Dan Lanning addresses quarterback rotation, position battle

Heading into his first season as Oregon‘s head coach, Dan Lanning is tasked with continuing the success that Mario Cristobal had with the Ducks’ program before leaving for Miami. While the team has been going through spring practices as part of its preparation for the upcoming 2022 campaign, Lanning has had his players competing at every position as he looks to piece together his starters once game week arrives in the fall.

As Oregon held its first scrimmage of its spring practice period on Saturday, quite a bit of the attention was on the Ducks’ quarterbacks – a position group that is highlighted by Auburn transfer Bo Nix, who threw for 2,294 yards and 11 touchdowns as a junior in 2021. Alongside Nix, Oregon’s room includes a pair of On3 Consensus four-star talents in redshirt freshmen Ty Thompson and Jay Butterfield.

With Nix, Thompson and Butterfield being the primary three quarterbacks in the running for the starting job, Lanning met with the media after Saturday’s scrimmage and addressed the battle and where it currently stands.

“A lot of guys got a lot of reps,” Lanning said of Saturday’s scrimmage. “A lot of guys got a lot of reps. Really, every guy was working with every group.”

While Lanning didn’t provide much context, he was asked a follow-up question by a reporter and spoke a little bit about each of the three signal-callers.

“I think Jay’s a savy player,” Lanning said. “I think Jay would tell you just like Bo and Ty would tell you – there’s a lot of things he can improve on and get better at. But the more these guys get comfortable in the system … I thought today was a great example of those guys understanding what Coach Dillingham’s goal is on offense and where he wanted the ball distributed and how we’re going to take care of it.

“But there’s something about a scrimmage that creates a sense of urgency because all three of those guys – and I thought we saw some of that today.”

Oregon will continue to go through practices before closing out the period with its annual spring game on April 23 at 4 p.m. ET.