Ranking All of Dan Lanning's Losses at Oregon

Oregon is coming off a tough loss to Indiana at home. A top ten ranked team at the time now moved up to No. 3 with the quality win over the Ducks. The Hoosiers are for real this season.

Still it’s hard to imagine this was only the 7th loss of Lanning’s relatively young head coaching career. And of course that entire career has spanned at Oregon only. So this is definitely not a hit piece on Dan Lanning. If you can go 40-7 to start your head coaching career, you’ve done way more right than you’ve done wrong.

But for the sake of entertainment, I went ahead and ranked Lanning’s losses from worst to best. I’m sorry if you are wrong and don’t agree.

My criteria isn’t the final score. That would obviously be boring to write. Just the worst loss in terms of the feeling after the game. For example, even though Georgia blasted Oregon in the first game of his career, I hardly rank that as the worst. To me, that just further illustrates how far he has brought this program into relevance.

So without giving it away, let’s get into my rankings.

7. Georgia 49-3 (2022)

This Georgia team went on to crush the national championship. They were an absolute buzzsaw. This game was in Atlanta, basically a home game for Kirby. While it was a tough way to start the Lanning era, it wasn’t even remotely close to his worst loss.

6. Washington 37-34 (2023)

I’m talking the regular season game. The one where Lanning went for it on 4th down twice and couldn’t convert. Let’s be real, Penix was in his bag that day. He was torching the Oregon secondary with his elite group of wideouts. While it was a fun game and tough loss, it was by no means, the worst one.

5. Indiana 30-20 (2025)

This game isn’t even top three for me. And honestly you could push it to No. 6 or 7 and I wouldn’t mind. But I’m listing it five, likely largely due to recency bias. Oregon looked unprepared. Dante Moore had a bummer of a game. And somehow Oregon stayed in the game late. It moves to four for me because it was a home game and Indiana’s first top five win. Two big back-breakers. Otherwise, you lost a relatively close game to a team that now sits inside the top three.

4. Washington 37-34 (2022)

Do you remember this game? Oregon’s up late, Bo Nix gets injured on an odd play and Ty Thompson enters the game. Lanning had a chance to preserve the tie, even after giving up a three-play, 80-yard touchdown in the final minutes. Aggressive Dan went for it on 4th and 1 with Thompson under center inside Oregon’s 40. When they didn’t convert, Washington kicked a game-winning field goal. An absolute brutal turn of events in Autzen stadium and a bad loss. Sorry for having you relive this one. This was Lanning’s lowest ranked loss of his career. UW was ranked No. 25 at the time.

3. Ohio State 41-21 (2025) (Rose Bowl)

Now hear me out. You are all going to want to say this game because of two reasons. Recency bias and the fact it lingered FOR SO DAMN LONG and haunted Oregon fans from January 1 to late August. It stung, it was gross and Ohio State kicked Oregon’s ass. But, like Georgia, you lost to the eventual national championship winner. A good team that had your number.

2. Washington 34-31 (2023) (P-12 champ game)

The Pac-12 championship game. A shot at redemption. Oregon played their way back into a rematch. And Washington entered the game not looking so hot. But again Penix and his all-star receiver crew did exactly what they did in the first game. Wing the ball all over the field against Oregon. This loss kept Oregon out of the playoffs and was a much worse loss than the regular season game.

1. Oregon State 38-34 (2022)

This game never should have ended in a loss. Never. And the fact Oregon State just lined up and ran the ball over and over and over again at Oregon makes it an inexcusable loss. It would be one thing if OSU pulled off some miracles and trickery, but they didn’t. We all yelled at our TV’s a run was coming. And Oregon did absolutely nothing to stop it. This was his second-worst ranked loss with OSU checking in at No. 21 when these two teams met.