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Kenny Dillingham looking for consistency, tempo out of Oregon offense in second scrimmage

Jarrid Denneyby:Jarrid Denney•08/20/22•

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Ben Lonergan/The Register-Guard / USA TODAY NETWORK

When Oregon held its first scrimmage of fall camp last week, the Ducks’ coaching staff was complimentary of the way its offense created explosive plays.

Now, a week later, offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham is looking for more consistency from his group and would like to see the offense play at a higher tempo.

“I want to improve on our tempo. We’re not playing at a very fast pace right now,” Dillingham said. “It’s not really who we are but we’ve got to play a little bit faster. It’s something that I would like to see. I’d like to see us take care of the football more with the ball in our hands. And I think we’re a little bit too loose with the ball.

“So, I want to see ball security. And I want to see with players a little bit better tempo.”

Last Saturday, Oregon head coach Dan Lanning met with reporters following the first scrimmage and said the quarterbacks performed well. Two of them threw interceptions — Lanning declined to say who — and all three led touchdown drives.

This time around, Dillingham isn’t overly worried about whether or not his signal-callers make dynamic plays. Rather, he wants them to limit game-changing mistakes.

“When bad things happen, do we make a bad play horrible?” Dillingham said “I think that’s what separates great quarterbacks is not necessarily the great players that make SportsCenter but do your bad plays make SportsCenter? When your bad players don’t make Sports Center, that’s when you’re a great quarterback.”

With Jay Butterfield, Bo Nix, and Ty Thompson all still in the mix for the quarterback job, Dillingham said he isn’t sure if Oregon’s coaching staff will have enough information after Saturday’s scrimmage to decide on its Week 1 starter.

“To be honest, I don’t know,” Dillingham said. “I think that’s just gonna happen when it happens.”

It isn’t just the players who Dillingham is hoping to see progress from on Saturday. He was asked how he personally he wants to progress during the scrimmage and provided a noteworthy response.

“I think sometimes you get in a rhythm with comfortable calls. I want to put myself in challenging situations to where we’re calling complex calls in the middle of drives,” Dillingham said. “Not just (possession and 10’s)ut. But we’re calling really complex calls for a defense that aren’t just tempo calls where you almost get in a rhythm because you’re gonna drive and you try to play fast.

“Really stopping ourselves and getting us into the best call possible on certain situations.”

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