Dan Lanning on Oregon's starting center: 'We'll see on Saturday'
Ahead of Oregon’s season opener on Saturday evening, one position on the offensive line still hasn’t been set: Center. And head coach Dan Lanning seems fine to enter the opener without a definitive, publicly-named starter at the spot.
Right now, it appears redshirt junior walk-on Charlie Pickard could play, as could sophomore Iapani Laloulu or senior Marcus Harper II, among others. But whoever ends up playing, Lanning is considering their place on the field perhaps differently than others.
“We’ll see on Saturday. There’s a lot of guys I think can play winning football,” Lanning said. “So you guys want to know every single starter, for me it’s about how many guys can play winning football for us. And you could see more than one guy in those situations.”
Oregon is replacing one of the best centers in the country from 2023, Jackson Powers-Johnson, who now plays for the Las Vegas Raiders.
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Laloulu has also been working at left guard some as Oregon deals with some injuries up front. It’s possible he plays one or both positions in the season opener as Lanning tries to mix and match up front in search of the winning football he wants.
Oregon offensive guard Matthew Bedford suffered a knee injury earlier this month during Ducks fall camp, and his status for the season opener is still up in the air.
Lanning has been forced to make some changes along the offensive line, as such, and he updated Bedford’s injury timeline after practice on Wednesday. Good news for the Ducks is he was able to get back on the practice field this week.
Lanning originally projected the injury to hold out Bedford for multiple weeks, but he was suited up at practice with what appears to be a wrap on his right knee.
“He’s able to move around,” Lanning told reporters. “But I don’t know that he’ll be able to help us in game one or not. We’ll see what it looks like. We’ll continue to assess it.”
Bedford, a transfer from Indiana, started 39 of 41 career games with the Hoosiers between 2020 and 2023. That included 11 of 12 games this past season when the former Honorable Mention All-Big Ten guard was coming off of a knee injury the year prior.
On3’s Nick Kosko contributed to this report.