College Gameday, ESPN’s beloved pregame show, will be in Salt Lake City this Saturday for the matchup between the No. 8 Oregon Ducks and the No. 13 Utah Utes. It’s the second time this season that Oregon’s travel plans have aligned with College Gameday’s, as they met two weekends ago in Seattle for the Oregon vs. Washington game.
On Friday afternoon, several members of the College Gameday crew spoke to the media about this week’s game. Rece Davis, one of the hosts of College Gameday, was asked about Dan Lanning and if this matchup against Utah is a must-win for him. Overall, Davis seems to be a fan of the Ducks’ 2nd-year head coach.
“It’s pretty early in his career to start, you know, giving him the must-wins. I think he’s shown every quality that you want in a head coach and a guy who’s able to lead a major program and lead them to huge heights, Davis said.”
Davis also pointed out that as a coach, you’re often judged too much by the moments you don’t control, like the result of a field goal or a poorly executed fourth-down play.
“I mean, look, it’s like the old Bill Raftery thing, right? A guy takes a shot, you’re down one, and as the ball arcs toward the basket, good coach, bad coach, good coach, bad coach, good coach, bad coach, good coach… Oh, bad coach. Okay, field goal doesn’t go in. Fourth downs aren’t converted. Field goal goes in, maybe we go to overtime, maybe they win. ‘Dan Lanning holy cow! He’s the best coach in America.’ You know, field goal doesn’t go in, they lose, ‘Oh, why do you go for it on fourth down?'”
Since Oregon’s loss to Washington, Dan Lanning has defended his decision to go for it on fourth-and-short three times. As Lanning has pointed out, the offense had the opportunity to check out of the 4th down call each time if they didn’t like Washington’s pre-snap look, but all three times they liked what they saw and rolled the dice.
Although the Ducks failed to convert on all three of those fourth-down plays, it isn’t a coaching failure, which is what Davis seems to point out here.
“So does he need to win tomorrow? Well, yeah, because they want to win championships. But in terms of it being some referendum on whether he’s going to ‘win the big one,’ you know, I don’t think there’s any doubt they’re going to win a lot of big ones as long as he’s the coach.”