Dan Lanning on UW: "It's one that I want to have success in."

Monday night Dan Lanning met with media per usual to discuss the latest. There wasn’t a lot of talk about the win over USC in this one. But there was plenty of talk about the upcoming game vs Washington.

There was only one injury update on Iapani Laloulu and as you can guess, it wasn’t much of an update.

Lanning did go into detail about his defensive coordinator, Tosh Lupoi, being linked to other head coaching jobs. And it ended up being one of his longest answers this season.

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Opening Statement:

“Season’s gone really quick here, obviously, and excited for this next challenge here with Washington. But, again, want to take the opportunity to thank our fans for being unbelievable this past weekend. Got some work in with our guys this morning and certainly excited to continue to attack this week.”

On Crader & Pickard Filling In:

“Yeah, I thought they did a good job stepping up. Certainly some opportunities that they can clean up, but the guys played with good effort. They were execution sound, like as far as technique. We had a couple snap infractions with Charlie. We’d have to get cleaned up, but those guys came in and performed.”

On DB’s Performance vs USC:

“Yeah, Washington has certainly some capable wideouts. We’ve got to do a better job at the 50-50 balls.
There were some moments where they competed and they were contested at times, but they went up and won it. You know, they got the ball at the top, and those are tough against guys like that. You know, ultimately we wanted to limit Mekhi Lemon. I thought we were able to do that in a lot of ways. I know he scored, but he didn’t have a ton of yards in receiving.

But the other wideouts stepped up and made some big plays. Some of those I think we can make better plays on. You know, some of them I think they were great throws and catches, and those are going to happen in those moments. But probably more than any of that is cleaning up just the pass interference where we had opportunities to get off the field and we didn’t.”

On the UW Rivalry:

“Yeah, it’ll be a lot of the same messaging from that standpoint of go out there and do your job. It’s the best way you can control. And I know that our guys are going to be a high level of emotion in this game. They’re going to have that. But it’s definitely an important rivalry to us. This game means a lot. It’s probably the number one question I get asked when I’m out on the road with donors and support groups and talking about our university is about this game. It’s one that I struggled with early on when I was here. You know, to start, they had some success against us. So it means a lot to me. It’s one that I want to have success in. And they’re well coached. I mean, Jedd does a good job. They have good players. They’ve done a really good job in talent evaluation.

Their quarterback’s playing as well as anybody right now. Got good wideouts, got good back. I know they’ve been a little banged up. It sounds like they’re getting healthy, similar to us. You know, we’ve been banged up. So, ultimately, though, you see a complete team, you know, and then two fan bases that don’t like each other, which makes it fun.”

On Tosh Being Linked to Cal Opening:

“Tosh is an unbelievable coach right I learned from him as much as um you know now getting the opportunity to work together in this in this you know setting with me as the head coach. But I’ve learned from him back when I was a GA at Alabama. And he is a relentless worker, an unbelievable guy at preparing. He’ll make an outstanding head coach when the opportunity comes that he wants. And it makes sense for him. Anybody that wouldn’t look at him would be crazy.

And he has a reputation of doing an unbelievable job as a recruiter, but that’s not all that he is. He is an unbelievable coach. He can coach every position on defense, understands offensive ball, puts in the time and effort. So when he gets his opportunity, I know he’ll kill it, and at some point that will happen.

And I always talk about, you know, my goals for our staff and really myself is for me to be able to help people advance for opportunities for themselves that make a lot of sense. And well, that happened this year for Tosh. I think it has to make unbelievable sense for him for it to happen. And same for Will and same for, you know, several coaches on our staff. We’ve got a bunch of coaches that are going to be phenomenal head coaches when they get that chance. But we also have a really good product here that a lot of these guys have said no to a lot of great opportunities because they don’t want to leave what we have here.

So will he get that opportunity someday? I hope he does if he wants that. And same for all the other coaches on our staff because they’re certainly deserving. We get to have a great team here because of what they’ve done. And the great thing is our players understand that that’s how opportunities work. You go places, you work really hard and then the next opportunity comes. And it’ll be the same for the players that are on our team.

You work really hard, you do a great job. At some point you get the opportunity to go be in the NFL. So we’ll see how that all goes. The number one thing that can impact that is how we perform, right? And if we perform really well on Saturday, it’s going to continue to create more opportunities for us. And if that happens, then that’s going to be me accomplishing some of my goals where other people get to accomplish theirs. We’ll see how it all plays out.
There’s some great coaches we got here. I hope they get the opportunities that they deserve down the road for sure. Another question I think we probably know your answer to, but curious if you can give us an update on Poncho and whether or not he’s going to be able to play in this game.”

On Poncho’s availability:

“We’ll see.”