SEATTLE \u2014 No. 6 Oregon defeated Washington 26-14 Saturday afternoon at Husky Stadium. <\/p>\n
Dan Lanning recapped the 11th win of the season for the Ducks (11-1, 8-1 Big Ten), who assured themselves a spot in the College Football Playoff.<\/p>\n
Below is a transcript of Lanning\u2019s postgame press conference.<\/p>\n
DAN LANNING<\/p>\n
Opening statement<\/p>\n
\u201cThose locker rooms are fun. Competitive game. Credit to Washington, they didn\u2019t make it easy. This environment is really good. I thought our players handled the chaos extremely well. I don\u2019t think the noise affected us and even heard our fans chanting there at the end, which is awesome to be able to come into somebody else\u2019s stadium and create that. We talked about how this game was going to come down to takeaways. I thought that was obviously a big piece of this game, being able to take the ball away twice and be able to own the ball on offense. Our kicker obviously played outstanding, four kicks in a tough place to kick. He\u2019s been really solid for us down the stretch, but several players coming up making big plays. I know at the very end, you could ask, why not kick the field? It\u2019s kind of a tough angle for the field goal kicker that tight. Ultimately, fourth and one, you want that opportunity to go get it. But I thought our guys handled the environment extremely well. They did a good job eliminating the run game, which is something that showed up, we got to be able to run it in tight situations. I thought Washington was outstanding there, so we\u2019ll have to make sure we can shore that up. But defensively, we played well. Offensively, we made some big plays down the stretch. Obviously, that pass to Benson was huge. Altogether, the sideline was incredible. The focus that these guys had. It is just a really fun group, and the great part is we\u2019re not done playing yet. I\u2019m excited for that next opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
On feeling of celebrating his first win at Washington”<\/p>\n
\u201cI told the players before the game, I said, ;History\u2019s great, but what\u2019s more fun is writing history.\u2019 We got to write some history today, which is awesome. And they showed up man. Everybody had each other\u2019s back. Certainly, this is a big game. It\u2019s a big rivalry, one of the best that I\u2019ve been a part of. It was fun to go out there and take care of business today.<\/p>\n
On Malik Benson\u2019s 64-yard touchdown:<\/p>\n
\u201cThat play was as impressive as any. And just the composure, man, I even saw the ball security there. For him, having that ball up and tight, it\u2019s a coaching moment, just all the coaching moments that showed up. We had a couple aggressive penalties there that I\u2019m disappointed in, lost our composure. I didn\u2019t think you\u2019d see that from our team today. One of them was an aggressive block that went a little long. One of them is one that we just can\u2019t absolutely can\u2019t do, which is disappointing. But overall, really proud of Malik, man. What an unbelievable teammate he\u2019s been for us this year. What a great throw by Dante. Great protection there. Our guys handled it really well. Our coaches prepared them well.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Dante Moore running more:<\/p>\n
\u201cInitially we ahd some of that in the plan but it became something more that we had to do. They did a good job of closing the middle of the field. Ultimately when they\u2019re playing with 10 you got to figure out a way to play with 11. They had loaded boxes. They did a good job stopping our run. That\u2019ll be something I\u2019m anxious to watch to see what their answers were. We got a tough quarterback and he\u2019s able to go out there and get the tough yards when it mattered.\u201d<\/p>\n
On playing with emotion on control:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a lack of emotion; it\u2019s about controlling emotions. All week I thought our guys were focused on controlling their emotions so they could execute at the highest level. I think they did that today.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Atticus Sappington:<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did a great job. We\u2019ve seen him hit them in practice. That was right on the edge of where we felt comfortable giving it a shot. Anytime you can walk away with points – I know that sounds funny coming from me – that was a positive. Did a great job putting it through the upright.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Dillon Thieneman:<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s probably the hardest guy in the nation to track in the pocket. You can talk about who are going to have as a spy? Who are you going to put on him? Every time you\u2019re spying it showed up on their conversion there at the end, when they hit the big touchdown,. If you steal a couple of guys to protect versus him you\u2019re putting your guys out in coverage in the backend. Dillon, it looked like he played really well. I know our team played physical, were able to get some good hits on guys. We were able to get the quarterback down at times too. Overall a complete team effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Jeremiah McClellan:<\/p>\n
\u201cProud of him. I thought he came down with that one, obviously went to review and we didn\u2019t get it but J-Mac played well and had great composure in this game. Obviously made some really big plays. When you start doing things like that and you have a potent run game as well it makes it tough to defend.\u201d<\/p>\n
