On Friday afternoon, Oregon’s offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham said that one thing he most wanted to see in Saturday’s scrimmage was the quarterbacks not making a bad play worse. It’s what makes someone a great QB, in his opinion.
“It’s not necessarily the great plays that make SportsCenter, but do your bad plays make SportsCenter?” Dillingham said. “When your bad plays don’t make SportsCenter, that’s when you’re a great quarterback.”
The script that Dillingham drew up isn’t quite what took place inside the walls of Autzen Stadium on Saturday. Instead, a total of four interceptions were thrown, and several fumbles were lost by the offense, creating an overall frustrating display that left the Ducks with a lot to work on before fall camp comes to a close.
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“I think most of the decisions that ended up being bad decisions today were somebody trying to make something out of nothing, and trying to create a play when they didn’t need to,” Dan Lanning said on Saturday. “A bad play turned into a worse play, you know, and that’s something we have to do a better job of.”
That’s not exactly something that you want to hear just two weeks away from the first game of the season, especially when that game is coming against the defending national champions. But despite the looseness with the ball at times, Lanning was able to highlight some positive plays on the offense.
“I would have told you the offensive line was really moving down the field, especially running the ball,” Lanning said. “But again, we didn’t get to cap off some of those drives because of turnovers.”
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Turnovers are always something you want to stay away from when talking about the offense, but if you look at it from a defensive perspective, Duck fans should feel confident players on that side of the ball are stepping up in a big way.
“Our guys were really physical today and that to me was really pleasing,” Lanning said of the defense. “It was to the point where you want to get live tackling and live scrimmage work in and halfway through I said to myself, ‘Okay, do we need to go thud mode here?’ Because we’re striking each other, we’re getting after it and I thought that was something I was really pleased with.”
With 14 days left to get prep in for Georgia, Oregon knows that they have a lot to clean up on. Negating turnovers will be a major part of that, but the team is focused hard on getting that squared away.
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