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Dan Lanning has done nothing but win in 2024, so nothing that happened during Sunday’s College Football Playoff selections did anything to deter his attitude.
Oregon is 13-0 now, with Saturday night’s thrilling win over Penn State in the Big Ten title game the latest victory on the Ducks’ long list this fall. So, even if on paper it looks like top-seeded Oregon was given a hard Playoff draw, especially for the No. 1 seed, Lanning basically said: bring it on.
“What an opportunity, right? In our world, we always talk about red light, green light. Focus on the things you can control. That’s what we’re going to focus on, and winning a national championship isn’t supposed to be easy,” explained Lanning. “You can ask Coach (Nick) Saban. If our path’s a little bit tougher, kudos to us if we go through it and take care of business.”
Oregon will take its first-round bye into the Rose Bowl where the Ducks await the winner of Ohio State vs. Tennessee in a first-round game. Regardless of the seeding, that is not a great outlook after Georgia will face the winner of Indiana-Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl.
Lanning was then asked about preparing for an opponent on a shorter schedule with first-round games involved. While the Ducks will need to prepare for a singular opponent in the quarterfinals, Lanning says Oregon will begin immediately looking at multiple teams that could pose his team problems in the Playoff.
“I’ll start with the practice piece. I think we have to look ahead and find issues throughout some common opponents that could be potential issues down the road,” he said. “So, we’re going to have to prepare for more than just one team as we prepare and then have some periods within that practice where it kind of focuses on overall scheme within those issues.”
And even though Lanning’s team hasn’t lost yet, he knows there is a lot of room for improvement.
“I’m not worried about the rat poison because I was at the game last night,” he said of outlasting Penn State on Saturday night. “And I know how much better we can get. We didn’t play our best game, but we had each other’s back.”
Stay locked into SDS’s 2024 CFP odds for the latest as we approach the first-round action.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
