The Herald’s Duck football commentary: The Lanning era: Beyond the Alamo Bowl

By LLOYD PASEMAN/For The Herald  —  No. 14 Oregon heads into next Wednesday’s Alamo Bowl game against No. 16 Oklahoma looking ahead to the 2022 season with a new head coach, a new offensive coordinator, a new co-defensive coordinator, a veteran QB transfer who helped beat the Ducks in 2019, and only a portion of its 2021 starting lineup and Top Ten 2022 recruiting class.

All that was set in motion on Dec. 6 when Mario Cristobal, Oregon’s head coach since the end of the 2017 season, announced he was resigning to take the head coaching job in his hometown at the University of Miami.

Cristobal has deep roots in south Florida so his leaving Eugene after only four seasons was no surprise. But the timing was: Three days after losing the Pac-12 championship to Utah by 38-10, 15 days after suffering an equally humiliating loss to the Utes 38-7, and ahead of a fifth straight bowl game that will now be coached by WR/pass game coordinator Bryan McClendon, who may be leaving after the Alamo Bowl to join Cristobal’s staff at Miami.

Cristobal’s offensive coordinator at Oregon, Joe Moorhead, will be on hand to call plays next week but after that will be heading to Ohio to take the head coaching job at Akron. Tim DeRuyter, defensive coordinator/outside linebackers coach for the Ducks, has left to take the defensive coordinator job at Texas Tech, and Alex Mirabal, associate head coach/offensive line coach for the Ducks, is joining Cristobal in Miami.

There’s no need to go into great detail about Cristobal’s departure from Oregon but it was messy.

Miami reportedly offered him an annual salary of $8 million plus bonuses and incentives; his base salary at Oregon this season was $4.3 million. When they heard he was thinking of leaving, UO officials—with the support of Nike founder and No. 1 Duck donor Phil Knight—put together a $7 million financial offer but Cristobal got on a plane after the second loss to Utah without signing the offer and sealed his deal with Miami while supposedly on a recruiting trip for the Ducks. Oregon will receive $9 million from Miami as part of Cristobal’s buyout and an additional $1 million in bonuses he forfeited by leaving before the end of the season.

Speculation about who might replace Cristobal immediately launched into high gear, with the potential prospects including California head coach Justin Wilcox, who is from Junction City and played defense for the Ducks in the late 1990s. Also mentioned was former Duck head coach Chip Kelly, now at UCLA, and Jeff Tedford, who was Mike Bellotti’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Oregon, also in the late ‘90s, and a former head coach at California. 

Dan Lanning’s background is defense

Instead, Oregon hired 35-year-old Dan Lanning, defensive coordinator for Georgia, for $4.6 million (and annual $100,000 raises through year six) plus incentives that could potentially top $2 million annually. Oregon says that contract currently ranks fifth among Pac-12 coaches and 27th nationally.

A Missouri native, Lanning played linebacker at William Jewell College in Missouri and coached high school football for three years after college. He was a graduate assistant at Pittsburgh in 2011, and in 2012 moved to Arizona State, where he was promoted to on-campus recruiting coordinator in 2013.

He was defensive backs coach at Sam Houston State in 2014 and a graduate assistant at Alabama in 2015. Memphis hired him as inside linebackers coach in December 2015 and he spent two seasons there before joining Georgia coach Kirby Smart’s staff as outside linebackers coach in 2018.

Under Lanning, No. 3 Georgia—which will meet No. 2 Michigan Dec. 31 in the College Football Playoff semifinal in the Orange Bowl—ranked second and third nationally in total defense in 2020 and 2019 and led the country this season in scoring, holding opponents to fewer than 10 points per game. The Bulldogs also were second in total defense and third against the run and the pass.

Assisting with the Duck defense will be Matt Powledge, Baylor’s safeties and special teams coach for the past two seasons, who coached with Lanning at Sam Houston State. Before joining Baylor, he was the outside linebackers coach and special teams coordinator at Louisiana, helping that team to its first-ever 10-win season in 2018.

Oregon ranked No. 60 this season in total defense and scoring, No. 37 in run defense, and No. 88 in pass defense. When Athletic Director Rob Mullens and others involved made the decision to hire Lanning, they obviously put an emphasis on defense. But equally as important as Lanning’s hire was his decision to make Florida State’s Kenny Dillingham his new offensive coordinator. 

