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I also have NO confidence in AI to recommend coach!!!!

I'm not mad at you. You Absolutely have a right to vent. You made valid points. You're not the type of Oregon fan I am talking about. Lanning does not have a top five group of players. Just like Penn State didn't have a top five group of players last year. That is a big misconception. I want you to go back and look at Miami the first month of last year. Our Ducks have NEVER looked that good. Even in 2019- Oregon's best defense ever. This is my opinion, Indiana, Georgia, Alabama Ohio State and Texas all have much better talent than we have. And I mean much. They perform better, and all but Texas have been consistent. And Miami has an offensive that is damn near unstoppable. That is six teams right there that are better. Potential isn't the same thing as performance. Out of all the contenders this year, and I counted seven, Oregon was the least likely to win a title. We have not performed close to how well the other six have on the field against elite talent. Everybody put on the hype that evidence contradicted. I've been saying for a long time, Lanning is elevating his team beyond it's talent capacity. Some people still can't accept that. Look at Dante Moore in the heat of battle. Everybody said last year she better come back because he has work to do. That was the first sign. The defensive line, in both playoff blowouts played poorly. That was the second sign. The offensive line played worse. Third sign. There are dozens of NFL teams that overpay their players. What makes you think that's not going to happen in college football? And that is not a criticism of you. That's rhetorical. Penn State is learning what it means to be an unrealistic fan base. It's going to take 5 years before they match what James Franklin did that at that program. We bought an unreasonable point of view. It is that simple. It is time to pay attention to how difficult it is to win a National championship. It is time to correctly assess talent based on performance. It is time to allow a coach to evolve completely into excellence.

The very title of the thread suggests Dan should be fired but we're stuck with him due to the size of his buyout. So it seems like just a play on semantics to say it didn't call for him to be fired. Maybe that wasn't the true intent, but that's how I read it as well. Dan's record and accomplishments in the first few years of being a very young HC are extremely impressive. Yes he has great resources, but those alone do not make a top 5 team. This season is actually proof of just how fragile things can be at the elite level of the sport. He was knocking on the door in just his 3rd and 4th seasons as a HC. Now he has a hiccup with a bad hire and a down season and the sharks immediately start to circle. I totally agree that he's made some decisions that warrant criticism. I've questioned some of them myself on this forum. But in my mind he's built a lot of equity and I see it as a long-term relationship. I can't get on-board with any talk of firing him at this point or the foreseeable future. To me it's like the difference between telling my wife she spends too much money or needs to stop dinging her car in parking lots vs telling her that the only reason we're still married is that I can't afford to divorce her. Totally different plain.

That’s the question of the day isn’t it?

I completely disagree. I'm going to beat this dead horse because Oregon fans have beat this dead horse, and I'm going to express how I feel about it. It isn't wrong to be upset. It isn't wrong to vent. But when people start acting like they're better coaches than the guy who elevated this program so high- its insulting. I will leave it at that because I'm beyond livid. I see a lot of Oregon fans that refused to recognize after the Oklahoma State game we were beyond capable of winning a National Title this year. The time to lament is when Lanning's career is over. He's barely getting started. Settle in and enjoy the ride. Or put in an application and put your money where your mouth is.

Stien has 'Tucky sitting at #1 in the SEC.

This is the most upsetting year in college football (CFB) since 2007. In addition to the 'ordinary chaos', the Big Ten has been bitten by the QB injury bug. Which teams in the SEC does ESPN's Bill Connelly trust? The Texas D, and that's it. Number 1 Miami has played against thin air and needed help from the refs to defeat FSU in OT. How did Notre Dame do when it played a ranked team in Provo? And how did the 2nd-ranked team from Provo do this week against a 3-3 unranked opponent? The team that should be righteously PO'd? How about Oregon's Week 9 opponent, Northwestern? Northwestern has one loss that came on the road against No. 4 Indiana by two points. Two-loss Alabama, Texas, Ole Miss, LSU, Tennessee, and Florida are all ranked above Northwestern. It wasn't a great P4 opponent, but Northwestern did play Colorado out of conference. It's not a lot of fun being a Ducks fan this season, but Oregon fans are in bad company. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/50278475/connelly-college-football-week-8-texas

As bad as the Ducks look this year, SUC fans have to live with losing to them in a down year on their home field.

Mike, I didn't call Dan a fraud or for him to be fired. But I reserve the right to critical analysis of him and his decisions. He is a good coach, but he is not beyond reproach. Lanning has had a roster ranking around the top five in blue-chip ratio the last three years, he 100% should have that team in the semis last year, and he should have had his team competitive in the game for the over $10 million he got paid. This year's implosion coupled with the blowout playoff losses to OSU and Indiana where we were clearly out coached and not competitive, make it fair to question Lanning has the goods to get us to the top of the mountain. It's evident right now that answer is no, that's just my own critical analysis of him, it's not personal.

