It was never pretty, but the Oregon Ducks stormed back just before the clock struck midnight at Autzen Stadium, taking down the Nebraska Cornhuskers, 17-14, in the most unconventional way possible.
After three quarters of stifling defense and zero support from the offense, Dan Lanning made a big change, swapping quarterbacks to start the fourth quarter for the second week in a row. However, it was a role reversal this time, as Dylan Raiola entered for Brock Thomas.
Raiola led two scoring drives, which lasted 17 and 20 plays, respectively, before linking with Jamari Johnson in the end zone for the winning score with seconds remaining in the game. Oregon's defense held Nebraska to 242 yards and 7-of-17 on third down, putting Anthony Colandrea on the run
for much of the game.
The defense stood its ground and ultimately gave the offense enough room to breathe in the fourth quarter and finish the game. Lanning spoke all week about making changes on offense, and while none of the changes seemed apparent in the first three quarters, the Ducks still emerged from Saturday night's rock fight with a win, led by Raiola against his former team.
Lanning spoke to the local media following the game to open up on Oregon's defensive prowess, the decision at quarterback, and how the difficult first half of the season has weighed on him so far.
Opening Statement
Dan Lanning: "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 a really sad deal, and I can't imagine as a parent going through something like that. I'll continue to always get up here and speak on that before I talk football because it's something we have to attack, and our youth are the most important things in our lives. I know anybody that are parents shares that sentiment. I just want them to know that our thoughts and prayers are 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.
"Unbelievable game, right? Nebraska is a really tough opponent. Coach Rhule coached those guys extremely hard. They had a really good plan. Obviously it was a defensive battle. It felt kind of like old-school football. For them to be able to score there at 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 played outstanding throughout the day. Even the plays that were made, they were contested. It wasn't easy. 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, whenever it was. They got put in some tough moments again. Back-to-back weeks where I thought the defense really showed up.
"Special teams, for us to go 3-for-3 on field goals, every one of them 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. They were dynamic in special teams, and it was going to be hard to 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. There's certainly nobody in the nation working harder to try to find ways to do that. I'll never make excuses. We have talent enough players for us to be better than we've been. You know, that being said, it does look like a different group than what we started the season with. You know, you thought you were going to have Jeremiah McClellan, Evan Stewart, Dante Moore. There are some different pieces to the puzzle out there, and we're working really, really hard to shuffle it and 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 staples for us and were able to run duo against those guys to create some positive runs.
"Then it came down to that last drive. I just talked to our team about unbelievable teammates. There are 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. He didn't throw it really well. The first series, we were trying to get some early touches to Dakorien, 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. The first series wasn't great, but there were some opportunities in there. And then the second series, it just didn't click. We had the takeaway, so we made the decision to go ahead and make a change. I went over to Brock and told him, 'Hey, we're gonna try to create a spark for our guys. I 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 going to 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.' I just think that shows so much remarkable courage from a guy like that to be in that situation. It's got to be disappointing in that moment to know, 'Hey, I'm good with it. Let's do whatever we've got to 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. '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 didn't look exact. 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 2-minute drill, and it came down to us calling some of our 2-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 the 2-point play; Hudson Lewis catches that on 2-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 ever run that concept and been able to execute and put it in for two points at the end. Obviously, it mattered where they were in a 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. There's a lot of things to fix, and we're gonna fix them. We're gonna work to fix them."
Staying Ready
Q: You said this week you hadn't seen guys hang their heads when that might have been human nature, given some of the challenges you guys were facing. Your defense certainly played that way, even when there were some challenges and moments today. What is it about those guys? What kind of buttons do you feel like you guys were able to push that they just played so relentlessly, even when it looked like points were going to be hard to come by?
DL: "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 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. They can get better, and we're going to play some teams. It's just going to get harder and harder. College football's hard. It's hard to play defense. You don't see a lot of games like this. So for them to perform like that, it was pretty impressive."
Brock Thomas
Q: Considering that this was the offensive result for the first three quarters, what did Brock show you in practice this week that made you decide that he was worthy of being the start over?
DL: "He protected the ball. I told Dylan the same thing throughout the week. Why'd we lose last week? We didn't score right. We didn't necessarily get yards, but he protected the ball better than Dylan in practice, and I kind of said that at the beginning of the week. We're going to evaluate throughout practice to say, 'OK, 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 differently on the field, it would have been a different result when it went to replay. I don't know that. 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? If it's called the other way on the field. So that was those were kind of like tough breaks. But ultimately, it came down to ball and Jeopardy plays, and how did it look through practice throughout the week? And I said, both of you guys got to be ready. I mean, we had KJ ready for a package that we didn't use tonight either, but he worked really, really hard. 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 as we move forward."
