Oregon's win over Ohio State meant so much more than Dan Lanning securing a signature win

Will Howard broke the line of scrimmage as the final ticked off the clock. By the time Ohio State’s quarterback slid, the reality set in for Oregon coach Dan Lanning. He did it. He really did it. 

Oregon’s thrilling 32-31 win over Ohio State gave him his first signature win as the leader of the Ducks. When the camera panned to him in that moment of realization, Lanning was shoving people because he was so excited. He let out a scream that has been building for more than two years. 

Lanning was happy about the individual victory, sure. Oregon remained undefeated and proved to the country it can beat anyone. But that scream was more than just a victory scream. That scream had to have been a culmination of every single emotion Lanning has felt during the construction of this Oregon program. Every recruiting call, every late night, every crushing loss, and, yes, every criticism that he has never won a big game despite winning many of those recruiting battles. 

As Oregon fans stormed the field, he had to have gone back to Sept. 3, 2022. That was the day of his first game as Oregon’s coach. His Ducks were matched up against Georgia in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game in Atlanta. They got blown off the field 49-3. It wasn’t competitive. It was elite vs. good. It was made vs. project.

Lanning arrived at Oregon after working for Kirby Smart at Georgia the previous four years. Before he took the Oregon job, he was keenly aware of what it took to win a national championship, what the roster had to look like to win games like this. He had to have known just by looking at his first Oregon team what was going to happen on that field in Atlanta, but seeing it still had to be jarring.

So he went to work. Recruiting. Building. Gaining valuable head-coaching experience. Losing big-time games in which he went for it on 4th down in a critical moment when many think he shouldn’t have. Getting to conference title games and losing. Pain.

All of that was for this.

This is the evolution of the Oregon football program.

Two years and a few months after that Georgia game, Oregon went from a team that couldn’t operate against one of the giants of the sport to beating one. That’s what that scream had to have been about. It was more than just an individual win over a really good team. It was the validation — mainly to himself — that the construction of this Oregon football program didn’t just work, but is almost complete.

“There’s been a lot of growth, but I’d say we’re not done, right?” Lanning said after the game. “There’s a lot more to do and I think that locker room feels the same way. Am I pleased with the growth that we’ve had so far? Absolutely. And every single person’s a part of that, right? Not me, not just our coaches, not just our players, it’s the whole community, the whole University of Oregon.

“Our fans, elite players making the decision to come here, and they’ve got options to go anywhere in the in the United States, all those things add up.”

They added up alright.

Let’s put into perspective what this Ohio State team is. The Buckeyes are a juggernaut talent-wise. It returned a large chunk of a team that took last year’s national champions to the final moments. There are five (maybe more) players on that team who should be in the NFL right now but opted to come back. Then the Buckeyes went out and added Howard, running back Quinshon Judkins and safety Caleb Downs in the portal. This Ohio State team is as deep and talented as the Georgia teams Lanning coached. Ohio State was supposed to be the sport’s super team in a season where it’s becoming increasingly evident that there may not be one.

What if that is Oregon now?

The Ducks are my No. 1 team in the country. And the best part? They made plenty of mistakes in the game that would have cost previous Ducks teams. Oregon fans watched a botched extra point, a failed two-point conversion, a failed fourth-down conversion inside Ohio State’s five, a player being ejected for spitting on another player, edge-rusher Jordan Burch missing the game because of an injury. Oregon fans were waiting for the final shoe to drop, for the Buckeyes to take advantage of any of those errors and win the football game.

It didn’t. The only shoe that dropped to the turf was Howard’s slide once it was too late for Ohio State to attempt a game-winning field goal.

Oregon didn’t play its best game and beat Ohio State.

Say it again: Oregon didn’t play its best game and beat Ohio State.

Why? Because Lanning knows how to a build a program, which was evident to people who know college football long before he won his first big game. There’s a reason his name kept popping up in every big-time coaching vacancy the last 12 months. Building what this Oregon team has become is a multi-year process, a process branded into Lanning’s brain by the best coach in college football right now.

Recruiting. Recruiting. Recruiting.

And portal.

Lanning’s 2023 Oregon recruiting class finished No. 7 nationally in the On3 Industry rankings. In the 2024 cycle, the Ducks finished No. 3. On top of that, Oregon has gotten huge portal pickups every year, including quarterback Dillon Gabriel and receiver Evan Stewart, who obviously played instrumental roles in the Ducks’ win over the Buckeyes. Ohio State’s roster roster reportedly being paid north of $20 million in NIL money, which is more than the cumulative salaries of the Detroit Tigers payroll. Oregon beat that.

Oregon’s win didn’t secure it a national title. Though the rest of its schedule is manageable and it seems likely the Ducks will finish the season undefeated, this new expanded College Football Playoff means their biggest games are still yet to come. As of right now, it seems very likely Ohio State and Oregon will play again in the Big Ten Championship in Indianapolis in December. Then the College Football Playoff comes after that. Oregon is going to have plenty more opportunity to finish the job.

But this is as legitimizing of a win as a program can have.

And instead of going out and smoking a victory cigar as Lanning likes to do, he had other things on his mind. At the end of his news conference that spanned 30 minutes, he was ready to go.

“I have to recruit here,” he said. “If you see any good players, tell them to come here.” 

That’s a man who knows the building process never stops. This is a man who gets it.

But hopefully he takes a moment to look around and see his progress. It’s remarkable.