One of the glaring keys to the loss against Georgia is that Oregon’s offense wasn’t running very smoothly. For an experienced offensive line, quarterback, and receivers, watching the Ducks stall on nearly every single possession was unexpected, to say the least.
Now with a game against FCS school Eastern Washington at Autzen next on the docket, the Ducks are looking to improve in all things football. It comes down, as usual, to the little things, and that’s what Lanning wants to see Saturday night.
“Just execution. I think that goes on both sides of the ball. But we know they’re a really good opponent,” the Oregon head coach said. “We know they’re going to air it out and throw the ball over the yard offensively. For them, they’ve had a lot of success. There’s some continuity with their head coach.
“But I want to see our guys go play fast. I want to walk away and you say, ‘okay, that offense has an identity, that defense has an identity in that game.’ And again, Eastern’s an elite team, but we’re really focused on us. I want to see those DNA traits show up within that game for us.”
For the elite teams, practicing against themselves is more difficult than the actual game on Saturdays. Oregon was in that position many times in the past. But with a brand new coaching staff learning on the fly, that wasn’t the case in Atlanta. Not by a long shot. Lanning is hoping to change that quickly, beginning with the Eagles.
“The game was harder for us than practice, so we’re trying to figure out how we can create those moments where the practice is harder than the game and we hadn’t done that yet,” Lanning said. So today (Monday) we had a bubble drill and tomorrow we’ll have a bracket drill. We’re going to add some elements where the balls are on the edge. We got to go win on the perimeter, strike disengaged blocks, be the difference or make blocks right to create those explosive plays.”
Oregon saw what it’s like to win on the edge and create explosion plays. You win with scores like 49-3. Except now the Ducks want to reverse that score in their favor.
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