‘I feel lucky to be coached by him;’ UO players love Lanning’s candid approach to Texas A&M rumors

Oregon Duck players appreciate the straightforward way in which Dan Lanning addressed the coaching rumors about Texas A&M on Monday.

For approximately 24 hours over the weekend, Oregon Duck fans were feeling a sense of anxiety that has certainly become familiar in the last decade. There was an air of impending dread hovering over Eugene as the coaching carousel started to churn in the world of college football, and the most popular guy in the Willamette Valley was seeing his name circulated nationally.

Dan Lanning was being thrown out there as a top candidate for the newly opened Texas A&M Aggies coaching job after the firing of Jimbo Fisher, and Duck fans once again had to face the potential reality that their beloved head coach might jump ship to take a higher-paying job elsewhere.

On Monday night, Lanning further found a way to grow fan adoration. He emphatically shut down those rumors and made it very clear, once again, that he has no desire to be anywhere but Eugene.

“I think I’ve been really, really clear here since Day 1,” Lanning said. “Everything I want exists right here. I’m not going anywhere. There’s zero chance that I would be coaching somewhere else. I’ve got unfinished business here.”

[lawrence-related id=52113]

While the fans loved Lanning’s clear and candid messaging to the program, it also went a long way with players. Those guys know better than anyone that their head coach is unlikely to get up and go elsewhere. However, having a definitive statement never hurts when it comes to calming the nerves, especially at a program where this sort of thing has been a problem in the past.

“I think it’s refreshing,” veteran C Jackson Powers-Johnson said of Lanning’s statement on Tuesday. “I mean, as a player you see those jobs get opened up and that kind of scares you a little bit because you know, this is a business. To see Coach come out and say all that kind of stuff and say how much he loves Oregon. it’s awesome.

“Everything he said about the resources here, the people, you know, how this program is, it’s true,” Powers-Johnson continued. “And having a coach come out and say that and blatantly say I’m not going anywhere. You know, I just I feel proud to be on this team. I feel lucky to be coached by him.”

Before Lanning came to town, the last two Duck head coaches ended up leaving for a “better job.” Willie Taggart went to Florida State and Mario Cristobal jetted south for Miami. Taggart ended up getting fired by the Seminoles, and Cristobal is struggling to keep his head above water with an 11-11 record thus far.

Both of those coaches were asked about their commitment to Oregon when rumors of their departure started to swirl, and neither addressed it in a way Lanning did.

“I mean, yeah, we have a little bit of PTSD,” said Powers-Johnson, who was a Mario Cristobal recruit in 2021. “But you know, as I said, it’s refreshing, because you’ll see a lot of coaches, as he said, kind of beat around the bush. He just flat out said it, you know, said how much he loved Oregon and it’s great.”

When you look at this storyline as a whole, it often concerns fans and media members more than it does coaches and players. While rumors may swirl each and every year once we get into November, more than 95% of them end up just being hearsay that people will throw against the wall and see what sticks. For the most part, it gets ignored by teams as they continue to prep for the biggest games of their season.

[lawrence-related id=52152]

When someone handles it in the respectable way that Lanning handled it, though, Powers-Johnson said players take notice.

“We don’t really look at like, you know, press conferences that much because we’re just so focused in on our stuff,” Powers-Johnson said. “But when you see that kind of pop up and you see how he kind of talks about, you know, us as a family — because we really are a family — and how he feels about us like, it makes us proud. It makes us happy to be here.”

That makes coaches and players aligned, then. Everyone is happy to be in Eugene and playing for the Ducks. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, can we get back to football?

[lawrence-auto-related count=3]