After first scrimmage, no Oregon quarterback has "separated themselves" as clear starter

Dan Lanning isn’t ready to say at this point if any of his three quarterbacks have separated themselves as the clear frontrunner to win the starting job.

Lanning’s Oregon program held its first scrimmage of fall camp on Saturday. While the practice was not open to reporters, Lanning did meet with the media afterward for a press conference and discussed his thoughts on the afternoon.

With Jay Butterfield, Bo Nix, and Ty Thompson all in the mix to be the Ducks’ starter, Lanning was asked if there is a player from that group who is in the driver’s seat to win the job.

“I don’t know,” Lanning said. “I don’t know — I think everybody has had shining moments. I don’t feel like there is one who has separated themself out from the others. I think there’s certainly room for improvement with each one of those guys. They’ve all had really good moments and they’ve all had really poor moments.

“Again, I’ll say this: I feel really confident we have quarterbacks we can win with, which is a big positive.”

At this point, Lanning doesn’t necessarily view that as a negative.

“I like to know that you have multiple quarterbacks you feel really good about; that’s where I’m at right now,” Lanning said. “I feel really good about that.”

According to Lanning, the performance of his three quarterbacks on Saturday was fairly even across the board.

“All of our quarterbacks, if you actually pull their stats afterward, you’re like, ‘Wow. They kind of had very similar days.'” Lanning said. “I think they all had success. They all scored touchdowns. Two threw picks. We talk about taking care of the ball, but in general, very similar performances across the board by those guys.”

There are ongoing position battles at several spots on the offense, and Oregon shuffled personnel throughout the afternoon and mixed first-, second-, and third-unit players together at times.

Lanning was complimentary of the offense’s tempo and said the Ducks created some explosive plays. Overall, though, the Ducks’ head coach was not thrilled with the offense’s inability to take care of the ball on Saturday.

“If you have one turnover, that’s one too many,” Lanning said. “On the same note, our goal on defense is to be plus-three every game. There were takeaways.”

Those interceptions, Lanning said, came in two-minute drill scenarios where quarterbacks were placed into a fourth-down, “must-throw” situation. He admitted the interceptions that were thrown on Saturday were less indicative of his quarterback’s abilities to take care of the ball, and more a product of the specific scenario they were placed in.”

“Some of those situations are going to be situations where you say, ‘You’ve gotta throw the ball,'” Lanning said. “Let’s say it’s fourth down in a two-minute, you need a touchdown or to get into field goal range. We’re gonna throw the ball. So, there’s a chance there’s gonna be a pick. … We had situations like that where we threw picks on must-throw fourth downs.

“But ultimately, still, we wanna do a better job of taking care of the ball. I think we were closer today. Like I said, for those (interceptions) to come in those situations I think tells you a little bit about our quarterbacks’ decision-making. But we can certainly still get cleaner.”