USA Today: Oregon is College Football’s Biggest Fraud. Dan Lanning Owns This Mess

Ouch... talk about a painful read... painful, but IMHO, mostly accurate.

Sadly, this is more than likely just the beginning as it's going to take a while to turn our badly listing ship around.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2026/10/25/oregon-ducks-football-dan-lanning-will-stein-offensive-coordinator-flop-disappointment/92330820007/

Pretty predictable article and of course correct. The hangover from the bad hiring decisions will extend to the off season at minimum. But now that he's finally done the hard part (firing Merhinger), he can start the course correction and get things ready for a steady comeback season next year.

Lot of Duck haters out there. I ignore them. How this will work out is not yet known, but it is not the best situation. Let’s see what happens with the upcoming recruiting classes.

I actually believe this firing will help since recruits are not stupid and have seen the train wreck under this OC.

7 minutes ago, lownslowav8r said:

Lot of Duck haters out there. I ignore them. How this will work out is not yet known, but it is not the best situation. Let’s see what happens with the upcoming recruiting classes.

I actually believe this firing will help since recruits are not stupid and have seen the train wreck under this OC.

I have no idea if this guy is a hater or not. But I'm wondering what you think he says is hateful and/or inaccurate?

I think he provides a rather accurate assessment of where we are. We can choose to bury our heads in the sand, and see where that takes us. Or, take a stone cold look at reality and begin to make the tough decisions to turn this program back around.

As we did today, starting with the firing of our OC.

29 minutes ago, kirklandduck said:

Pretty predictable article and of course correct. The hangover from the bad hiring decisions will extend to the off season at minimum. But now that he's finally done the hard part (firing Merhinger), he can start the course correction and get things ready for a steady comeback season next year.

Oh come on. Firing Merhinger was the easy part, now what's DL gonna do?

This is a hit piece. Low hanging fruit. The writer is lazy and ignorant.

He has a "if you cant kick a man when he is down, when can you kick him?" Writing style.

Trash article that has no substance and was only written to cause more damage.

What a hack

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by Log Haulin

25 minutes ago, Log Haulin said:

Trash article that has no substance and was only written to cause more damage.

When you’ve experienced the decades of success that we have, and that others envy and covet, coupled with our financial entitlement from Phil Knight, it’s little wonder that Duck haters are a dime a dozen. So, what else is new? Water off a Duck’s back.

1 hour ago, anyotherduck said:

Oh come on. Firing Merhinger was the easy part, now what's DL gonna do?

For most people, admitting that you're wrong is the hardest part. Merhinger was with him from the beginning when they first stepped foot in Eugene so firing him wasn't easy both personally and professionally. Performing a candidate search and hiring a new OC is a far easier task.

Here's a bit of college football trivia which calls attention to the situation as a target.

In the last 50 years of AP football polls, only 5 teams have been pre-season No. 1 or No. 2 and finished the season unranked. Obviously Penn State last season which started at No. 2. Then in the 49 prior seasons just 4. Including No. 1 USC in 2012.

All 5 of them finished unranked ...and for a couple it was Top 20 (not 25) final ranking years. Those 2 might have made top 25.

But, and this is significant, all 5 of them finished with 6 wins or more, and above .500, including 6-5-1 Notre Dame which was No. 2 and then unranked in 1994.

Unless the Ducks get their s..t together they could be the first to go from preseason No.1/2 to under .500.

1 hour ago, Log Haulin said:

This is a hit piece. Low hanging fruit. The writer is lazy and ignorant.

He has a "if you cant kick a man when he is down, when can you kick him?" Writing style.

Trash article that has no substance and was only written to cause more damage.

What a hack

Pardon me for asking, but did you read it? If you did, I'm wondering which part(s) you so strongly disagree with?

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by Desert Duck

The annoying part of Lanning's schtick is it's very front runnery. That's not how to do it. Be confident and know who you are in adversity too. But instead of his cocky schtick he appears meek. How about more even keel? How about, to me , pathetic message it sends when Ducks vs Them only seems to come out after wins.

