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QuickTake:
Saturday cracked the polished image the Ducks have built under Dan Lanning. What happens next may tell us more about Oregon than all the wins that came before it.
What does Oregon do to come back from this?
This isn’t rhetorical.
I really don’t know.
What’s the answer as to why Oregon’s offensive line couldn’t block? Or why Dakorien Moore and Jeremiah McClellan dropped key passes? Or why the defense was gashed for seven plays of at least 20 yards, Dante Moore struggled when conditions weren’t ideal and three times Lanning and his staff called for the Ducks to go for it on fourth down, only to fail.
I don’t know why Oregon lost to Oklahoma State 39-31. In fact, this is the least I’ve ever known about these Ducks.
And that’s by design.
Few people know how Oregon truly operates, and the ones who do aren’t allowed to talk about it. They practice behind walls, play coy with depth charts, handle discipline — for players and coaches — internally.
Star tight end Jamari Johnson? Oh right, he was banged up. Didn’t you know?
Quarterback Dante Moore? Well, I can’t tell you what he was thinking on that final drive – Oregon let only linebacker Teitum Tuioti speak with the media.
Oregon’s message is its brand. The national one, the one that put Joey Harrington on a billboard in New York 25 years before plastering Dante Moore’s face all over Tokyo.
Oregon is cool. Oregon is polished. Oregon has an edge.
And yes, there does have to be a modicum of truth to sell a message.
Oregon can be very cool and has won a whole lot of football games — specifically under Dan Lanning, who arrived in Stillwater on Saturday looking for career win No. 50 in his 58th game.
It’s not as if the players are invisible, either. Fans see more of them than ever through beautifully shot and expertly edited video packages produced by one of the best in-house media staffs in the industry.
Those things really sing when the Ducks are winning.
But when success is the only thing that gets shown, when those recap videos skip one or two weeks every season and star players only talk after things go right, it can’t be surprising when people are shocked after such a drastic deviation from the norm.
Oregon didn’t just lose to an unranked team on Saturday. A team Oregon beat by 66 points last year — one that had lost 21 straight games against FBS opponents and had nearly 90 new players on its roster — dominated the Ducks.
The Cowboys’ Drew Mestemaker played like the quarterback who should be on billboards. Eric Morris coached like the coach who should have been shooting the breeze with the College GameDay staff pregame.
Oklahoma State even trolled like Oregon does, playing “Shout” immediately after the game, then a clip from Lanning’s Wednesday press conference as fans rushed the field.
“Good,” Lanning said of the heat originally forecast for Saturday. “Drink a little more water.”
The video then cut to Morris at a podium, taking a long sip from an Aquafina.
“We’re going to have to be really good as coaches this week because everybody’s going to tell them how good they are now all of a sudden and all this stuff switches,” Morris said after the first win of his Cowboys career.
He’s right. Things can change quickly. Oregon was the No. 2 team in the country two weeks ago, Dante Moore was a preseason Heisman favorite and Lanning was, yet again, the coach ready to break through, equipped with striking one-liners gone viral like “All Cap, No Cattle” after Oregon beat Texas Tech in the Orange Bowl.
Lanning didn’t have a quip for Saturday.
“The score was closer than it really was because it wasn’t close in a lot of ways,” Lanning said. “We got our ass kicked in a lot of areas.”
Lanning has said similar things in press conferences after other big losses during his tenure.
But this wasn’t a loss to Ohio State or Indiana — two poor performances by the Ducks that could be reasoned away as losses to eventual national champions.
This is different. The Ducks play again in six days. Then it’s USC. There is no offseason to regroup.
The last time a Ducks team went off the rails this early in such dramatic fashion, Oregon ultimately fired its head coach for the first time in 40 years.
Mark Helfrich wasn’t canned because of the loss at Nebraska, though. Or the loss to Colorado two weeks later. He was fired because after the armor cracked, the Ducks melted down to a 4-8 record.
Lanning is largely viewed as a better coach, and when his teams are rolling, Oregon can be as cool and dominant as it’s ever been.
Helfrich’s teams were like that, too — with a national championship appearance — up until they weren’t.
Some never saw the writing on the wall.
How does Lanning respond? What does he say to his team after a loss? Can he inspire after failure?
What do the Ducks do after it’s been proven they can bleed?
Lanning did take the blame. He said they had to do a better job, but that “every single goal is still in front of us. We control our destiny.”
He may be right. But when so much of Oregon operates behind closed doors, accountability ultimately gets judged by what we can see.
Maybe a Ducks vs. Them on Tuesday where the hero doesn’t win would offer some insight.
Heck, even posting the final score would be a start.
Otherwise, all we saw from Stillwater was a disaster.
This story is part of Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s new Sunday Duck Report. For the full report, subscribe to the free newsletter here.
Tyson, from Boone Pickens
