Dan Lanning isn’t interested in opening the door for college football’s latest roster twist.
With the sport still sorting through the fallout of a Louisiana state court ruling that allowed players who took part in NFL minicamps this summer - along with other undrafted rookies - to return to school, the Oregon coach made his stance clear after the Ducks’ Aug. 22 scrimmage: he thinks the whole thing crosses a line.
“I think there’s a lot of negatives that are involved around it,” Lanning said. “One, once you go to the NFL, to me, you’re in the NFL.
You don’t get the opportunity to come back. Two, most of us have built our rosters, and you have a limited roster limit now.
So if you invited somebody back to your team, that means you’re kicking somebody else off your team to match your roster limits. I don’t think that’s fair to the players that worked all summer, all spring, and put themselves in position to be ready to work for a team to have somebody come back.”
Lanning also pointed back to the old markers that used to settle a player’s status. In his view, if a player signed with an agent, attended the NFL Scouting Combine or took part in minicamp, that was the end of the college road.
"All those things qualified as you were no longer an amateur, you’re a professional now," Lanning said. "So to let any of those players come back, fair or unfair to them, it’s unfair to the sport and I think it’s unfair to the players that are on current teams for those guys to be coming back."
So far, Oregon hasn’t added any 2022 recruits back onto the roster, and Lanning has already made it clear he doesn’t have much interest in doing that.
While the roster rule grabbed the spotlight, Lanning also offered a few notes from Oregon’s second closed-door scrimmage. He didn’t give away much, but he said the defense had the upper hand this time after the offense stood out in last week’s work.
He said the team came out of the scrimmage “relatively healthy.”
“Third-down stops, red-area stops,” Lanning said of what the defense did well. “I thought they attacked the ball well.
There were some balls that we were able to get out. They’ve done a really good job of attacking the ball … I think we still have got to get better against the run, based on what I saw today.”
Special teams looked cleaner, too. Lanning said sophomore Rocco Graziano hit all four of his kicks, likely starter Gage Hurych had a good day, and the punters were more accurate with placement than they were a week earlier.
As for what comes next, Oregon is still focused mostly inward before turning its attention to Boise State later in the week.
“It’s still going to be more about Oregon than anybody else,” Lanning said.
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