Dan Lanning Talks 12 Men Penalty, Traeshon Holden

Oregon coach Dan Lanning held his weekly Monday press conference and talked about a variety of topics including Traeshon Holden‘s spitting penalty, Jordan Burch‘s injury, and the 12 men on the field penalty from Saturday. Below are the most notable questions and quotes from Lanning’s interview as well as my thoughts at the end.

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Opening Statement:

“Turning around for a short week here, obviously a really exciting weekend for us. We’re proud of our players but there are a lot of moments from evaluating the film that we can use to get better.”

On the 12 men penalty on Ohio State’s last drive:

“We spend an inordinate amount of time on situations. There are some that don’t show up very often in college football but this is one that obviously was something we worked on so you can see the result.”

On Holden’s spitting penalty:

“I’m extremely disappointed with his actions during the game. There’s no place for that in the game. Traeshon realizes what he did wrong and there will be some discipline with that but we’ll keep that internal.”

On Burch’s availability:

“Continuing to evaluate it with him. Obviously we want to have our players’ best interests in mind. I do anticipate us being able to use Jordan but I don’t know if it will be this week.”

On the challenges of playing another Friday game:

“The key for us is that our process shouldn’t change. Our guys are certainly aware of other situations in college football but that’s what makes it so great.”

On Evan Stewart‘s performance vs Ohio State:

“Sometimes you don’t know when your number will be called but Evan did a great job capitalizing when he had opportunities and I certainly expect him to keep doing that in the future.”

On a potential change at the kicker position:

“We chart every single day in competitive situations. Atticus (Sappington) has proven to do a good job in situations and not always being put in the best places to be successful so you always have to evaluate the whole picture and not just the subset you see from the sidelines.”

On cornerback Nikko Reed‘s execution Saturday:

“I think Nikko’s grown a ton and he went out there and competed his tail off on Saturday with one of the most competitive matchups he’s had but we have confidence in a lot of other guys in the secondary as well to do their jobs.”

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Linden’s Take:

This was maybe the least focused press conference on the coming game that I’ve seen this year. That mostly stems from the questions asked as I’m sure Lanning & Co. are well aware of the dangers this matchup presents but it caught my attention regardless.

I wasn’t surprised to hear about the disciplinary situation for Holden as the spitting penalty was not a good look for Oregon and was a far cry from how we typically see the Ducks act on the field. I won’t speculate on what exactly the discipline looks like but it’s probably safe to say he won’t have a good week.

Getting confirmation that the 12 men penalty was intentional added a lot of substance to what we saw as it would be easy to chalk this up to confusion in a moment of chaos. Lanning cited the opportunity to review this with the team in the preceding timeout but it was an extremely heads-up call regardless.

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