On turning focus to the playoff:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited, very excited. I\u2019m going to enjoy the moment here for a little bit, probably though the rest of the night. Then start worrying about what\u2019s our prep plans moving forward. Our team\u2019s banged up. It will be great for us to be able to get healthy. I think everybody at this point in the season is dealing with that. But there\u2019s only 12 teams in the nation that get to keep playing. I mean, some others can play, but in the real one. We get the opportunity to do that so I\u2019m excited about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the defense:<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought Tosh (Lupoi) called an outstanding game today. I thought our defensive staff did a great job and our players did too. There were some chunk plays but we felt like chunk plays weren\u2019t going to be the difference; explosive plays were going to be the difference. We limited explosives being able to stay on top. When the ball was in the air I thought we attacked it. We had the PI that was tough, one that you don\u2019t want to have. Overall I thought it was a complete game, really good job by our defensive staff going out there round after round. After the lack of a fourth down conversion there at the end, to be able to stop them there was huge too.\u201d<\/p>\n
On being 11-1:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think overall you look at this team, you look at in a lot of ways our most complete in all three phases. We\u2019ve had great offense at times. We\u2019ve had great defense, good special teams. But not always in sync at the same time. I think this season we\u2019ve seen that show up together a lot. At some point offense will have to put the defense on your back; that happened a little bit last week. At some point the defense puts the offense on its back; that happened this week in some ways. Special teams have been really outstanding this whole year. Credit to coach (Joe) Lorig and coach (Zach) Tinker, the job that they\u2019ve done and those guys going out there and executing.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the starting offensive line being healthy enough to play:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always evaluate all the way up to game time. But those are tough guys that wanted to be a part of this. They weren\u2019t going to miss this opportunity. They went out and executed. It\u2019s great when we have those numbers – you talk about strength in numbers. That comes from having numbers and we had some today.\u201d<\/p>\n
On receiver health:<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re all healthy now, so we\u2019re good.\u201d<\/p>\n
On if he expects receivers to return:<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. Sure. I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
On managing no margin for error for seven weeks:<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, it\u2019s always felt the same way. You win, it\u2019s up to you, and it\u2019s good to be in charge, being in control of your destiny. If you don\u2019t win, you have no excuses. There\u2019s nobody here complaining about what the situation is. Go win. Ultimately, the team that gets the opportunity to play in the playoffs, that\u2019s the way it\u2019s supposed to work. The team that earned it and went out there and played and won games. That\u2019s what you have to do to get there. It\u2019s not supposed to be easy. It\u2019s supposed to be hard. The whole season matters. It seems like the playoff spectrum has changed a lot over the last couple years, where it was always about the team that played the most consistent throughout the whole year, got that opportunity, and now it\u2019s changed a little bit. You can have some hiccups. We had one. We learned a lot from it. You don\u2019t get second, third, fourth tries, and we knew that. So we had to play a certain way to make sure that we had that opportunity. The guys wanted to make sure we did that on the field.\u201d<\/p>\n
On if Oregon is close to peaking:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have to evaluate this film and see where we\u2019re at and see what we can build off of. We have an opportunity, a window here of time that we can evaluate where we\u2019re at and what we can do better. We\u2019ll what that looks like and evaluate it as we go.\u201d<\/p>\n
On what he expects a home playoff crowd to be like:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they\u2019ll be pretty cranked up. Hopefully it\u2019s interesting weather. I don\u2019t know, it could be fun for somebody coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n
On if he knows the team\u2019s ceiling:<\/p>\n
\u201cTime will tell. What I do know is this group will come to work. They\u2019re already anxious to get back to work right now, which is pretty awesome. I think our group realizes how special this is. I hope everyone realizes how special it is, where we\u2019re at right now. But the only things we can control are what we control, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to focus on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE \u2014 No. 6 Oregon defeated Washington 26-14 Saturday afternoon at Husky Stadium. Dan Lanning recapped the 11th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[18495,1607,64943,5693,64944,99],"class_list":["post-322026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-big-ten-football","tag-college-football","tag-ducks-football","tag-oregon-ducks","tag-oregon-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}