Oregon’s upset loss to Oklahoma State has left the Ducks with more than just a bad result to absorb. It has also kicked up a sharper question about what the offense is giving away before the ball is snapped.
Dan Lanning addressed the criticism Monday for the first time at his weekly press conference, and he didn’t dismiss it outright.
“We have to do a better job, policing that, for sure,” Lanning said. “That’s something we have to be better at, right?
Really simple. You know, on the same note, there’s gonna be times based on looks that you have more tells than others, and sometimes you can take advantage and use those. ...
But I’d say that’s something we can be better at. One of the things we definitely addressed after the game.”
The discussion picked up after a report from the Oklahoma State locker room, where Cowboys senior linebacker Tate Romney said Oregon had “tendencies” and “stance indicators” along the offensive line that helped the defense read run or pass.
That showed up in the game itself. Oklahoma State seemed to react fast to what Oregon was trying to run, and the Ducks never found much of a groove in the loss. Oregon finished with 281 total yards, including 90 on the ground.
Dante Moore had a difficult night seeing the field, and even when Oregon did have the right play called, the offense still ran into problems with mental mistakes and drops from its playmakers.
The idea that Oregon can be deciphered before the snap doesn’t appear to be limited to Saturday’s game, either. An excerpt shared Sunday from an upcoming book on Indiana football included comments from former Indiana linebacker Aiden Fisher, who said the Hoosiers saw something similar while studying Oregon ahead of last year’s Peach Bowl.
“We were hitting on all of them,” former Indiana linebacker Aiden Fisher said in the book. “We were like, ‘Dude, we have these guys on everything they want to do.’”
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Now Oregon heads into a meeting with Portland State carrying the kind of uneasy aftermath that follows a result like that. One bad afternoon can be explained away in September, but for Dan Lanning and his staff, the concern is what the performance said about how the Ducks handled pressure, adjusted in-game and responded when the script stopped working. [Read more 🡒]