected the ball better than Dylan in practice.”
“And I kind of said that the week we're going to evaluate throughout practice to say, okay, who doesn't put the ball in jeopardy? We feel like we have a strong defense, good special teams.”
“We want to be in the position that we're going to protect the football, right? And the fumble, man, was really hard for me to understand how that was a fumble. I think we had two calls in this game. I'm not complaining about fishing at all because their job's extremely hard. But I think we had two calls.”
“If they were called different on the field, it would have been a different result when it went to replay. And I don't know, I didn't hear what was said in replay. But their touchdown, as well as that fumble, I don't know if that doesn't go the other direction, right?”
“I mean, we had (Akili Smith Jr.) ready for a package that that we didn't use tonight either, but he worked really hard. And it's kind of like almost like that Hudson Lewis illustration of like Hudson didn't play a lot tonight, but man, did it matter whenever he did play and did his one job for the team, so that's kind of what led to it.”
“That's how that played out, and we'll see. We'll reassess and compete again this week to see where things are at as we move forward.”
Dylan Raiola’s Poise:
“Yeah, I thought it was. I thought he did an incredible job. I think he soaked it in for a little bit. You guys probably recognized it, right? He's pretty good on the stage, right? After that first down, and I think he knows too what people say about him.”
“At times like, there were multiple times before the play started. He's like, ‘I'm going to get you the hard yard coach. Like, don't worry about calling that.’”
“Like, we called an outside play because the quarterback is a running threat, and Dylan hasn't really been a running threat for us this year, and that's part of the benefit of doing it in that situation is knowing that, hey, they're probably not going to see him as that. Let's see if he can go take advantage of it. I thought he did that extremely well.
“He did the scramble early that mattered. I mean, we didn't do anything on third down tonight, and some of that's by design. Obviously, offensively, again, our goal-the most common turnover down in football is third and long, right? So sometimes a punt is not the worst thing that can happen, and we got to have a better plan.
“We got to get better in that area, but we just did not want to turn the ball over to a good team and give them a short field. So, we got what three of four downs today, which we haven't been like that this season. We got to keep getting better there, but there's some growth there and certainly some opportunities.”
Balancing the Urgency to Score With Clock Management on the Last Drive:
“Yeah, again, we were kind of in and out of a huddle, dependent. We're really pretty aware of the situation, and once we got down the red area, we had plays that we liked out of certain personnels and plays we didn't.”
“And then there's a point, especially when we started utilizing timeouts, that they know that we're not going to be running it anymore, right? You really can't unless you're at the one, the two-yard line. You're kind of limited with what calls that you can really call, especially when we hadn't consistently ran the ball effectively.”
“So, we had some calls that we liked out of different groupings, so we changed groupings, and I ended up burning timeouts because I would have loved to save them, but it was more about having the right people on the field for the situation we had.”
“And then we knew once we were inside that that last first down, we knew we had the time, but it limited our menu. So, let's practice the menu that we had for that situation, and we call that situation ozone, right? It's either us or nobody, right?”
“And right here, like we got if it's open, we throw it to the guy that's open. If it's not, we're gonna put it where only our guy can catch it, or nobody else. And Dylan did a really good job of that in that moment. Our guys executed the plays pretty well. In that moment, nice.”
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