Dan Lanning details how he wants Oregon's season remembered

The Oregon Ducks had a great 2023 season, finishing 11-2 and ranked eighth in the final College Football Playoff rankings. Still, for head coach Dan Lanning, there was a hint of disappointment at what could have been.

While reflecting on the season, Lanning shared how he wants the season to be remembered. He also emphasized that expectations are high for this Oregon team.

“Yeah, we want the standard to be that expectation,” Dan Lanning said. “We have a high expectation for ourselves. There’s nobody outside of this room that wants us to do better than those guys in that locker room, these coaches. They know what we had this year. We have a special group this year.”

Oregon has only had three other 11-win seasons in program history. Still, if it wasn’t for the Washington Huskies, Oregon would likely be in the Playoff this season. Both losses this season came against Washington, including in the Pac-12 Championship Game. A win in the championship game would probably have propelled the Ducks into the Playoff. However, that obviously didn’t happen.

Instead, Lanning and the Ducks are going to use this season as a building block on their way into the Big Ten.

“But it’s a building block, right? We’re in year two. This is an opportunity to build on to this and set the expectation for what it should look like in the future,” Lanning said. “And we’ve got an opportunity to go play in a really good bowl game, right, and cap this thing off the right way.”

Oregon still has another game to cap off the season, the Fiesta Bowl where the Ducks will take on Liberty. Oregon opened as a 14-point favorite for that game.

Dan Lanning confirms Bo Nix will play in the Fiesta Bowl

Bo Nix is going to have a busy December. First, he’s headed to New York City for the Heisman Trophy presentation. After that, he’s going to need to prepare for the Fiesta Bowl and a potential NFL career.

There were some who expected Nix to skip the bowl game, but Dan Lanning recently confirmed that he will be playing in the Fiesta Bowl.

“We’ve gotten some clarity this morning. I think some of those guys? It’s probably fair for me to let them have that opportunity to let you guys know that they want to go play. But I can say, definitively, that Bo Nix wants to go play in this game. He told his teammates the same thing this morning when we met as a team,” Lanning said.

“I think he wants that opportunity to go out on the field one more time and there’s several other guys that have made that same decision.”