Dan Lanning comfortable with Oregon's clock management in Washington State game

Following the Oregon Ducks‘ loss to the Washington Huskies, head coach Dan Lanning was criticized for several of the decisions that he made and didn’t work out. In particular, Lanning was criticized for his fourth-down decisions and approach to the end of each half.

Oregon bounced back from that loss, though, beating Washington State by a score of 38-24. After the game, Lanning reflected on his in-game management at the end of each half, explaining that he’s comfortable with how things went.

“I was comfortable with it,” Dan Lanning said. “You would love to get a first down there in that last series, so we can keep the clock running, you know, but at the very end of the game we were able to take it down to one or two seconds before the snap on each one of those. You’re trying to make sure you utilize as much of the time as possible there. Yeah, I was comfortable with the way we managed the clock.”

Of course, if things had gone differently for Lanning and the Ducks against Washington, then this might not be a concern now. However, Lanning’s aggressiveness ended up not working out and that led to criticism of how he managed the end of each half.

Despite that criticism, Lanning explained that he can handle criticism and doesn’t regret his decisions because he trusts his team.

“If I knew none of them were going to work, you would change every situation, right? 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,” Lanning said.

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

Dan Lanning impressed by Kyle Whittingham overcoming injuries at Utah

Oregon has another tough game coming up against Utah. The Utes have been banged up this season, dealing with plenty of injuries. Despite that, Dan Lanning is impressed with how well Kyle Whittingham has had the Utes playing.

“The amount of injuries that they’ve dealt with, and for him to be able to utilize defensive personnel on offense and shuffle positions and utilize offensive linemen at tight end and I think it’s just really impressive,” Lanning said.

“You know, everyone’s always known that he’s a great coach, but the way that he’s been able and his staff has been able to utilize the people they have, you know, I know the beginning the year he spoke about the depth of his team, it’s starting to really show up. He has good depth, but they’re utilizing people in different ways than they anticipated when the year started and he’s done a great job coaching that group.”