Dan Lanning assesses his coaching performance against Washington

Whenever a coach loses a close game, it’s only natural for them to be second guessed for decisions that didn’t work out. That’s true for Oregon head coach Dan Lanning, especially given his choice to go for it around midfield with the lead late.

On Monday, after having time to reflect on his coaching performance in the loss to Washington, Lanning shared how he felt he did.

“If I knew none of them were going to work, you would change every situation, right?” Dan Lanning said. “That’s not how those decisions work. Here’s the hard part when you sit in this seat, when I make decisions, one — I’m a big boy. I can handle criticism. That’s gonna come and it’s deserved in this position. That’s the way it works.”

During his time as Oregon’s head coach, Dan Lanning has proven to be aggressive in his approach, especially on fourth down. For him, it’s a matter of trusting his team.

“I trust our players. I trust our coaches. We have opportunities to win games. I’m going to be aggressive to win games,” Lanning said.

“If you look back at all of them, ultimately, field goal before half, that certainly could have gone either way. Like I said on Saturday, we felt that we had the look. If we didn’t have the look that we wanted, we were going to call a timeout and kick the field goal. Could easily turn around and say, ‘Kick the field goal’ there and feel good about it.”

Dan Lanning is referring to the end of the first half. At that point, the Ducks were trailing by four and had a 4th-and-3 from Washington’s three-yard line. Instead of taking the points, Lanning went for it but Oregon failed to convert.

Still, with just over two minutes left in the game, Oregon had the lead. It was fourth down from the Washington 47-yard line. Dan Lanning didn’t want to give the ball back to the explosive Huskies’ offense. So, he went for it. Again, the Ducks failed to convert and it gave the Huskies a short field on what quickly became the game-winning drive.

“At the very end of the game, I don’t think there’s any scenario where I wouldn’t go for it on fourth down there,” Lanning said.

“When you have an opportunity to put the game away and they’ve scored on more than 50 percent of their drives at that point in the game — 75 yards to 50 yards to 80 yards for them with a potent offense, they’re gonna have a lot of success in a lot of those scenarios. And they had that day. And then, you know, transversely, it gives our offense an opportunity to come back and still have a chance in that situation if we don’t get it. If we get the first [down], the game’s over. So, when I would go back, like I said, on Saturday is the 3rd-and-2. I wish we could have executed at a higher level. There was some confusion there.”

Ultimately, not being able to convert these attempts played a major role in the Oregon loss. It was a loss to a rival that is going to leave very little margin for error moving forward for the Ducks.

“What’s tough is when I make those decisions, it doesn’t just affect me. It affects everybody in our program. It affects everybody that cares about Oregon football, and I understand that. Like I said, I’m deserving of the criticism,” Lanning said.

“But it’s not like those decisions are made on Saturday in that moment. Those decisions were made earlier in the week. It’s, ‘Hey, how are we gonna play this game?’ We knew this was going to be a high-scoring game where touchdowns over field goals mattered. In that scenario, like I said before half, I think you could certainly say that could go the other direction. A lot of the other scenarios, I don’t know that you play them any other way other than if you already knew what the result of the play was going to be. Three opportunities on a fourth [down], the chances of not getting one of those three is really unique. Especially with what we’ve done offensively so far this year.”

Dan Lanning took the blame for the loss

While Dan Lanning doesn’t regret being aggressive on fourth down, he did ultimately take the blame for the loss.

“Both our coordinators prepared our guys to executed well. I think this game is 100 percent on me. I don’t think you guys got to look anywhere else besides me. I think everyone of us can look at the decisions that were made today,” Lanning said.

“If you could make some of those decisions different — if you kicked the field goal before the half, if you kicked the field goal somewhere else — that game could’ve been a different result. You never know how the rest of the game is going to play out, so you make those decisions based on the information that you have.”