Here's an objective look at CFB to date in 2026. Many teams are not performing up to expectations. Talent has been spread out. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/50278475/connelly-college-football-week-8-texas

I do think he needs some maturity on the staff. Coordinators generally need to have enough prior experience to immediately recognize what an opponent is doing at the time they are doing it. That comes with seeing it before, and knowing how to adjust to it. 1-Miami – Shannon Dawson – 49 2-Ohio St – Arthur Smith – 44 3-Georgia – Mike Bobo – 52 4-Indiana – Mike Shanahan - 37 5-Notre Dame – Mike Denbrock - 62 6-Utah – Kevin McGiven - 49 7-UCLA – Dean Kennedy - 35 8-BYU – Aaron Roderick – 52 9-Kentucky – Joe Sloan - 39 10-Alabama – Ryan Grubb – 50 11-Texas – Kyle Flood – 55 The O-coords above under 40 have a head coach with O experience. And/or were coords elsewhere before.

This guy make a great point. Just make sure to read his whole post. “Champions miss, the great ones fix it”.

Come On, Man! It's a fracking game. Stuff happens. In a bad year after a bad offseason the team is 4-3. You do know that Bama sucked wind for decades, right? How long has it been since SC's blood has been blue? Wisconsin is now in the top 25, should Fickell have been fired? What kind of season are preseason ranked Michigan, Penn State, UW, and Texas A+M experiencing? What would Oregon's record be with Miami, Notre Dame's, or Texas Tech's schedule? Who in the last five seasons would have a better record at Oregon than Dan Lanning? Who else could bring talent as he has to Eugene? Rob Mullens and a football GM have to take control and fix this? Mullens promoted Helfrich and hired Slick. Of course, you are welcome to your POV, but I'm happy that we're not sharing a foxhole. Stuff happens.

Will was here three years. Nix in year two, Dillion for a year and the Dante year 1. Nix did do quite a bit of formation checks in the RPO scheme that we didn't see Dante making last year. Of course, the experience gap was miles apart between those two.

Thanks for the clarification. Sorry if I took you took you too literally.

I think what he's saying is even considering a buyout it's going too far. I can't speak for him, but I'm along that line of thinking. Personally for me, Life happens. A lot of people have serious problem with life. That's why we're seeing a bunch of bandwagon fans going crazy and acting like Penn State fans or Ohio State fans and Michigan fans. It has been beyond the pale. Caesar crossed Rubicon and the Republic started to crumble. When you start having civil war because of one poor decision to elevate someone that didn't have the experience means that a lot of people are fragile. Nothing against anybody here, but character is built through losing. The best part about this forum, is there's been a lot of educated, and informed as much as you can be informed for not being a coach, and thought processes about how to fix the problems. I haven't seen a lot of character in our fan base. And it should be more than obvious that I'm pretty pissed off. As much as I get pissed off when I see guys looking at that damn quarterback instead of covering his man. I think the media has had a pretty good feel for how to address the issues. They are asking what his thought process is, they're not attacking Dan Lanning the man. I may have said this before, but I knew Casey Brooks when she was in school with me, and both Washington and at Oregon. She told me some of the stupidest and the most ridiculous things that fans said about her father. And this was 15 years before he elevated the program to the level it started to become and what it is today. We don't make the playoffs this year - so what!!! It doesn't define the program under Lanning, and it's certainly isn't anything like it was in the 60s and the seventies and early 80s. 3 years before Penn State fired James franklin, people start to say he was a fraud. They poisoned the well, and every decision he made after that point was considered questionable. Look at Penn State today. They suck. That is exactly what happens when people start to prematurely raise their expectations beyond reality. I will say this again, Dan Lanning is elevated his team that had no business being in the semifinals last year, despite a lot of talent. They had holes in personnel, they could not figure out what their quarterback was going to do when the quarterback had clear receivers wide open. Here's the most egregious part of it all: when other program tried to poach Lanning -because he was elevating the program beyond what Cristobal had done-Dan Lanning pledged his loyalty forever. The minute he struggles for what, half a season everybody wants to dump him and dump on him. I for one, do not want to be a fan like Penn state's, Ohio state's, alabama, or Michigan's. Programs will not elevate to National championship status easily. The programs that have already won a championship, are far better a position to win another one than it is for somebody else to actually elevate like Curt Cignetti did. All this conjecture about Lanning being a fraud is inaccurate. Do you think Nick Saban won national championships in his first five years? Absolutely not. He was just as stubborn, and he actually sought help from a psychologist to elevate his program. That was at Michigan state, before he won a national championship. Oregon is one of the institutions that is doing quite well, and will continue to do quite well in this environment. They have the right coach, they found them when nobody knew about him, and they will stick by him because he is the right man for the job.

Something about the coach Terry situation just seems puzzling to me. I think he came in way under qualified but had great results with guys that already new what they were doing but poor results with guys he's taught from day one. It makes me think what is more impressive, being the conductor of the London Phil Harmonic, or just being a very good high school band teacher? One can meld some of the best players in the world into a fantastic symphony while the other just gets kids able to play regardless of skill level. I think that's a decision Lanning will have to deal with. As for getting back to the post topic, I'd love to see the return of Greatwood.