Three times on Saturday afternoon, the Oregon Ducks faced a fourth down and short-yardage situation. A conversion would have changed the game drastically, and in one case, ended the game completely.
Three times, the Ducks failed to convert, and ultimately ended up losing, 36-33, to the Washington Huskies in a game that will go down as one of the best of the entire 2023 college football season.
If even one of those conversions goes the other way — a “what if” that normally has a high success rate — then we’re likely having quite a different conversation at the moment.
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Instead, the Ducks’ suffered their first loss of the season, and head coach Dan Lanning is facing more criticism for his aggressive play-calling. On Monday night, I asked Lanning if the benefit of hindsight, and the ability to pour over the film since Saturday, had altered his opinion on the decisions made just days earlier.
“If I knew that none of them were going to work, you’d change every situation, right?” Lanning said. “That’s not the way those decisions work. When you sit in this seat — I’m a big boy, I can handle criticism. And that’s going to come, and it’s deserved. In this position that’s the way it works. I trust our players, I trust our coaches, and when we have opportunities to win games, I’m going to be aggressive to win games.”
The first of the three decisions game in the second quarter, where the Ducks had a 4th and goal from the Washington 3-yard line, with 5 seconds left on the clock. Instead of kicking the field goal, making it a 22-21 Washington lead into the half, Oregon went for it, and threw an incomplete pass.
“Ultimately, the field goal before half, that’s one that I feel we certainly could have gone either way,” Lanning said. “Like I said on Saturday, we felt that we had the look. If we didn’t have the look that we wanted, we were going to call a timeout and kick a field goal. You could easily turn around and say kick a field goal there and feel good about it.”
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The other two decisions came in the second half, one in the third quarter, and one in the fourth. Trailing 29-18, the Ducks decided to go for it on 4th and 3 from the Washington 8, rather than kicking a field goal to make it a one-posession game. Again, the pass fell incomplete.
After eventually taking the lead and facing a kill-the-clock scenario in the 4th quarter with just over two minutes remaining, the Ducks had a 4th and 3 from Washington’s 47-yard line, knowing that a first down would end the game.
Incomplete pass. Washington ball. Two plays later, Michael Penix found Rome Odunze for the go-ahead touchdown.
“At the very end of the game, I don’t think there’s any scenario where I wouldn’t go for it on fourth down there when you have an opportunity to put the game away,” Lanning said. “They’d scored on more than 50% of their drives at that point in the game, you know. 75 yards to 50 yards to 80 yards, for them with a potent offense, you know, they’re gonna have a lot of success in a lot of those scenarios. And transversely it gives our offense an opportunity to come back and still have a chance in that situation. If we get the first down, you know, the game is over.”
Instead, the Ducks lost their second consecutive game to the Huskies, and Lanning now has an unfortunate 0-2 record against one of the team’s biggest rivals, with both losses coming in games where Oregon led late, but was unable to finish.
Frustration was prevalent from the fanbase, but Lanning still held strong in his aggressive nature and conviction.
“What’s tough is when I make those decisions, it doesn’t just affect me. It affects everybody in our program. It affects everybody who cares about Oregon football,” Lanning said. “I understand that and like I said, I’m deserving of the criticism. But it’s not like those decisions are made on Saturday in that moment, you know. Those decisions were made earlier in the week. We knew it’s gonna be a high-scoring game where touchdowns over field goals mattered. In that scenario, like I said before, at the half I think you could certainly say that could go the other direction. A lot of the other scenarios, I don’t know that you play it any other way other than if you already knew what the result in play was going to be.
“Three opportunities on a fourth down, the chances of us not getting one of those three is really unique, especially with what we’ve done offensively so far this year.”
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