Dan Lanning denies that Oregon got complacent ahead of final week

Going into the final week of the season, Oregon had a chance to play in the PAC-12 Championship Game. Then, the Ducks lost to rival Oregon State and Utah went to the championship game instead. It was a frustrating end to Dan Lanning’s first season as the head coach in Eugene.

However, Dan Lanning doesn’t think that this is because Oregon got complacent.

“I don’t think players got complacent or people got complacent or I don’t think our team got complacent,” Dan Lanning said. “You know, I think ultimately they made some plays and we lost on the details.”

Dan Lanning is specifically talking about blowing a lead to Oregon State here. For him, it wasn’t an effort or intensity issue. Instead, there was a lack of execution and attention to detail on Oregon’s end.

“Right, you’re gonna go back and say this is what my job is on this play, and you’re gonna see one person not executing it the right way. You’re going to see one thing that went wrong and those little things add up and become big things. Those small details.”

Oregon will have a chance to correct those issues when it plays SDCCU Holiday Bowl against North Carolina.

Dan Lanning on how Oregon will use the rivalry loss as motivation

Losing to a rival is never fun. It hurts even more when it costs your team a shot at a championship game. For Dan Lanning and Oregon, it’s a game that they have to learn from.

“Ultimately, I think those guys are going to look at it and you’re gonna use them as learning moments,” Dan Lanning said.

“You hate to learn in that situation. And some of those are going to be moments that we know that we’ve coached before. And we’ve addressed them before. Obviously, if it still happens on the field, we’re not doing a good job of coaching that and we’ve got to coach it better.”