Dan Lanning breaks down plan for revamping recruiting at Oregon

Oregon has officially hired Dan Lanning as the Ducks’ new football coach, but he is finishing out the season as Georgia’s defensive coordinator currently. Despite still being with the Bulldogs, Lanning is already putting his plans for his new role into motion. For Lanning, recruiting is something that he wants to emphasize and revamp at Oregon.

While Lanning doesn’t have any head coaching experience, he is excited to be able to get started with the Ducks. When it comes to recruiting, Lanning understands that Oregon is a national brand, which allows the team to expand throughout the country while recruiting players.

“One of the big benefits of Oregon is it’s a national brand,” Lanning said about his plans for recruiting. “We can go anywhere in the nation and be able to sign players. But I think you can just bring that relentless pursuit that we operate with day in, day out here and the organization behind it. We can bring the mentality of how we play football to a certain level.”

Oregon went 10-4 this season, losing three of its final four games. The Ducks were blown out twice against Utah, including in the Pac-12 Championship. Oregon also lost 47-32 in the Alamo Bowl to Oklahoma.

Lanning brings plenty of recruiting experience to Oregon

Despite not being a head coach, Lanning is no stranger to recruiting. Lanning brings a ton of experience recruiting at some of the biggest college football powers to Oregon.

“I’ve been fortunate to have high-quality experience in my team here, whether it be at Georgia or Memphis or Alabama or some of the other places I’ve been able to visit and coach,” Lanning added. “So taking all that out there I think will be really important. The biggest thing is just learning from that experience. Not any situation is the exact same. But recruiting ultimately, at the end of the day, comes down to work. And it’s going to take work to get great players at Oregon. And we have the ability to get great players there and great players should want to come there.”

Lanning did a tremendous job at building Georgia’s defense into one of the best in college football history this season. With Lanningbeing Oregon’s head coach now and splitting duties, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said that he has done a good job at staying focused, and also added that he’s going to be a great recruiter for Oregon.

“There’s not a 24/7 continuum on being just the coordinator,” Smart added. “There’s guys that have other things on their mind, and he delegates his time. I trust Dan. He’s done a tremendous job here. Number one, he’s a great recruiter. He’s loyal to Georgia, he’s loyal to these players that he recruited. He knows for his sake and Oregon’s program’s sake he wants to play well. He’s as invested in this process as everybody is.”