ATLANTA — Dan Lanning went to Oregon to win a national championship. His first game showed him just how much work is left to be done.
Lanning has prioritized associating with a winner whenever he’s coached as an assistant, from Georgia to Alabama to Memphis. He won a national title as the Bulldogs’ defensive coordinator last year, and he’s quick to point out that only nine teams have played for a national title in the past 12 years and Oregon has done it twice. It’s why he took the job.
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But Saturday’s 49-3 beatdown by those same Bulldogs was a measuring stick, and the No. 11 Ducks didn’t measure up.
No. 3 Georgia scored touchdowns on its first seven possessions. The Dawgs averaged 9.2 yards per play. They converted nine of 10 third downs. This game was never close, and when Bo Nix threw his second interception in the second quarter, everyone in Mercedes-Benz Stadium knew it was about to get out of hand.
“(Lanning) knows that we’ve got better players,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said after the game. “He’ll never say it, but he knows we’ve got better players, and I respect how he works.”
That’s the reality of the top of college football, where less than a handful of teams have most of the top talent.
At that level — the level Oregon wants to reach — you need elite talent. The Ducks are seventh in 247Sports’ team talent rankings, which compiles the high school recruiting rankings of every player on the team. That looks more than respectable, sure. But Georgia is second. The teams have a similar number of former four-star recruits (Georgia’s 52 to Oregon’s 47), but the Bulldogs have 15 former five-star players to Oregon’s five (and one of those was Nix, the Auburn transfer whose career has not lived up to that billing).
While the teams are just five spots apart in the rankings, their talent-score point difference nearly equals that of Oregon’s distance from Auburn and Tennessee, which are ranked 18th and 19th, respectively.
Lanning knows all of this because he recruited much of that Bulldog talent himself. Georgia defensive back Malaki Starks, who had a ridiculous interception on Oregon’s second drive? Five-star recruit. Tight end Darnell Washington, who had a broken tackle and a hurdle on a 25-yard gain in the first quarter? Five-star recruit. Running back Kenny McIntosh, who burned the Ducks with 117 receiving yards on nine catches? Four-star recruit with offers from Alabama, Oklahoma and Auburn.
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After the game, I asked Lanning how he felt his team matched up with the best. Smart was right.
“I’m taking our team,” Lanning said. “I’m taking our players, our coaches. … (Georgia has) a lot of talent. They’ve been recruiting there and building a program for a long time. I won’t take anything away from them, but we have guys that we can play winning football with, and we have to grow this team to do that.”
Lanning tried to stay optimistic after his first game as a head coach. He had to. There’s an entire season left to be played. He emphasized that all of the team’s goals remain in front of them. A Pac-12 championship? A Rose Bowl? Absolutely on the table still. A College Football Playoff spot? Maybe, maybe not.
The good news is Oregon won’t play a team nearly as talented as Georgia again this year. If it does, it’ll likely be in the CFP.
The bad news is there are a lot of questions about this Oregon team after a loss like that, starting at quarterback. Lanning never publicly tipped his hand on the starter, but it was Nix over Ty Thompson, as everyone predicted. Nix moved to 0-4 against Georgia in his career, the first three coming at Auburn. He completed 21 of 37 passes on Saturday for just 173 yards. He also led the Ducks with 37 yards on the ground.
Despite the blowout, Lanning never pulled Nix. When asked why, the head coach said he felt the Ducks were able to move the ball at times, but they just couldn’t finish drives and they often had bad field position.
The teams had the same number of first downs at halftime. Oregon didn’t have a three-and-out until the fourth quarter. But only two drives went longer than 50 yards. The Ducks’ best starting field position was their own 25-yard line. The final drive went 87 yards in garbage time, but it ended with Nix missing an open Terrance Ferguson in the end zone. Lanning slumped into a squat when the play missed. He beat Nix three times while at Georgia. He knew the quarterback he brought in as a transfer. Despite the limitations, Lanning stuck with him and will continue to for now.
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“I wanted to give our offense an opportunity to drive and get in some rhythm there,” Lanning said. “They moved the ball down the field that last drive. We didn’t capitalize with a score, but give them an opportunity to get a feel for the game. We have a lot more football to prepare for beyond this one.”
Meanwhile, Georgia gashed the Ducks defense with screen plays and throws into the flats, and Oregon players frequently were slow to read the play or missed tackles.
“I think they had one deep ball, and they weren’t running the ball down our throat. It was all perimeter screens,” safety Bennett Williams said. “We schemed for a lot of different stuff, but when it came down to it, we didn’t play the perimeter screens well enough and they know that so they kept going to it.”
With Eastern Washington, BYU and Washington State coming up next on the schedule, the Ducks’ defense will be tested. They’ll have to play a heck of a lot better than the effort put forth Saturday.
College football isn’t only about star ratings. Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett IV, who put in the best performance of his career with 368 yards and two touchdowns while completing 25 of 31 passes, is famously a former walk-on. You still have to coach ’em up. Last year, the Ducks did go to Ohio State and beat a more talented Buckeyes team.
But it starts with recruiting, and it never stops. After that explosive offensive Georgia passing performance, Smart made a public recruiting pitch.
“If you’re watching from home, you’re saying, ‘Man, I’ve love to play in that offense,’” Smart said.
Mario Cristobal twice signed top-10 recruiting classes with the Ducks. Oregon’s current 2023 class ranks 14th and has two five-star commitments, tied for third-most in the country. One of those is quarterback Dante Moore from Detroit. Lanning knows this is the lifeblood. He became an ace recruiter as a graduate assistant at Arizona State and knew that ability would get him to an on-field coaching job. He’s filled his first staff with quality recruiters.
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One bad loss to the defending national champions isn’t the downfall. There’s a lot of season left to be played and the Ducks can still accomplish a lot. They only joined the gigantic pile of teams that have opened or closed a season with a beatdown at the hands of Alabama or Georgia.
But Saturday showed how far there is to go to get to the top. It’s up to Lanning to start the march toward that.
(Top photo: John David Mercer / USA Today)