Switching to Dylan Raiola
Q: What do you make of just the poise that Dylan showed in that moment, despite being passed over initially?
DL: "Yeah, 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. After that first first down, and I think he knows too what people say about him. At times, there were multiple times before the play started, he's like, 'I'm gonna get you the hard yard, coach. Like, don't worry about calling that.' Like, we called an outside play with the quarterback as 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. So sometimes a punt is not the worst thing that can happen, and you know we've 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 three of 3/4 downs today, which we haven't been like that this season. We've got to keep getting better there, but you know there's some growth there and certainly some opportunities."
Game-Winning Drive
Q: How did you guys manage the urgency of trying to score on that last drive, but at the same time managing the clock as well? When the offense up until that point really wasn't effective all games, how did you get balanced?
DL: "We were kind of in and out of a huddle. We're really pretty aware of the situation, and once we got down in the red area, we had plays that we liked out of certain personnel 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. You can't really, unless you're at the 2-yard line. You're kind of limited with what calls you can really call, especially when we hadn't consistently run the ball effectively. So we had some calls that we liked out of different groupings, so we we 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 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 you know we call that situation ozone, right? It's either us or nobody, right? In the red, we're 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. Dylan did a really good job of that in that moment. Our guys executed the place pretty well."
Raiola Facing Nebraska
Q: I can't imagine the range of emotions that Dylan's had over the last three weeks or so. How do you coach somebody who's in that situation and has kind of the unique kind of national eyes on him, especially with this Nebraska matchup too, and just knowing that he's in the right place to call his name there?
DL: "That's really hard, man. We had a great meeting on Thursday. I kind of told him at that point that this is where I'm leaning with my decision because at that point he's been competing. It's not that you announced to the team, hey, this is what we're gonna do. I kind of explained to him why, and I said, he's 21. I said, 'Man, I'm asking you to have to have an experience and the calluses of a 40-year-old. As a 21-year-old, it'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, right? And I think everybody will have self-doubts or thoughts in that moment of, 'No, it needs to be like this.' And a lot of people don't necessarily get second chances. 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."
Raiola's Spark
Q: You touched a little bit on how Raiola is so mature, and you just talked about that and his energy. But when he came out there with such a spark, especially on that first drive, how did the rest of the offense maybe feed off of his energy, and have you seen that in practice as well?
DL: "He was ready for his moment. I think there was juice and the spark that was kind of created. But I think our guys were pretty stellar focused, consistently about doing their job. And it was just the moments where we didn't have success; it was usually somebody trying to do a little bit more than their job, right? And I thought in that moment, everybody just kind of settled in and said, "Let's just focus on this next play, and then again, Dylan created some success. It didn't always look like how we had to drew up, but he gave us a chance. I felt like he moved in the pocket, similar to how he did in the USC game, and didn't put the ball in jeopardy, which gave us a great opportunity."
Critical Downs
Q: You guys were 3-for-3 on fourth down conversions. We talked about this a lot; how important those critical down conversions were going to be. While third down conversions didn't come as easily in the first half, you guys picked up some crucial ones late. What changed in terms that allowed you guys to convert on those critical downs, especially when you needed it the most?
DL: "Yeah, as the game goes, you start to find like, 'OK, here's the answer for this coverage.' We've seen different stuff in every single game this year, which every coach does, right? But we've seen some stuff that wasn't necessarily on film. They played empty different tonight than what we've seen in other games. Obviously, empty's always been a pretty good package for us, but they did some stuff different. Sometimes you've got to work through the game to kind of figure out what the options are, what the solutions are in that, and we were able to find some of those. We had some plays kind of circled that were like kind of must calls in this game, and some of them, because we just didn't have enough, you know, plays on the field we didn't necessarily get to. But yeah, I think all those things kind of weighed into it. We're getting the feel for it, and then we were able to do a little bit more in our passing attack once Dylan got in there. I think it allowed us to have some success."
Moving Forward
Q: Coach, one of the beauties of sports is the unpredictability. But how do you, as a coach, wrap your mind around the fact that Dylan comes in to save today, and then what do you do with that moving forward next week?
DL: "Yeah, you evaluate it again. College football is crazy. Winning is hard. I know I'm certain that there isn't a staff that worked harder this week to have a really good plan for what we wanted to be able to accomplish, and sometimes still it doesn't look the right way, and we have to continue to work through that and figure it out, and figure out what we got to do better, and we got to figure out how to replicate practice. But there were moments that showed up in the night's game where I know those moments were worked in practice. They showed up in practice, and you don't know what moment that's going to be. But we got to be better. We got to find a way to be better. We got to go compete again, right? And we've got to go compete again this week, and you gotta compete in practice. But I thought the guys were really focused on the process today, especially there in the second half. We were able to, you know, hone in. Thought we had a really good halftime meeting of things that we think we can be able to do, and it didn't show up till the fourth. But we were able to take advantage of some of that.
