Dan Lanning's Best Quotes Following Boise State Win

The Oregon Ducks survived a 37-34 shootout against the Mountain West Conference’s Boise State Broncos Saturday behind a late surge from the special teams units. Coach Dan Lanning addressed running back Ashton Jeanty‘s performance, keeping composure in a wild game, and more in his postgame press conference.

Below are Lanning’s most notable quotes from tonight, as well as my thoughts at the end.

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Opening Statement:

“Hats off to Boise State, I thought they played a hell of a game. They created some takeaways, I think really the difference tonight was special teams.”

“I told Atticus (Sappington) early on when he missed the extra point that you’re going to have an opportunity to kick again for this team and it’s gonna be the difference for us and it was. Their back is special, that guy is a really really great back.”

“Proud of our guys for showing resilience, that was really a comeback game for us in a lot of ways. A guy makes a mistake, somebody else makes up for that mistake later on so there was a lot of back and forth a lot to learn from this game.”

On creating explosive plays:

“We had a couple of those. I think our coaching staff did a good job of recognizing when we’d have those opportunities. They got in blitz and we were able to hit the slant to Traeshon (Holden) for a touchdown.”

“We told ourselves early on that we’re going to take a shot down the field, Evan (Stewart) capitalized on that shot on a really good pass there from Dillon (Gabriel).”

On the offensive line’s performance through two games:

“Early one was a mistake of holding the ball. They have a good defensive line that wanted to be aggressive early and we held the ball a little longer than we needed to.”

“Some of the other ones I’ll have to watch the film and figure out what that looks like so we can attack that.”

On Jeanty’s breakaway run late in the game and his performance at large:

“It’s kind of what he creates with a lot of teams. You can bottle him up, bottle him up, bottle him up and then he makes a huge, explosive play.”

“Certainly a miscommunication on that big run, we weren’t sound in where we were at defensively so we have to be sure that we have all 11 playing the same call. He just doesn’t go down, that’s what makes that guy special.”

On keeping composure through a chaotic fourth quarter:

“You just have to think about the next play. It’s certainly an emotional game but we talked to the players before the game about paying attention to your attention.”

“It’s about the next play, even when we’re going out for that field goal at the end we’re talking about what we’re gonna do for the next play if it misses.”

On how he felt about the team’s process this week after being disappointed with it against Idaho:

“I have a sense of relief because of the result but there are a lot of things that I think we can attack and fix. I thought offensively we did a lot better job in the second half after starting off slow.”

“We have to figure out the cause of that and make sure that doesn’t become an issue for us. That’s our job as coaches.”

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Linden’s take:

It goes without saying that there’s a lot that needs to happen between now and when the Ducks start Big Ten Conference play. Lanning was pleased with the Ducks’ opportunistic explosive plays to Holden and Stewart which were sorely lacking against Idaho a week ago.

Coming off a sluggish game such as that, I think it would’ve been easy for this team to be rattled given the back-and-forth nature of this outing. This was one of the main things I was pleased with from this game.

Lanning acknowledged Jeanty’s unbelievable ability to keep a play alive, something that gave the Ducks fits all night. I suspect most teams will have a lot of problems containing him throughout the season.

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