Oregon defense shines late during Ducks' first scrimmage

From the sound of things, the Oregon offense won the early part of the day during the Ducks’ first scrimmage of fall camp on Saturday.

But according to head coach Dan Lanning, the defense delivered some big-time moments toward the end, making it difficult to decipher which was the better of the two groups on the day.

“I would have definitely said offense early,” Lanning said. “They were definitely moving the ball and having some success early. I think the defense late. It’s good to see the yin and yang, but plenty to clean up on both sides.”

The practice was not open to reporters and stats were not made public.

The offense did a good job moving the ball early on, according to Lanning. He was complimentary of his three quarterbacks — Jay Butterfield, Bo Nix, and Ty Thompson — and said all three had nice moments, but that none of them have separated themselves as the clear starter at this point.

When it came down to the end of the scrimmage, though, the defense began to get the better of the offense. Lanning said the defense got two big stops during the two-minute portion of the scrimmage, and he said two quarterbacks thew interceptions in those scenarios but declined to reveal who.

One of the stops came via a Bennett Williams interception. Lanning praised the senior defensive backs football IQ for how he handled the moments after his pick.

“We had a big pick and I think it was Bennett on the first series,” Lanning said. “It was interesting in our pre-practice team meeting, we showed a clip of Rice-UAB from a few years ago when coach (Drew Mehringer) was at Rice. Rice was going in to score. They throw an interception, and UAB instead of dropping right there has an opportunity to win the game if they go down, but they try to return the ball and they fumble it back to Rice and Rice goes down to score to win.

“We saw that exact same scenario today with an interception and our defense went down. It’s fun to see moments like that start to be reciprocated in practice.”

Lanning didn’t necessarily highlight the performances of very many individual players. When prompted, he was complimentary of Oregon’s running backs. He also was asked about the second- and third-unit defensive backs, and how that relatively young group of players coped with the Ducks’ offense.

“Again, I think the offense had the upper hand in moments,” Lanning said. “There were some explosive plays but certainly not just against the two groups or the one group. It was really collectively across the board. We’ve got to get better there. We have guys that are hungry.

“What I was excited to see was that I didn’t see as many guys make mental busts or errors. The majority of our errors came because of the chaos we created for ourselves and not necessarily because the players made mistakes. Overall, I was pleased with where they were at, but they’re not there yet.”