Reading Between the Lines: Oregon vs BYU

One of the things we’ve come to expect in today’s college football world is understanding coach speak. It’s common for coaches to answer questions without directly answering questions.

Granted, I will say it’s a little more straight-forward these days with Dan Lanning at Oregon.

Following Oregon’s big win over BYU here are a few quotes I singled out and translated for you. Perhaps you missed them or glossed over them. But each week I’ll try and grab some of the top quotes and ‘translate’ them for you.

Here is this weeks edition.

Dan Lanning: “We wanted to out-rush our opponent, that’s a brand of physicality we were able to show. We wanted to establish an identity. I think everybody in the stadium at some point probably realized what we were doing when we ran Josh Conerly (Jr.) out there, our big group with three tight ends in the back and we were about to get big and go play ball. We didn’t really care if you knew what we were going to do, you had to stop us. I thought our offense did a great job of that.”

Translation: This was Oregon’s chance to really show the country they are a physical football team against BYU. It would appear Dan Lanning is going to continue pounding the ball and forcing teams to stop them. This is one quote that really doesn’t seem to have a hidden meaning. I think this one is plain sight. And I love it.

But I also think it’s worth noting because some have wondered if Oregon has an offensive identity and it sounds like Dan Lanning is telling you they certainly do.

Kalani Sitake: “You have to give credit to Oregon because they did some things differently on offense utilizing personnel. They utilized a lot of empty sets; they went big and went a lot of spread sets. We were ready for that in practice, but it seems like whenever we made a mistake, Bo Nix and the offense capitalized on it.”

Translation: Bo Nix is playing the game with a veteran experience Oregon has lacked. He does a great job taking what’s there, making adjustments and understanding coverage. It’s pretty subtle, but really Sitake is saying Nix kicked our butts and he’s a dang good quarterback.

Duck fans are finally catching on but it certainly would appear Sitake saw enough to know Nix is legit.

Kalani Sitake: “Obviously, they did a good job shutting down the run, so it made us one-dimensional and put us in some tough situations on third down, even on fourth down. We could not even capitalize and make those plays. I think at the beginning, we could not punch it in, we could not finish drives, and we will get that fixed.”

Translation: They kicked our butts and pushed us around. Oregon did exactly what I said in one of my keys for last week, make BYU one dimensional. With Oregon scoring and forcing BYU to start playing catch up in the second half it really forced BYU to play out of its comfort zone.

Credit Oregon’s defense for taking some pride in playing with effort and passion.

Bo Nix: “It helped playing here at home. The atmosphere was awesome.”

Translation: Autzen is getting back to being “Autzen.” Outside of the unfortunate chant by a few, the students showed up and helped give the team some Juice in a big way. Here is my one concern as we start to turn the page. Oregon’s lone road game this season, went bad. However that was Georgia, so how much do we take from that? Both wins are at home and the team looked noticeably better.

The Ducks are back on the road this week so it will be interesting to see if this team can play well on the road in Pullman.