Oregon’s offense needs help

As inconsistent as Oregon’s defense has been this season, the offense has been worse.

The defense held Fresno State to 77 yards rushing but gave up 208 yards to Utah on Nov. 20 and allowed only 111 yards passing at Washington but gave up 484 yards to Heisman finalist C.J. Stroud in the second game of the season against Ohio State in Columbus.

The offense ran for a season-low 63 yards in the Nov. 20 loss to Utah after having gained 306 yards against Washington State a week earlier. And while QB Anthony Brown managed only 98 yards passing against Washington on Nov. 6, he threw for 296 yards against UCLA two weeks earlier.

Five of the Ducks’ 10 wins were single-digit victories, and four others were by double-digit margins of less than 25 points. They lost to Stanford by seven points in overtime while eventual Pac-12 champion Utah rode roughshod over them—twice.

They outscored their opponents by an average of only six points and topped 40 points only three times, against Arizona (1-11 on the season), Colorado (4-8) and Stony Brook (5-6), which plays in the second-tier Football Championship Series.

It’s still hard to believe the Ducks were ranked as high as No. 3 in the nation by the College Football Playoff selection committee prior to their loss in Salt Lake City.

Whether Oregon’s offensive woes can be solved by the 31-year-old Dillingham remains to be seen. He spent the past two seasons at FSU and prior to that was Auburn’s offensive coordinator for one season. But in both of those situations his head coach called most of the plays, according to The Register-Guard’s Antwan Staley.

This season, FSU (5-7) was No. 51 in rushing (178 yards per game), No. 72 in scoring (28 points per game), No. 93 in passing (202 ypg) and No. 88 in total offense (379 ypg). Oregon’s numbers are 203 yards rushing, 31 points scoring, 219 yards passing and 418 yards of total offense.

Dillingham worked at Memphis from 2016-18 and was offensive coordinator his final year when the Tigers were ranked fourth nationally in total offense, yards per play and rushing yards per game. An Arizona State alum, he began his career coaching high school football in Scottsdale. He and Lanning worked together at ASU in 2014 when Lanning was the Sun Devils’ recruiting coordinator. 

Fielding personnel in 2022 may prove a challenge

After Cristobal announced he was leaving, the Ducks lost nine commitments from their 2022 recruiting class. Among them was 6-foot-5 WR Tetairoa McMillan, who flipped and signed with Arizona, where he will join three childhood friends and Servite High School (Anaheim, Calif.) teammates.

Recruiting observers cited McMillan’s “acrobatic catches downfield and in the red zone” as among his strengths and called him one of the top high school receivers in California and possibly on the West Coast.

Some recruits have given verbal commitments to the Ducks but will wait until February’s National Signing Day before deciding whether to play in Eugene. Five-star offensive tackle recruit Kelvin Banks, who earlier had given a verbal commitment to Oregon, instead opted to sign with Texas.

Meanwhile, All-American sophomore defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux, starting sophomore WR Devon Williams, and starting sophomore cornerback Mykael Wright declared for the NFL Draft and have opted out of playing in the Alamo Bowl. Also, starting junior cornerback DJ James and backup freshman defensive tackle Jayson Jones have entered the transfer portal.

And former WR Mycah Pittman, who left the Ducks in November after 10 games, has committed to play for FSU and has two years of eligibility remaining. In 2020 he missed seven games with a broken collarbone and broken right forearm.

Lanning was able to convince freshman RB Seven McGee to remain with the program after he announced he was planning to transfer.

Bo Nix to the rescue?

Anthony Brown, a “super senior” transfer from Boston College, ran the Duck offense this season, almost exclusively, and will play his final game in the Alamo Bowl. He completed 64 percent of his passes for 2,683 yards and 15 TDs in 13 games while picking up 657 yards and nine TDs rushing.

Bo Nix, the Auburn QB who just finished his third-year sophomore season at the Alabama school, will transfer to Oregon for 2022 with two seasons of eligibility remaining. He played in 10 games this year before fracturing his ankle but completed a career-high 61 percent of his passes for 2,294 yards with 11 TDs, with three interceptions. He also ran for 168 yards and four TDs.

