Dan Lanning stresses importance of backup quarterback development

Going into his second season as the head coach at Oregon, Dan Lanning is happy to have a starting quarterback he can rely upon in Bo Nix. However, this will be Nix’s last college season and he’s one snap away from an injury. So, it’s important that Oregon has a backup the team can be confident in.

Lanning explained this during the 2023 Oregon Football Media Day.

“You want to make sure that when he comes in, you can win games,” Dan Lanning said. “Right, and there isn’t a drop-off. The expectation is they train to become the next guy up, they train to become the guy that’s on the field.”

After Bo Nix, Oregon has three quarterbacks on the roster. They’re all much younger than Nix, including sophomore Ty Thompson, redshirt freshman Marcus Sanders, and freshman Austin Novosad. As Dan Lanning explained, if something happens to Nix, he doesn’t want there to be a drop-off giving the ball to one of them.

“And I think we’ve all seen great examples of that, winning games and winning down the stretch because of that play,” Lanning said. “So, we expect not to have a drop-off when — there’s gonna be more than just one position, right? There’s gonna be injuries this year. Those will exist. And, what we want, is our next guy to be up and ready, right, and that’s the expectation across the board.”

Ty Thompson is the likely backup going into the 2023 season and during spring ball, Dan Lanning praised his performance.

“Ty [Thompson] had a really good day today,” Dan Lanning said. “I thought today was probably Ty’s most impressive practice so far this spring. Thought he did a lot of really good things out there, operating as a quarterback.”

Dan Lanning on his ‘good to great’ motto

This season, Dan Lanning has a motto that he wants Oregon to live by, and it’s to go from good to great.

“There’s a ton of them but, really, we just start within the book. ’20 Mile March’ is a great example of having a consistent approach. Be the hedgehog, know what your strength is. Not everybody is going to have strengths in every field. But what is yours and how are you going to utilize it? I’ve been around a lot of teams. I’ve seen a lot of teams take that same approach and take that same march. We want to use those examples but our focus is us. How can we accomplish that?” Lanning said.

“Ultimately, words are just that. It’s not really about words. It’s about action. But this isn’t a cookie-cutter deal. It doesn’t work. There’s 131 different teams in college football, in FBS football. We’re not looking for the cookie-cutter example. If you’re rolling out the exact same material every single year for your players? It can become mundane and you’re probably not attacking your strengths or your weaknesses.”