Everything Oregon HC Dan Lanning said after the Ducks' comeback win over Washington State

The Oregon Ducks survived an upset-minded Washington State team in Pullman on Saturday night. The Ducks looked dead to rights late in the fourth quarter, particularly so after a Cougar score put the home team up 34-22 with under seven minutes to play.

But head coach Dan Lanning said he never saw any quit in his group, and the 15th-ranked Ducks rallied to score 22 unanswered points over five minutes of game clock to roar back and beat the Cougars 44-41 in an instant classic.

Here’s everything Lanning had to say after the game:

Opening statement

“Well, glad there was a little time left on the clock there at the end. Gutsy performance. I gotta give credit to Coach (Jake) Dickert and his team. They came out here ready to compete, and they caught us off guard early and in a lot of ways they outperformed us a lot of the day. But there was enough time left on the clock when our offense got the ball there at the end. I said, ‘Hey, guys, this is a two-minute drill on Thursday, just like we did in practice.’ Those guys went down and executed. Obviously, a lot of things didn’t go right in the first half, getting down in the red area and not being able to score but to walk out of this game, I think we finished without giving up a sack, credit to our offensive line. This is probably one of the most challenging looks that we’ve seen up front from Washington State. They do a lot of things to change it up.

“Obviously, a lot of stuff for us to go to work on. We have to get a lot better on defense, we didn’t play well enough there today to be successful and to win the games that we are going to have to win in this league. That being said, it’s hard to come to Pullman in this environment — they had a great crowd, great atmosphere today — and get a win. Our guys got a win, and they earned a win, and they battled all the way to the end. Really proud of them. Proud to walk away (with a win). I think you can learn as much from close wins as you can from losses or big wins, at times. We learned a lot today. There’s a lot for us to go work on. I’m anxious to get to the film.”

On the play of Bo Nix

“Obviously, there at the end, every possession was really critical. We had to go score touchdowns and our offense knew that. I think the offense put the defense on their back today and did a great job. Turning those drives into touchdowns in the second half, the drives we didn’t turn into touchdowns in the first. Bo did a great job. It can’t get much worse than throwing pick-six as a quarterback, and to respond the way he responded and our team respond to Bo the way they responded, I think that shows the ultimate confidence that this team has in Bo.”

On Mase Funa’s game-sealing interception

“That was a great instinct play. I wish he would have gone down right then and we could have kneeled it out. But he probably couldn’t hear me say that on the other side. That was a great instinctual play by Mase. You know, they had been firing the ball out, quick game, all day and we talked about getting hands up. I think their quarterback did a great job of extending plays, and that was one that came out quick and (Funa) was able to make a play on it.”

On the deep shot to Troy Franklin for the touchdown on third-and-short, and what was said in the huddle on the final drive

“We talked the entire day about continuing to stay aggressive. We were probably in a fourth where we were gonna go anyway, obviously, there in that situation but exactly what I just said. I mean, as I walked into the huddle, I said, ‘Guys, this is Thursday, it’s two minutes, last period of the day, exactly what we do in practice every single week,’ and then those guys went out there and executed.”

On whether he expected the pass game to be as big a part of the offense as it was

“In general, I will tell you today was not what I expected it to be. There were a lot of things that went unexpected, but what I expected was tough, resiliency, and never give up. And that showed up today in our team. There’s so many things that we can fix and we can coach better and play better and do better. That being said that team didn’t give up and when our best was needed, it was there and we were able to finish. I’m excited to see that.”

On the personal foul calls late against DJ Johnson and Brandon Dorlus

“I’m looking forward to getting some explanations on some of those. I hate to see it come down to calls like that. We have to do a better job, obviously, of coaching that on our side of the ball, but I’m anxious to look at the film and get the interpretation on some of those plays at the end. Can’t lose our composure and give an extended drive. We’re about to be in a great situation, we get a late personal foul. That can never happen. We can’t be that team. It almost cost us and we’re lucky it didn’t. We’re gonna learn from it. I can promise you that. That being said, there’s a couple of odd things that happened today that I’m looking forward to hearing explanations on.”