Nix began his college career by beating the Ducks in the 2019 season opener, 27-21, in Arlington, Texas. Dillingham was his offensive coordinator for that game. He was the first true freshman QB to start a season opener for Auburn since 1946. Against Oregon, he threw the game-winning 26-yard TD with nine seconds to go after gaining 58 of the Tigers’ 60 yards—53 passing and five running—on their final drive of the game.

Oregon has five other QBs on its 2022 roster but with Nix on the scene it’s questionable whether any of them will see significant playing time next year. They are Ty Thompson, Jay Butterfield and Robby Ashford, all freshmen in terms of eligibility, and freshman A.J. Abbott and sophomore Bradley Yaffe, neither of whom has yet played for the Ducks.

Brown’s backups were ill-used this year in Cristobal’s run-first/pass-second offense, having a combined 18 pass attempts for 109 yards and two TDs and only 10 yards gained rushing. Assuming they decide to remain at Oregon, one or more of them could redshirt in 2022 to save a year of eligibility.

What happened to Oregon’s stable coach/QB-dominant legacy?

Prior to Kelly taking over as head coach in 2009, Oregon had only six head football coaches in 58 years. In the past 12 years they’ve had four coaches, including Willie Taggart, who took the Oregon job (and hired Cristobal as offensive coordinator) for one year and then left to take the job at FSU, where he was fired after two losing seasons.

Mike Bellotti was head coach for 14 years, Len Casanova for 16 years and Rich Brooks for 18 years; they won 289 games and lost 237 (and had 12 ties) while Kelly, Mark Helfrich, Taggart, and Cristobal won 118 and lost 36 (Kelly had 46 of those wins to seven losses).

There’s no question that Kelly turned the Ducks into a national championship contender, but his three successors didn’t fare quite as well. He won 87 percent of his games while Cristobal won 73 percent and Helfrich 69 percent. Combined, the three coaches took the Ducks to 12 bowl games in 13 years (as the number of bowl games increased from 34 to the current 43).

Casanova remains beloved by Duck fans almost 20 years after his death at 97, even though his teams won only 53 percent of their games. Brooks, revered mostly for returning the Ducks to the Rose Bowl in 1994 after a 37-year absence, won only 46 percent of his games but Bellotti set the stage for Kelly’s arrival, winning 69 percent of his games, including six of 12 bowl games.

Frankly, I don’t care whether Oregon ever wins a national championship, especially if it means they have to play Cristobal’s smash-mouth type of football to do it. I want the Ducks to have a quarterback who can throw because that, combined with a respectable running game, is what makes college football fun to watch.

I’d be happy just to see them go to one of the six major bowl games each year, which probably means winning at least nine games. Let the Southeast Conference and Big 10 have the glory because they’ll take it anyway—with the support of the majority of the country’s sportswriters.

Lanning wants the Ducks to have a balanced offense, with an emphasis on explosive plays, and above all, to be an all-around attacking team. “The word ‘passive’ will not exist in our system,” he said at his introductory news conference. “We will apply pressure and move on the field with (an) aggressive, but disciplined approach…. We want to be progressive, effective and united. We will assess every facet of our program to avoid being stagnant. Our approach throughout the organization will be built on being life-long learners. We are going to be willing to be on the cutting edge. We are going to be willing to change.”

And change—or rather reversion—is what the Ducks need. Cristobal’s style of football was toxic to Oregon. Reputed to be a great recruiter, he brought a trio of talented freshman QBs to Eugene this year so why didn’t he use them instead of relying almost exclusively on Brown, who was individually as erratic as the team was overall?

Moorhead and probably Cristobal seemed to value Brown mostly for his running skills—or maybe just his willingness to run the ball himself and take a beating. But I want to see Oregon bring back the days of Norm Van Brocklin, George Shaw, Tom Crabtree, Bob Berry, Dan Fouts, Chris Miller, Bill Musgrave, Danny O’Neil, Akili Smith, Joey Harrington, Tony Graziani, Kellen Clemens, Dennis Dixon, Darron Thomas, Marcus Mariota and Justin Herbert. They knew how to throw the ball and they did it often and accurately (although in my opinion Herbert was underused by Cristobal in his last two years at Oregon).

