Traeshon Holden: "Coach Lanning wasn't here when they won"
Oregon wide receiver Traeshon Holden met with reporters following Wednesday’s practice to preview No. 7 Oregon vs. Boise State this weekend.
Below you’ll find some of his key quotes and some analysis.
Question: Game 1 in the books how do you feel like you guys did as an offense? Where do you think you can get better this week?
Holden: “I feel like we probably need to improve really everything. Our mindset is probably the main thing, just going into that game—we already thinking we had the win, and we can’t go into games like that. So that’s probably been our main focus this week. And we definitely plan to improve on that.”
Question: As one of the leaders of this team what are you doing specifically this week to try and get that out of these guys?
Holden: “Just reminding them it doesn’t matter who we play, at the end of the day it’s us vs. us and it all depends what we want to put on film. If we say we’re the best offense in the country we gotta show that every week no matter who we’re playing.”
Question: What’s changed in your preparation from previous week now to this week to make sure that doesn’t happen?
Holden: “Really just, like I said, the mindset. My preparation for games is always going to be the same, like how I prepare. But as a whole I feel like we just gotta, I feel like we have been, but at that time we needed to lock in and really just focus up.”
Question: What’s the key to finding the end zone a little bit more this week?
Holden: “Really just explosive plays. We just gotta break tackles, at receiver when you get the ball make it happen. For real. That’s what’s gonna happen.”
Question: Not a lot of passes downfield last game. What do you attribute that to?
Holden: “Really I don’t know. I don’t know. It was a bunch of things that were going wrong. It was bad. It was bad on us for sure.”
Question: Coach Lanning was talking a little bit about the history of this series, that Oregon’s never beaten them. What does that matter to you?
Holden: “They ain’t beat me. Coach Lanning wasn’t here when they won, so they ain’t beat none of us. So we just gotta go out there and make a new streak or whatever they call it.”
Torres’ Take
Holden was relatively quiet in Oregon’s opener against Idaho, reeling in three passes for 36 receiving yards. Even so, he’s still a wideout that I’m pretty high on for this year. We saw Gabriel lock in on Tez Johnson pretty heavily against Idaho and that won’t fly as the year goes on.
Terrance Ferguson is another safety blanket for Gabriel, but I think Holden is a weapon that has been pretty underutilized since he arrived at Oregon. Maybe that was because there weren’t enough targets to go around between him, Franklin, Johnson and others last year.
With Franklin gone there’s certainly an opportunity there now. I love how he’s made it a point to change the team’s mindset this week, as he basically admitted the Ducks had Idaho chalked up as a win before the game started.
