What Dan Lanning said after Oregon lost to Indiana

EUGENE — No. 3 Oregon lost to No. 7 Indiana 30-20 Saturday afternoon at Autzen Stadium.

Dan Lanning recapped the first loss of the season for the Ducks (5-1, 2-1 Big Ten), who travel to Rutgers next week.

Below is a transcript of Lanning’s postgame press conference.

DAN LANNING

“Certainly a disappointing result, but we didn’t play well enough to go win that game and Indiana certainly did. They’re a really well coached team. They did a great job in this game. They had a great plan. They were able to create pressure throughout and we struggled on third down, struggled to protect the quarterback. Ultimately, they were more prepared for us in this moment. I don’t think there was any let down from our players. Our crowd was outstanding; created some penalties and some opportunities for us. But ultimately we shot ourselves in the foot and had several penalties ourselves, which has been a little bit uncharacteristic for us. Can’t play behind the chains on offense. We had a hard time generating success and anytime we did we hurt ourself. An unbelievably prepared, great team. Coach Cignetti and their quarterback played well. Their defense played really, really well and they did some things that will good for us to be able to attack and look at for the future.”

On team’s goals still being in front of them:

“Our players know that. They recognize what’s in front of them and it’s about improvement. It’s about going to attack. It’s hard to go unscathed in college football, especially against a good team. They played a better game than us. They were better coached than us today. Our guys recognize that there’s still, every one of our goals is still in front of us and an opportunity to attack.”

On the third downs on Indiana’s go-ahead drive:

“You try to have tight matches. I thought quarterback did a good job of getting from 1 to 3 and finding the open guy. One of them we slipped and fell down. I have to go back and see the offsides; that surprised me. It’s not a reviewable play but I thought we were off the field in time. That’s something we said we have to be clean on substitutions and we weren’t. Then they were able to run the ball and control the clock. We didn’t do a good job of having responsibility for the quarterback on a couple of those plays where we thought we did. But it’s something we’ll go back and evaluate.”

On offense in second half:

“Ultimately it means they made better adjustments in the second half than we did. We came out and we get a stop defensively early on but again, I think the penalties really hurt us in the second half. Some negative plays that we weren’t able to create and I thought they had a really good plan that we have to have more in-game adjustments to be able to handle. They played well and we didn’t play well enough. No excuses from us. They deserve credit in this win.”

On Indiana’s rush defense in second half:

“They had hats in a loaded box. You look even at the interception there at the end, you’re trying to throw an advantage RPO, you get a batted ball when they have a loaded box and they do a great job of creating that and turn that into an interception. We have got to go look at the film, see what they did, make sure we have proper answers for it in the future.”

On Brandon Finney’s pick-six:

“We were in man-to-man coverage. He did a great job. That’s one of the harder routes to defend in man-to-man is a crossing route from the opposite side. He did a great job breaking on the ball. We had good pressure up front. Great job finishing in the end zone and turning that into a touchdown for us.”

On his message to Dante Moore:

“Adversity is real. You’re going to face it at some point in your career. It’s about how you respond to it. We didn’t have our fastball today. They did a great job. In this game everybody wants to look at players and say, ‘oh, this is the reason.’ That was a team effort and that was a team loss. Their team played better than us. It wasn’t Dante. It was the whole group. It was the coaching staff. It’s the players. Ultimately Dante’s going to look at this as an opportunity to learn from it as well. We’ll grow from it and get better.”

On Moore’s confidence:

“I think Dante has confidence. I thought they had a better plan. There’s some things that we put on film that they did a good job taking advantage of. They had a good rush all day. Our protection wasn’t clean; we can get better in that area. But Dante’s a confident player. He’s a guy that we have a lot of confidence in.”

On Moore’s health after a hit in the fourth quarter:

“I think Dante’s OK. He’s a tough kid. Took some hits today and we got to do a better job protecting our quarterback to avoid that.”

On 267 yards of offense:

“It felt like they had the pen last. They had extra hats at the point of attack. In situations where we’re having to throw for it, they did a great job defending the sticks. They were aggressive. I think they’re really well coached. They wont he 50-50 balls; some of those are really close as far as connection and how tight they are in coverage but they did a good job being tight in coverage. We tried to take the top off a couple of times. They did a good job being on top when we had those moments.”

On play of leaders:

“I think these guys played till the end. There’s some moments where we made some great plays and then there’s some moments we didn’t make the play that was necessary and the play we’re supposed to make. Those will be opportunities to attack. Bryce always leads. He led all the way throughout the game; never wavered. You let a team be in position like they were to have success and you don’t create enough positive when you have the opportunity, you’re going to end up coming on the short end of the stick.”

On team’s response to adversity today:

“I don’t think anybody in organization did the best that they were capable of today, myself included. It starts with me. I thought their plan was better and ours wasn’t. There’s some moments going back early in the game that I’m already saying, ‘OK, we handled this wrong and didn’t put our guys in position to have success.’ But that will be something we go improve. I thought our players played hard. But there’s a moment there when you’re not having success on offense that you’ll have self-doubt that’s going to set in. It’s something that we’ll have to attack and make sure we have a great plan for in the future.”

On the final series of 1st half and whether he considered going for it on fourth down:

“No, we wanted to take points there. That’s a kick that Atticus has made a lot of times. If you go back and look at it, again I have to go see it, but we felt like we had a really advantageous run look and we were a cut away from making that into an explosive play. If it was tight – if it was fourth and 1 or fourth and 2, it might have been a go. But ultimately felt like taking the points there was the right thing to do and we just didn’t make the kick.”

On corner’s performance against Elijah Sarratt:

“It felt like we were a little loose in coverage. We were soft at times. We got to do a better job playing catch when we’re playing off. I think that’s really hard technique to play. They did a good job taking advantage of it. We didn’t get enough work on it during the week to have success. But he’s a really good wide out. Mendoza threw the ball really, really well to him and was able to find it. Ultimately our rush didn’t necessarily get home. They had a batted ball that mattered there at the end. I think we had one in the game. We got to get more batted balls and more impact on the quarterback.”

On what they could have done better:

“I don’t think our plan was great. At times we played well defensively. We had some short fields. But ultimately we didn’t stop the run when it mattered most. We got to have a better job to stop the run there at the end of the game. Didn’t do a good job of contesting balls defensively. Third down we weren’t good on offense and we got to be able to avoid third down. We had some positive runs on certain schemes then there was some really negative runs. You can’t take negatives against a team like this. Tempo we didn’t handle well. I thought they handled our tempo extremely well on offense, excluding the early touchdown pass to Malik. But they had some good tempo answers for us that we didn’t have great answers for what they were doing. Their pitches were better than our pitches. Ultimately that’s something we can improve,”

On Jordon Davison:

“We felt like he had a hot hand at one point in the game, was running really well. Was falling forward for yards. Did a good job of doing positive yards. We were having success with some of our duo plays, things like that, that he runs really well.”