Impact of Tough Season
Q: The season's injuries result in some ways very different than your previous season here. I'm curious for you personally. How has the season maybe stretched you or challenged you in ways that you didn't expect? Especially given sort of what was the let's just say expectation of the team coming into the year.
DL: "Well, nobody else cares, but I think this will be the year that I've grown the most in my position. It's challenged me in a lot of ways to really dig deep and figure out where I have to get better and improve and how I can make this. Because ultimately, I'm responsible for all of it, and it has to look better than it has. At times, more consistent. But I've learned a lot of hard lessons. People don't tell you about that. There are benefits from losses as well. I think I'm down 24 pounds right now, so that's a benefit from losses, right? I've learned a lot more as a football coach about where I can improve and what I can do better. You want to win and learn, and I think today is going to be a really good example of we were able to win. But man, there are so many lessons in there that we can learn from, right? But you know, there's a lot more. There's a lot of improvement there for me, and for me to continue to improve and get better. But I'm really pleased with the effort. I think you saw a group that played really, really hard tonight, and it didn't always go the way we wanted. But I think that's always the biggest judge of a coach is how hard your guys play. And there were times this season I don't think it looked like it needed to look, but I thought our guys played hard tonight on the run out."
Wildcat Formation
Q: What do you think opened up the run game for you in that fourth quarter? I know you mentioned Wildcat, but Brandon Smith also had some good runs, under center runs. What do you think just opened it up for you guys there in that fourth quarter?
DL: "We were able to do some stuff from a shift motion standpoint that I think allowed us to play off some of the other stuff that we did in the game. We did some different stuff from a back standpoint of where we aligned the back that we thought was something we could take advantage of. It took us a while to find it, but it was positive. And then Brandon Smith is going to be a really good player. I'm super excited about him. He's been good for us throughout the season. At some point, we knew that he was going to get his number called and have some opportunities, and I think that showed up a little bit tonight."
Fixing Issues
Q: The win kind of covers up a lot of the struggles in this game. You have a fan base that's still a large part of it, still very frustrated about the product that you guys have put on the field. I'm sure you hear the boos. I'm sure you don't like it.
DL: "They were deserved."
Q: "Last week you told us that we're working really hard. Is that still the message? You promise changes. They're frustrated. Is there a new message to this team about what you're trying to do to fix this thing and make it look like more of a standard?
DL: "What would you say?"
Q: I don't know. It's not my job to answer the question.
DL: "I mean, my job is to work at it and try to fix it and prove it. I don't know what other response that somebody would necessarily be looking for.
Q: I think some fans want public accountability instead of saying that we're just working really hard and then expecting to take that as the answer and just run with it.
DL: "Yeah, I mean, I don't know what public accountability. You're saying you want me to fire people, right? Is what you're saying?"
Q: I'm not saying that. That's the sense that I've got from fans in the fan base.
DL: "I got you. Yeah, I mean we evaluate everything. We want to be the best. Again, the decision has to come down to what makes us better, what doesn't make us better. I'm trying to work on solutions that certainly make us better. It's not the same as it was in previous weeks. Thought there was some stuff that we got better at, and again, I think it's a different group than what we started with. But there's a good enough group that we can be better than we were, right? But if you can't acknowledge that the way that we took the field, the 11 players we took the field, is different than what we started this season with, and I think I mean I don't know what college football looked like today. I'm pretty certain that there were a lot of really good teams that didn't necessarily have success. Am I right? And I don't think that means that those coaches forgot how to coach, right? I think this is probably harder now to be consistent and sustained, and we've got to keep finding and being aggressive with solutions. And I promise you, I'm not gonna, just because we won, say, 'Oh, we're good, it's fixed.' What answers do I need to give fans? Kind of like I said the other day in the press conference, like does that lead to wins, right? Revealing anything to fans. I'm so grateful for our fans, and they deserve more. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm OK with that, but I'm a big kid. It's not gonna hurt my feelings, right?
"If I thought listening to the boos or the cheers would impact the way that I make decisions as the leader of the organization, that would be pretty immature of me to decide, 'Wait, what do they think? All right, let's do it.' You know what I mean? That's not how you can make decisions. So we try to make decisions based on what we have, the information we have in front of us, and the guys that stayed up here and didn't leave the building for several days, right? To make sure that they worked to get it right, and it's still not right. So, I'll do what I've done and what I've watched other great coaches do when it comes to solutions like that. And it's always based on what you have the availability to do. We're pursuing every angle."
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This article originally appeared on Ducks Wire: Everything Dan Lanning said after Oregon's comeback win vs. Nebraska
