Dan Lanning thought this past Saturday was a ringing endorsement of the Oregon football program, what it is, and where it’s going. That’s from the start of the day — with fans packing the set of ESPN’s College GameDay well before the sun had risen — all the way through to the end of a 45-30 Oregon win over then-No. 9 UCLA.

Now, the Ducks need to carry the momentum they’ve created forward. No letdown spot this week. The Ducks (6-1, 4-0 Pac-12) travel to Berkeley to battle Cal (3-4, 1-3 Pac-12) on Saturday.

Lanning met with reporters Monday night to recap the UCLA win and preview the upcoming game against the Bears. Here’s everything he said, with video of the press conference at the bottom.

Opening statement

“Obviously, a phenomenal weekend, really exciting. I don’t know how you can be a fan or a prospect or anyone right now and not want to be a part of and around what’s going on in Oregon football. Our fans made such an impact on Saturday, starting with GameDay being there early, being able to carry that over to a primetime game. Obviously, an elite experience there in that stadium. I have been in some great stadium environments, and that’s one of the best stadium environments I’ve ever been in in my career.

“A lot of fun for our players, fun to see our players have that success. But we enjoyed it on Saturday, and we’re ready to move on now and attack our weaknesses and try to make them strengths as we move forward to play Cal this week.”

On staying focused amid a ton of outside praise and moving on from a big win

“We don’t concern ourselves with the opinions of others. Our focus has always been within and today we went to the doctor and we saw a lot of things we can get better at. Some people texted me in the morning after the game and said, ‘How do you feel after that win?’ I said, ‘Well, I just watched the film, so I’ve got some concerns.’ There’s a lot of stuff that we’ve got to fix, a lot of stuff to get better. Again, the piece that I’m excited about is that consistently every single week, we’ve improved really across the board, and we got to continue to improve as we move forward.”

On Bryan Addison

“He’s got range. We talked about it this morning as we as we went back and evaluated some of the things — this guy can cover sideline to sideline. Obviously having that receiving background allowed him to come down with a ball there at the end of the game. He’s getting his hands on a lot of balls and gets guys down when it comes to tackling. That’s showing up.”

On the final plays of the game — taking a knee and then throwing it out of the back of the endzone  — and how they make those decisions

“We work situations like that every single Friday. For us, it wasn’t about trying to go get another score, it was just making sure the ball doesn’t go back to our opponent. You talk about things that I can do better — it should’ve been more of a slow knee. You take a slow knee, you can run a little bit more time off. We’ve worked the airball situation that we did the very last play with as much as 10 seconds in practice. It was 13 (in the game). That’s a little longer than you really want to work, but that’s the kind of situation where you know, ‘Hey, I don’t want to punt I don’t want to get the ball back to the opponent.’ We want to use all the time on the clock. That was a really cool situational play.

“You see so often even in the NFL where backs break out in the open and they tried to go score a touchdown and then what do they do? They create an opportunity for another team to go back and score, onside kick, all those things. You open up Pandora’s box. We knew it was a drop alert situation. If we got a first down, we wanted to go down. We could have done a better job operating with a slow knee rather than a victory as fast as we did, but then to have the airball to finish is a good sequence of play for us.”

On how they help their linebackers in coverage

“Recreating that in practice as much as possible. Making sure that we recreate those situations for our guys consistently through the week and then do a good job of really making those tackles. I think we talked about even going back all the way to Week 1. What do you see? You see a lot of individual one-on-one tackles, and we can eliminate those opportunities and make more of those buddy tackles. That’s what we’re trying to do. We’ve got to do a better job of that. In football you got to make one-on-one tackles. When that happens, you’ve got to do a great job of it and have eye discipline. Teams will create confusion. We have to do a good job of evaluating that and assessing it.”

On Cal’s defense

“They don’t give up explosives. They play with great layering in their defense. They’re not a team sitting here taking a million risks. They play really sound, they’re probably one of the most well-coached and sound defenses in our conference that we’re really going to see. I think they do a really good job from that standpoint, and because of that they don’t give up a lot of big plays.”

On how he’d describe the personality of the offensive line

“There’s so many different character traits that fit that group. Intelligence, toughness, brotherhood, they’re a close-knit group, there’s a high belief, they’re very coachable. You talk about wanting to be the best version of yourself, Coach (Adrian) Klemm does a great job with those guys every single week, week in and week out. Those guys are willing to be coached. So many people shell up when they get coached. These guys accept coaching and look for opportunities to get better and embrace adversity. So, that’s exciting to see in a group.”

On how much easier it makes things on defense when the offense scores at the clip it has been

“A bunch. It’s nice, the name of the game is to score more points than the other team. The fact that we’re able to do that right now at a high level is definitely a benefit. This past weekend, we knew we were playing a good offense in UCLA. They score points, but the fact that we’re scoring touchdowns and they’re scoring field goals, that’s going to equate to a win at the end of the day. At some point, it might not always go like that, but right now our offense is clicking on all cylinders and I think that will continue.”