On the mood at halftime

“Our locker room never wavered. The guys in the locker room, the sideline never wavered. They were composed and ready to finish the entire game. I think we knew that a lot of the issues that we were facing were self-inflicted wounds that we gotta clean up.”

On Washington State’s red zone defense

“They got really tough down there in the red area. You run out of field space, but they defended the plays that we ran well, and I think we’ve got to go back and look at some of the answers they had for us. We knew a couple of the coverage variations they were gonna give us, they just executed better than us in those situations. We want to have some of those moments back. We won’t, but we can learn from them.”

On Wazzu’s Cameron Ward

“We tried to have a couple of different answers that we could throw at him. But, he obviously does a great job of extending plays. There’s times that we capitalize and we were able to finish and then finish with a penalty. There’s times when he’s able to extend the ball and get it downfield. He’s obviously a tremendous player that’s going to do really good things in this league. We’ve got to get better at the way we finish on guys like that.”

On whether he’d been part of a game as strange as this one

“I don’t know. The great thing about college football is every week you’ve go out there and do it again. I don’t know if I’ve been a part of one quite like that.”

On DJ Johnson

“Well, I love DJ and DJ knows I love him, but I was extremely disappointed in the way he managed the moment right there. He made a huge play for our team and then it almost hurt us. DJ’s gotta learn from that, our team has to learn from that. Not everybody has to make make a mistake for us to learn from a mistake. But, that was certainly a critical one, one that I hope we don’t make again.”

On Bucky Irving and Noah Whittington

“It’s no secret that those guys run hard. I think anybody that watches them play, they know they run hard. They protected the ball today and those are big, big moments for us. They got tough yards when tough yards were needed.”

On if he thought Noah Sewell had as strong a game as the box score would indicate

“I think stats are overrated. Noah Sewell is a phenomenal football player. Anybody that watches football knows that Noah Sewell is a phenomenal football player. I don’t know what his stats were, I don’t know what it finished, but Noah can play football and just turn on the film and watch it, and you can see that.”

On managing Washington State’s linebackers

“I think we had a good gameplan. I think the biggest piece of our game plan that we’ve got to go back and look at on the drawing board is when we get down to the red area. Outside of that, we weren’t really stopped all day. I’m excited to see us take some shots down the field and have some success there. Certainly, some moments for us to clean up. By no means are we a finished product and we’re not playing our best football yet.”

On being able to move the ball well on the ground one week and then through the air the next

“Like I said, we’re going to take what is given to us, and in this situation our hand was forced a little bit. We had to be more aggressive there passing the ball at the end of the game. I think he (Nix) proved that he can go be successful doing that.”

On the significance of the win and getting a road win in conference play

“It feels good to win. It feels bad to lose. It feels good to win, and this is a tough place to win. I don’t know how many messages I got this week about, ‘Hey, have you played there before? Have you been there before? It’s a tough place.’ And you know what? It was. But we got a win. We’re gonna celebrate wins around here. But I promise you there’s a lot that we can go work on, and we’re gonna go to work and fix some things.”

On what he learned over the last three minutes of the game

“I mean how much I love our guys. I love our sideline. To see the celebration and the pure admiration from our team for each other, the excitement for other people to go make plays. I didn’t see selfishness on that sideline. I saw guys that were really excited for us to be in the situation we were, and I don’t know that any of them ever had a doubt in their mind what we could accomplish if we went executed.”

On if today showed resiliency from the Ducks

“We talked a lot this week about ‘Chop wood, carry water,’ and it’s called little things. Little things on the front end of this game, they were adding up against us — some little things that went wrong. But we didn’t stop. You get a chunk of meat and you keep taking chunks and you keep fighting until the end. That’s what showed up to me at the end, was chopping wood and carrying water. We weren’t trying to win the game in the first quarter. We’re trying to win every single play, and some of them didn’t go our way, but at the end of the game enough plays went our way for us to get the W.”