What Dan Lanning said after Oregon rallied to beat Iowa

IOWA CITY, Iowa — No. 9 Oregon defeated No. 20 Iowa 18-16 Saturday afternoon at Kinnick Stadium.

Dan Lanning recapped the eighth win of the season for the Ducks (8-1, 5-1 Big Ten), who return to Eugene to host Minnesota on Friday.

Below is a transcript of Lanning’s postgame press conference.

Latest Ducks news

Oregon Ducks’ rushing attack, challenged all week by coaches, rises to occasion in win at Iowa

The rain let up, but Dante Moore didn’t. And the Ducks’ CFP hopes are still very much alive | Bill Oram

Oregon keeps its College Football Playoff hopes alive in rain-soaked comeback win at Iowa

DAN LANNING

“Well guys, I guess that’s what they call Big Ten football. And what an unbelievable game. You’re looking up there at the score and you’re like, ‘OK, it’s 2-0.’ Man, Iowa does such a good job of being in the fight, continually being in the fight. I felt like we were winning in a lot of categories tonight and they were just hanging around. They did a great job. Obviously, they’re right there and you have to give a lot of credit to them for the position they put themselves in. I think there’s gonna be a lot of learning moments for us on how we can finish games like this. But to get the ball back with a little bit of time and our guys go execute a two-minute drive I think just tells you the heart and resiliency of our group. We talk about strength in numbers, we had some guys that had to step up their opportunities. And they were ready for their opportunities this week, which is unbelievable. Great for them.

“I know everybody will want some updates on injuries and where guys are at, I’m really just proud of the way the guys played. Ultimately, it was kind of a weird week. We actually didn’t have a lot of contact. Dakorien kind of tweaked his knee on a non-contact play in spiders. I think he’s gonna be OK, but was obviously out tonight.

“Kenyon’s really had lingering injuries since the Rutgers game where he makes a big catch in the end zone. We wanted to give him the ability to try to recover from that because he’s tried to practice and it hasn’t been what it needed to be. Harkey rolled his ankle, but he was really close to being able to potentially help us in this game and kind of the same with D-Jax. All those guys being out, you see a bunch of guys step up. And you need guys to step up in big moments like this.

“Face some adversity early in the game with the interception and guys were putting each other on each others’ back. Defense coming up with a big takeaway. We said special teams had to be special tonight. We weren’t gonna let 21 beat us in the special teams. I thought our guys did an outstanding job of covering. Can’t say enough good things about Atticus Sappington. You talk about ice in your veins in a moment like that. Several big kicks. I probably should have tried the kick earlier - it was a little bit of a long field goal with the wind down there on that end and we ended up punting it. But ultimately really proud of the way these guys played and attacked.”

On the last two-minute drive:

“We were looking not to sub to give them an opportunity to sub. We felt really good about Malik in the situation. We had some repeater calls that we can use in two-minute scenarios. We caught them in man-to-man. We knew that they were going to potentially be aggressive there at the end. And that’s the quarterback and the wideout being on the same page of saying, ‘OK, If I get one high (safety), here’s where I’m going.’ And Malik went and made a great play.

“We knew where we were going to utilize our timeouts. I think a lot of people in college football panic and start using timeouts outside of the one-minute mark. That’s never been our philosophy here. I think we used them exactly how we wanted to use them there. I think the first one was 23 or 24 seconds. In my mind, it’s inside the 30-second mark. We wanted to make sure we reserved one if we needed it for a field goal. Obviously we had that. And we want to make sure we have the whole field available and you don’t have to just throw the ball out of bounds. Utilizing that second timeout so we were able to throw the ball in the middle of the field and still have an option there. The guys executed it flawlessly and then Atticus makes a great kick.”

On Dante Moore on final drive:

“Dante was lights-out in that drive. It reminds me of what we do in practice. We put our guys in a lot of scenarios like that. I don’t ever give them 1:51, I don’t ever give them that much time in practice to go execute that same situation. They were able to do it quick. Will (Stein) did a good job, I thought, of starting it off with some runs, which is important to make sure they know the run is still alive, especially when you have three timeouts. We were short of the first down a couple times and nobody panicked, got up and lined up and I think we even converted a short yardage on third-and-one on a tempo unbalanced play. Ultimately, a really good job by our coaches and a really unbelievable job by our players in those moments.”

On the game-winning kick:

“If you want the truth, I was pretty nervous. I’m nervous for him because it shouldn’t come down to that moment for Atticus. And that guy’s gonna feel an unbelievable amount of pressure however that goes. But I’m really proud that he’s able to handle a moment like that. We do a lot of pressure kicks in practice and try to recreate it. But there’s nothing like 70,000 fans, the last second of the game, seven seconds left having to kick that kick. You can’t recreate that in practice. And Atticus handled that like a champ.”