No son, adversity is often the best teacher. I dunno. I think Lanning is a good enough guy which I appreciate but maybe I would appreciate an actual high quality coach with less charisma than whatever Lanning currently is.

Right?

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by Utki

34 minutes ago, Desert Duck said:

Pardon me for asking, but did you read it? If you did, I'm wondering which part(s) you so strongly disagree with?

I did read it. This is how it starts

In this season of failures and fizzles, frauds and faceplants, one team still found a way to stand out for its futility.

Look out below!

Here comes Dan Lanning with a bellyflop off the high dive.

Splash!

It's verbiage throughout is all sensationalism, all for Oohs and Aahs. All to stick the knife in and twist. Complete hack imo. I am sure some people love it, I find it uninformative and weak.

All this " fire Lanning" hype is pretty interesting. You've got a coach that's 52-10, 84% win record, and was considered an up and coming star for 4 years. He could be coach at any school during those years. In six weeks, he suddenly doesn't know how to coach? He has obviously made some bad hires to coach this year, and it sounds like he owns that, and is working to remedy the problem. There are a lot of winning coaches who have been on the hot seat for losing a few games, Day and De Boer for example. Did they forget how to coach? If Lanning were fired, who could you expect to get that would do better? I understand past performance doesn't guaranty future results, but give the man some time to solve the problems the team has.

22 minutes ago, Log Haulin said:

I did read it. This is how it starts

In this season of failures and fizzles, frauds and faceplants, one team still found a way to stand out for its futility.

Look out below!

Here comes Dan Lanning with a bellyflop off the high dive.

Splash!

It's verbiage throughout is all sensationalism, all for Oohs and Aahs. All to stick the knife in and twist. Complete hack imo. I am sure some people love it, I find it uninformative and weak.

Okay... but while accurate, he does seem to be enjoying writing this piece a bit more than I would prefer.

Except for the fact that Dan didn't actually do a literal belly flop off of a high dive, I cannot think of one FBS team that has done a greater face plant this year than our beloved Ducks.

While the hyperbole is a bit much, the facts are sadly rather accurate.

Fortunately, the repair work has begun, and the search for a new OC is underway.

18 minutes ago, Desert Duck said:

Okay... but while accurate, he does seem to be enjoying writing this piece a bit more than I would prefer.

Except for the fact that Dan didn't actually do a literal belly flop off of a high dive, I cannot think of one FBS team that has done a greater face plant this year than our beloved Ducks.

While the hyperbole is a bit much, the facts are sadly rather accurate.

Fortunately, the repair work has begun, and the search for a new OC is underway.

FEBU... especially now. Let the rest of CFB world think what it wants. Go Ducks

"In six weeks, he suddenly doesn't know how to coach?"

That is the real question. Did the game change so much, so fast that it passed him by?

It happened to a lot of coaches/teams. Swinny, Franklin, USC, Fla St, to name a few.

Yes, it is possible. It is also possible that the Ducks just hit a bump in the road and all will be fixed soon.

Oklahoma was considered down and out and then they came back and beat Texas.

First of all, the guy is inaccurate. Stein was only here 2 years, and the offense didn't start to stall until after the USC game. They looked pretty bad and it was still averaging over 30 points a game so that means it's a total fraud to say that they were fraudulent at that point.

If the defense had themselves together, Oklahoma state would have been buried- that is another inaccurate assessment of the situation.

The guys obviously an Oregon hater. I don't have a problem with that since our fan base was getting quite arrogant. What I do have a problem with is the guy that's won over 50 games out of 60 and is being called a fraud is extremely egregious.

Lanning made a poor decision. And it's quite funny because there are a lot of fan bases right now that are wanting to fire their coach for not being perfect. To take it to an extreme and say the Lanning is not a successful coach it's just ridiculous.

Four active coaches have a National Title on their resume. Under this guy's standards, a lot of coaches are frauds.

Mehringer was in charge of the entire offense, and he was doing a poor job of putting it together despite the injuries. That's all this is. To say that Dan Lanning is a fraud is just pathetic.