Dan Lanning opens up on using Ohio State loss as motivation for Oregon in 2025

Oregon looked like hands down the best team in the country, having run through the entire 2024 regular season slate and the conference championship game unbeaten. Then it ran into a buzzsaw.

Ohio State stumped Oregon in the national semifinals, ending an otherwise promising season for Dan Lanning and the Ducks. On Wednesday at Big Ten Media Days, Lanning was asked if he has used that loss as motivation going into the 2025 campaign.

“Yeah for me as a coach I’ve always, I think every coach probably feels this way, but we always remember the losses over the wins,” Lanning said. “I think there’s a lot you can learn from that. Doesn’t take away from what we were able to accomplish, but we lost to a great team.”

That much is undeniable. Ohio State was dominant, perhaps the most talented team on paper playing at the highest level toward season’s end.

Oregon was very good, too, though. And Lanning’s program seems set for success again, assuming it can figure out what went wrong last year. Lanning put a lot of that on himself.

“Coach (Ryan) Day did an unbelievable job last year of having his team in position to have success there,” Lanning said. “And there’s some things that I feel like I could have done better there at the end.”

But too much hindsight can get you stuck in the past, too. Oregon wants to move forward. It once again has lofty ambitions, with the players in place to make good on them.

The key will be tapping into what Ohio State did last year — getting hot at the right time and finding the right blend of team chemistry. Lanning believes all that is in front of his Oregon squad still.

“I don’t think we played our best football,” Dan Lanning said. “That being said we did go undefeated in the conference, we won the Big Ten championship in our first year. So like I said, double down and focus on our process. What do we have to continue to improve? There’s always learning lessons, but it doesn’t necessarily impact the future.”