After a wild offseason of departures on both the players and coaching side, there are a lot of question marks for this Oregon Ducks team entering spring ball.
Perhaps the biggest question is how new head coach Dan Lanning, lauded for his excellence as a defensive mastermind while at Georgia, will rework Oregon’s already very talented defensive group in 2022.
Lanning spoke to that on Thursday during media availability, addressing how he has handled taking over a new team while trying to implement his defensive gameplan.
“Yeah, we’re gonna build it, you know, from the ground up,” Lanning said. “We’ve had walkthroughs we’ve had some football operation and I think that’s going to help us be able to push the envelope. I’ve kind of always been a guy that feels like you can, you know, throw it all at them, and then we’ll see what sticks.”
Lanning certainly could have inherited a worse situation defensively, as he gets two superstar linebackers in Noah Sewell and Justin Flowe to play with on the front seven, along with stalwart role players like Mase Funa, Brandon Dorlus, and Bradyn Swinson.
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Still, adjusting to a new scheme on the fly during spring football can be a challenge, and Lanning acknowledged that now is more a time to see these guys in action, rather that critiquing any small mistakes – mistakes that are natural in the early stages of learning a new scheme.
“Today you want to go out there and you want to see your guys play fast,” Lanning said. “So if we’re making a bunch of schematic errors on offense or defense then we’re doing too much, and that wasn’t the case. We peeled it back a little bit and did a little less.”
“We’re going to carry all elements to our defense and all elements to our offense that we think can make us competitive on game day.”
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