When he sat down to his postgame press conference, Oregon Ducks head coach Dan Lanning still needed a minute to catch his breath.
His face was red, and his hair soaked with sweat. When he tried to talk, there was a hollow raspiness that came out, earned only from the hours of consistent yelling throughout the course of the night.
“Anybody have a heartrate monitor?” the 38-year-old coach asked after the biggest win of his career.
Lanning and the No. 3 Oregon Ducks had just upset the No. 2 Ohio State Buckeyes in front of a record crowd of 60,129 fans at Autzen Stadium, 32-31. It’s the type of win that will instantly put them at the top of the College Football Playoff conversation and clear the path for them to get to Indianapolis and the Big Ten Championship Game at the end of the season.
More than any of that, though, it’s the type of win that gives Oregon fans a reason for hope.
A reason to believe.
I’m not talking about the young generation of Duck fans who picked up the sport when Chip Kelly made it cool — the Ducks who throw the O with memories of Marcus Mariota, Justin Herbert, and Bo Nix under center. This win on Saturday night was for the OGs: The Kellen Clemens, Joey Harrington, and Bill Musgrave Ducks.
I grew up in Eugene and saw my fandom begin early in my elementary school days. I’m still close with a lot of my childhood friends that I used to go to games with back in the Harrington era. This past week when shooting the breeze and predicting the outcome of this game, one buddy said something that resonated after forecasting a Buckeye blowout.
“I’ve been a Duck fan my entire life.. it’d be foolish of me to assume that tomorrow is the day they decide to be nice to me after 30 years.”
I found myself thinking of him on Saturday night, as fans poured out of the stands at Autzen Stadium and crowd-surfed the Duck into oblivion. Somewhere in the mix, Lanning was busy hugging his players and chest-bumping anyone who came near.
It was a chaotic scene, but through it all, I found a chance to step back and see the cathartic nature of it all.
This victory feels different. Not just because it’s a new conference, a new playoff structure, and a new mountaintop for wins inside Autzen Stadium. It feels different because everything that’s stopped the Ducks in the past — every unlucky injury, bad bounce, or blatant missed call from the refs — all happened on Saturday night.
But none of them stopped Lanning and his team.
On Thursday in practice, Oregon’s best defensive player, Jordan Burch, suffered a knee injury that will likely hold him out for the next 2-3 weeks, at a minimum. Classic Oregon. On Ohio State’s first possession of the game, Jeffrey Bassa came up with a massive interception over the middle, swinging the momentum of the game. The refs called it a Buckeye completion and didn’t review the play. Vintage Ducks. One of Oregon’s best receivers got ejected for spitting on a player, the kicker missed a field goal, a PAT attempt was botched, and a two-point attempt was stopped short. With a 4th and goal from the 2-yard-line, Dillon Gabriel threw it incomplete into traffic when Tez Johnson was running wide-open in the endzone. All of these things happened.
It’s a story veteran fans have seen many times in Eugene. But this one had a different ending.
An ending that Dan Lanning penned personally.
“In moments like this, where you want to be filled with complete joy, relief is one of the biggest feelings,” Lanning said candidly after the game.
I think that’s an emotion that every Oregon fan watching could relate to. I think back to my childhood best friend and imagine the sigh he let out when Ohio State’s Will Howard slid down while time expired on the clock.
Relief begets hope, which begets opportunity, which begets excitement.
Is it fair to say that’s where this new Dan Lanning era of Oregon Football is heading? To a place where the Ducks can enter these top-five matchups and not expect pain and suffering to triumph? Can children of the Toilet Bowl look ahead with optimism and confidence?
There are still more chapters in Lanning’s story to be written before fans of a self-proclaimed cursed program can convince themselves of that, but I saw enough evidence on Saturday night to consider it as a possibility. The Ducks had every right to lose that game and send their fans home with familiar frustrations that stretch back 13 years to “Dyer was down” and beyond.
But this one ended differently.
Who knows if that trend will continue and if we’ll see the culture that Lanning has established in Eugene take deep enough root to overhaul decades of frustration and misfortune. While the Ducks are fun and flashy, deep inside every OG is a pessimistic misanthrope that expects the worst.
The worst came against Ohio State, but the Ducks rose above. Relief? Absolutely. Soak it in.
Now make room for the hope.
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