Dan Lanning shares firm stance on Oregon's mindset for Week 7 matchup vs. Ohio State

Week 7’s headline matchup is Ohio State‘s road trip to Eugene for a presumed top 10 showdown between the Buckeyes and Oregon Ducks.

The Ducks are coming off a 31-10 victory over Michigan State at home on Friday that saw Oregon shut out the Spartans through three quarters. It set them up to be 5-0 heading into next weekend’s blockbuster matchup.

Undefeated heading into the game — the stakes won’t be this high for the Ducks for the rest of the regular season. It’s one they’ve had circled since the schedule was released.

“It’s time now that we actually have to go and play this game,” head coach Dan Lanning told the crew live on Big Nook Kickoff. “It’s an exciting game, certainly for our fans, certainly from the University of Oregon, and to get to go compete against Ohio State — it’s going to be a really special one. But I always talk about playing the game, not the occasion. There’s going to be a lot of fanfare around this game, but it’s really going to be about the game itself.”

The x-factor for the Ducks in the matchup will be their offense. Expected to be one of the more high-powered offenses during the preseason, Lanning’s squad hadn’t exactly met expectations during the opening weeks of the year.

However, the defense hasn’t given up more than 14 points since Week 2 and Oregon’s offense has been picking up steams. That has left quarterback Dillon Gabriel and the rest of the offesne to hold up their end of the bargain and against a defense like Ohio State, he’ll have to do better than his two interception performance against Michigan State last week.

“It’s going to be a fun experience for Dillon. He’s continued to get better and better each week,” Lanning said. “He had a couple of errors that we can’t have, and he knows that this past game. But that’s what growth’s about, it’s about what you’re figuring out, what you can improve on. And certainly this stage next week is going to be a big one, but it won’t require anything special from him. Just a standard performance, and we’ll be able to go out there and execute a high-level.”

Ohio State still has to get through Iowa in Week 6 before they can call themselves undefeated heading into Eugene next week. 18-point favorites coming in, they’re expected to be unscathed entering next week.