Dan Lanning reveals creative use of past Oregon greats to highlight big lesson

As Oregon continues to go through spring practices, new head coach Dan Lanning is discovering new ways to motivate his players as they put in work in preparation for the upcoming season. With a handful of spring practices in the books and a couple more weeks before the Ducks’ annual spring game on April 23, Lanning decided to be clever when it came to getting his team ready for a recent spring scrimmage.

With Oregon taking the field this past Saturday for a team practice scrimmage, Lanning and his coaching staff dug up practice film that included former big-name stars to show his team. He spoke about that with reporters following Saturday’s scrimmage.

“Stage is not too big,” Lanning said in regards to some of his players taking the field for a scrimmage for the first time. “We spent some time this morning watching clips of Marcus Mariota playing in front of an empty stadium in a scrimmage very similar. Arik Armstead – same thing. Justin Herbert, right? Penei Sewell, right? We watched clips of them on a scrimmage day and what they did, and then you get an opportunity to watch what they do on Sundays.

“But the reality is – the example there is – that it starts with work. It starts with nobody’s watching. That’s what today was – an opportunity to work with nobody was watching.”

Lanning’s coaching tactic was unique – no doubt about it. But if he and his staff were able to find film of former players such as Mariota, Armstead, Herbert and Sewell, how far back did they have to go to find clips of each of them?

“That’s a good question. … I’m not sure,” Lanning said with a laugh. “We just dug a little bit. We know those guys are good players. We wanted to find some film that we thought would be good to show our guys.”

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.