Instead, in between those classic college-style QBs we’ve had to suffer a bunch of one-and-done QBs like Brown, Vernon Adams and Dakota Prukop (briefly, mercifully), and mediocre players such as Jeremiah Masoli (2008-09, who completed fewer than 60 percent of his passes and had two rushing TDs for every TD he made by passing—Cristobal would have loved him) and Reggie Ogburn (1979-80, who barely managed to complete 50 percent of his passes and ran the ball even more than Masoli did in a pair of six-win seasons), plus a handful of others who tried to hold down the fort until the Ducks could find another quality QB.

In a Dec. 8 column in The Register-Guard, sports analyst Ken Woody addressed the QB issue.

“The Ducks need a pass offense that can carry the load and keep them in the game when they’re down 14-0,” he said. “They need the ability to pass to win a game or two, not just complement a strong running game.

“If the belief is that the current system can win the Pac-12 championship and earn a spot in the [national] playoffs without serious revamping, there will be a lot of crickets chirping in Autzen Stadium.

“There are…not enough deep shots against corners down the sidelines with the opportunity of success or pass interference penalties,” he wrote. “It doesn’t make sense that there is not a bona fide backup quarterback available to spell the starter when the starter is off key….

“Not playing [Ty] Thompson, or whoever was the backup earlier in the season, was negligent and prevented the Ducks from having an option when things were not going smoothly.” 

The Alamo Bowl (and CFP playoffs)

The Ducks are scheduled to take on Oklahoma next Wednesday at 6:15 p.m. on ESPN but there are worrisome signs that some of this season’s football bowl games may have to be canceled.

The latest surge of COVID-19 infections, combined with injuries and player opt-outs, caused No. 25 Texas A&M to withdraw from its Dec. 31 Gator Bowl game against No. 17 Wake Forest. Bowl officials are searching for a replacement opponent.

Meanwhile, the College Football Playoff executive director said it won’t reschedule its Dec. 31 semifinal matchups featuring No. 1 Alabama against No. 4 Cincinnati (Cotton Bowl) and No. 2 Michigan playing No. 3 Georgia (Orange Bowl) if any of the four teams is unable to compete.

Under CFP policy a team that’s unable to play in a semifinal game forfeits the game and its opponent automatically advances to the national title game Jan. 10 in Indianapolis. If both teams in one of the semifinal matchups prove unable to compete, the winner of the other semifinal game will be declared the national champion.

Playoff officials said the championship game could be rescheduled but must be played no later than Jan. 14. If a team is unable to compete even after a delay, its opponent will be named champion. If neither team can make it to Indianapolis there will be no national champion this year.

Georgia’s backup QB JT Daniels has tested positive for COVID-19 and likely will miss its New Year’s Eve matchup with Michigan. And Alabama has reported that its offensive coordinator and offensive line coach have tested positive for the virus.

As for the other four “New Year’s Six” bowl games, the Fiesta and Peach bowls could be rescheduled within a week of the original date if the CFP, bowl game officials and ESPN can agree on a new date. No word yet on the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl.

The National Hockey League has paused its season and abandoned a plan to send athletes to the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. Meanwhile, the NFL and NBA are trying to keep their seasons on schedule as the COVID-19 omicron variant continues to spread throughout the world.

Oregon’s 2022 schedule

Sept. 3: Georgia, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta

Sept. 10: Eastern Washington, Eugene

Sept. 17: BYU, Eugene

Sept. 24: Washington State, Martin Stadium, Pullman

Oct. 1: Stanford, Stanford Stadium, Stanford

Oct. 9: Arizona, Arizona Stadium, Tucson

Oct. 15: Bye

Oct. 22: UCLA, Eugene

Oct. 29: California, California Memorial Stadium, Berkeley

Nov. 5: Colorado, Folsom Field, Boulder

Nov. 12: Washington, Eugene

Nov. 20: Utah, Eugene

Nov. 25: Oregon State, Reser Stadium, Corvallis

 

Lloyd Paseman is a graduate of Crow High School and the University of Oregon. He was an all-state B League quarterback in his senior year in high school when his team, the Cougars, finished 6-1 on the season. He’s lived all but two years of his life in Lane County, with two years out for U.S. Army service, and retired from The Register-Guard as a local news editor after nearly 40 years. Paseman’s analysis is provided as a service for the many Duck fans in Highway 58 communities who can no longer find such expert commentary in their local print newspapers.