Oregon’s bye week hasn’t slowed Dan Lanning down.
After the No. 15 Ducks knocked off then-ranked No.
12 USC, Lanning was in Seattle on Thursday, Oct. 1, where he was spotted as a guest of Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald at practice. The visit fits a pattern for Lanning, who has previously said he has met with NFL teams as part of the broader challenge of navigating more travel and a longer season.
Macdonald is the kind of coach Lanning can learn from quickly. He comes from a defensive background, just like Lanning, after serving as the defensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens. He also has college stops at Georgia and Michigan on his résumé, giving the two coaches plenty of common ground to work with.
That overlap goes beyond scheme. The Seahawks’ offseason run on Hard Knocks offered a closer look at Macdonald’s approach, and one of his training camp talks echoed the kind of message Lanning has built around in Eugene. Macdonald told Seahawks players a story about Phil Jackson persuading Michael Jordan to embrace a style of offense that pulled the whole team in rather than centering everything on Jordan.
“So why do I tell you guys that story? Like, in the NFL guys, I really believe this, that the secret sauce of the NFL is connection.
What if everybody was on the same page going int he same direction, playing off one and each other, building each other up not caring who gets the credit. And just going, and going, and where could that take us?”
He continued:
“What if we could get this whole building involved in just creating this vision of who we want to become all the time? This is how we know when we go into games that we have the competitive advantage, because we have this in our corner,”
That kind of message lines up with the way Lanning has shaped Oregon. Connection sits alongside growth, sacrifice and toughness as one of the program’s core DNA traits. The Ducks regularly lean into that idea through team dinners at position coaches’ homes, group activities and themed retreats.
Lanning has also organized a leadership retreat and a coaches retreat, while Oregon’s defensive linemen spent several days on the Oregon coast to build chemistry and train on the beach.
The bye week can also double as a recruiting window, so Lanning could be out at high school games on Friday night. Even so, the focus remains on the Ducks and the next stretch of their Big Ten schedule.
Up next is UCLA, and Lanning has already compared the Bruins to the 2025 Indiana team that upset Oregon and later won the national title. With one loss already, the Ducks have little room for error if they want to stay in the College Football Playoff picture.
Oregon and UCLA will kick off from Autzen Stadium at 12:30 p.m. PT on Saturday, Oct. 10.
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The additions only sharpen that picture. Jaylen Petty arrives from Texas Tech, Serbian newcomer Nikola Kusturica adds another layer to the mix, and Auburn transfer Filip Jovic is expected to step into a sixth-man role. With multiple players able to cover different spots, UCLA suddenly has the kind of versatile lineup construction Cronin has been chasing. [Read more 🡒]