Dan Lanning Keeps It Blunt About CFP Loss

Oregon was going through something it hadn’t encountered all season: a defeat, as the clock ticked off seconds and the winner’s pedestal, adorned with red roses, was brought onto the field.

The Ducks could only watch as the Buckeyes lined up in victory formation and sealed the outcome—a commanding, 41-21 victory in the Rose Bowl Game presented by Prudential—after going 13-0 in the regular season, defeating Ohio State in October, and winning the Big Ten championship almost a month ago.

Dan Lenning gets brutally honest on the loss

The victory put an abrupt end to Oregon’s season and raised questions about how the nation’s best team could be defeated in such a manner.

Coach Dan Lanning stated: “They clicked tonight and we didn’t,”. “I didn’t get our team prepared. When you play a great team like Ohio State, you can’t not be clicking on all cylinders and they were clicking on all cylinders.” I thought our guys prepared well going in,” . “[The layoff was] an opportunity that we had to recharge. I thought our guys did practice well. I’d tell you if that wasn’t the case, I thought they had a great focus. I just don’t think our plan was good enough and I think they had a great plan to attack us, so credit to those guys.”

“We haven’t faced a lot of moments like that this year,” “Obviously [Ohio State] is a team that has the ability to win it all.” “We had an opportunity. We didn’t take advantage of our opportunity. I’m not going to make excuses for our opportunity,” “Ultimately, you got to beat great teams to be in position at the end of the year and we didn’t do that. This is the road that we had to travel and they did it better than us tonight. So no complaints for us for having that opportunity. They just took advantage of it and we didn’t.” “Sometimes, it’s not your day,” . “It wasn’t our day today.”

Oregon was outscored 34-8 in the first half, outgained 500-276 in total yards during the 60 minutes, and never seemed to have a chance to keep the score close. Ohio State seemed to be playing at a different pace from the first kickoff, one that Oregon was unable to keep up with.

Lanning had no interest in offering an explanation, regardless of the outcome. He clarified after the game that his team was unable to get going offensively (the Ducks had four three-and-outs in the first half) and defensively (the Buckeyes had four touchdowns of 40 yards or more).

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