On whether Atticus showed something during practice:

“I see it consistently throughout practice. It just happened to be this is the game where we needed all of them. I think he’s done a really good job for us. And I’m excited he could have that moment because he works really, really hard. Even, nobody is gonna credit the squib kick there at the end, but obviously they struggled to field the squib. I just thought our specialists played really well today. We felt like coming into this game that defense was gonna be really important and special teams had to be really special - and they were tonight.”

On winning a game in this fashion on the road:

“We’ve been really good on the road, really regardless, since we’ve hopped in this conference. Again, it wasn’t always pretty, but our guys are resilient. They are tough, they can handle tough moments. If it’s a four-quarter fight, we can do a four-quarter fight. If it’s gonna go into OT, we can do that. Proud of the way they handled the moment. I had guys coming up to me at the end of the game like, ‘Coach, breathe.’ That’s what I’m telling them all week. For them to be able to come up and say that same thing to me it tells you they believe in what we’re doing. It makes me really proud.”

On the run game’s effectiveness:

“We felt like it mattered. We felt like obviously with the conditions today, we came out the first drive and threw it the first three times and that wasn’t necessarily by design, it was based on the box they had. But we said we go to to go win by the way we run the ball. And our running backs ran extremely hard tonight. I got a feeling that Noah (Whittington) is gonna have a couple of ice packs on him on the flight home. The way those guys ran, and they blocked really well. We wanted to have a variety of run game. We heard the noise all week about how they don’t give up runs and we just made note of that. We wanted to be able to run the ball effectively in this game and we did.”

On where this style of win ranks in his career:

“As much as the world tries to look ahead, we try to keep our eyes (on) what’s right in front of us. I knew how our guys had to perform tonight and I thought they did a great job of that. This is a tough team to run on; that’s as good a defense as you’ll get to play. And they played great D. We felt it was really important to run the ball and we had a lot of creative ways to do that. I gotta give credit to our coaches and credit to our players. For Gernorris (Wilson) to step up and play a really good game. We gotta go watch the film, but there’s a bunch of guys out there that’s numbers got called – Jamari (Johnson), Roger (Saleapaga), and those guys, to show up and block the way they did and our backs to run the way they did and our wideouts blocking down the field. We felt like that was an important key to the game was how we win in the rushing battle, and we did that tonight. Where’s that rank when it’s all said and done? I’m glad we got a W. I’m already thinking about Minnesota because they’ve had a week off waiting for us. So we’ll move to that one really quick.”

On Jerry Mixon:

“Jerry’s been a warrior for us all year. I think it’s very clear that we trust him. He plays winning football. I thought he did that tonight. We had a couple of misfit issues early, and not necessarily Jerry but in general, they had a couple of runs they hit on us and I thought our guys made great corrections on the sideline. We were able to handle the run game. There was a never a doubt in their mind the way that they played and I’m really proud of that.”

On the early forced fumble:

“Yeah, it was huge. I’m sitting there saying they’re gonna review it, are we gonna review it. We got there. So we got that right answer and got the right results. I’m glad it all played out the way it did. Big moments. I guess we ended up with one takeaway, they ended up with on takeaway. And that takeaways mattered right?”

On why it wasn’t intentional grounding on Iowa’s late third down pass:

“I was told there was a wide out near. I was also – nevermind. There was another question I had too. A couple of other questions.”

On playing in rainy conditions again…

“Luckily we’ve been seasoned and able to train in it a little bit this year. I think that first drive was really evident to me this is going to be really tough to throw in. We made a commitment to saying, let’s run, let’s not step on the field again and have another series where we don’t run the ball. But I thought they handled it well. And then we had to throw it to win at the end, and we were able to throw it to win. It was better in the second half. It was a little bit easier to throw I, but some big, big moments there, and our guys handled it well.”

On the outlook for Sadiq, Harkey and Jackson heading into Minnesota:

“We’ll reassess it. It would be unfair for me to say right now.”

On Gary Bryant Jr.’s injury:

“I don’t have an update on Gary right now.”

On the team handling injury uncertainties:

“I think they handled it well. I told some of those guys their role is coaches today. You got to go out there and coach and make the people around you better. I’m anxious to get our team back and get it healthy and see where we’re at, but we’ll evaluate that as it comes. But I thought guys stepped up. We always say, ‘Don’t wait for your opportunity to be ready for your opportunity.’ I thought some guys were ready for their opportunity tonight.”

On winning on the road with a younger team:

“We’re not rookies anymore. We have some young players that have been playing a lot of football this season. The time of being freshmen and young guys, that’s over with now. We’ve played several games and those games, that experience, it pays off and I think that showed up tonight.”

Click here to read article