On how much of an impact a single weekend can help from a recruiting standpoint

“When you get an opportunity to be on a stage similar to what we were on this Saturday… You talk about the stars really aligning. From the minute people woke up that morning, they were evaluating Oregon football until that game was over with. It became really something that was in every living room across the United States. That’s an opportunity to make an impact. I think our fans lived up to a moment right there. They created an opportunity to make sure everyone knows: If you haven’t been a part of this or experienced it firsthand, you may not realize what Oregon football is all about and what this fan experience is all about. And what that does from a recruiting standpoint is invaluable.”

On pulling Bucky Irving into the route progression on an obvious passing down, and how much the confidence in the offensive line plays into a decision like that

“I think all those things play a factor. Ultimately, any defensive coach would tell you it’s harder to cover five than cover four. So when you get the back out in a pass route, it takes another person to be able to cover that. It also eliminates one more person they can bring. But Bo (Nix)’s smart enough and understands coverages well enough to know, do we have enough hats up front to block them? Do we trust the guy that’s in front of them? If we can get five guys in routes, we want to be able to do that. In both of those situations, those are situations we knew before we got to that situation that we knew we were going for it, and we had a play dialed up for it. So it was good to see those guys go out there and execute.”

On the Cal offense

“They pass the ball a good amount. I think they do a good job of getting the ball down the field. Their quarterback probably doesn’t get enough credit. He’s got one takeaway in his last five games, he’s done a really good job of taking care of the ball. And he throws the ball really well. He’s a talented thrower. You have to cover them, handle them well in the backend, and I think they do a good job of pushing the ball down the field. They haven’t hit a rhythm consistently this season, but when they do, they can be dangerous.”

On offensive line coach Adrian Klemm

“Our entire offensive staff… You love a guy that has experience. You talk about Coach Klemm, this is a guy who played in the NFL, played high-level college football, he’s been a college coach, he’s been an NFL coach, he has experience. So I think for our players, it’s really nice to know that this isn’t a guy who just says it. It’s also a guy who’s done it. I think you see a big guy, but when you hear him talk, it doesn’t sound like it. He doesn’t have to be a yeller and a screamer to get the results that are necessary for his group. And that’s appealing. I think he can be really straightforward with his guys, honest and clear, and I think that comes out in the way that they play. Having the offensive staff, the defensive staff, I can’t give enough credit to our coaching staff that we have here and the job they’ve done, and our players buying into our coaching staff for us to have success.”

On Cal being able to run or throw it

“When you’re playing a team that can do both, it really challenges you defensively. That being said, we have to be able to take away what they do best. We’re going to have to play to some of the tendencies and try to evaluate that as we go through the game. But they have certainly proven that they can. So that’s something we’re going to have to prepare for.”

On keeping the focus for a game that doesn’t have quite the same build-up

“I think anybody that turns on the TV any Saturday night is going to realize every week that you can’t predict college football. I’m watching film earlier today and this game last year came down to the last few seconds and a fourth-and-2 at the goal line. We have to bring our best every single week to be able to perform to the level we think is necessary and capable. Again, I have a lot of respect for Cal, (but) we’re playing Oregon this week. We have to get the best version of us and be able to play really well. We want to play better at the end than we are right now. And that’s what we’re looking for — growth. This team is very capable.”

On how much freedom Bo Nix has within the offense

“We trust Bo. There was maybe one time where we all gave him a hard time today about one of the checks he made. But, we trust Bo. He’s got great confidence in the system and he understands what we’re trying to get accomplished. I think that’s a credit again to the coaching staff and the job that they’re doing for preparing him. But he knows what looks we’re looking for. There’s times where there’s something we haven’t really prepared for, but (it showed up) four weeks before and he remembers the check and why we had it and he’s able to utilize it in the game. That’s when you’re really clicking on all cylinders when you have someone who can do that.”

On the balance between 2023 and 2024 recruiting

“That’s just got to be part of your everyday process. Again, there’s recruiting and there’s relationships. That’s kind of the key. I think our staff does a great job building relationships, does a good job of evaluating talent because that’s the part that I think gets missed sometimes — you have to make sure you evaluate the right guys. There’s a lot of guys we were able to bring into our team when we got here that weren’t here. I don’t know how many were really highly rated or touted or what that looks like but I’ll say this: every single guy we brought in here, I’d take again. I’m really excited about the guys we were able to bring into our progrum. I think every one of us can recognize the value, whether it be portal guys, freshmen, the value they’ve added. You want to be able to do a good job of that, and you have to do it every week to do that.”

On Taki Taimani

“He got a little dinged up in his ankle. I think he’s going to be able to go Saturday. We’ll see.”

On the defensive challenges posed by an offense that can switch between extremely different personnel packages

“Ultimately, we try to keep the game really simple. I think you go back to the BYU game. If we find something in the game and we have a rhythm and we think our numbers are right or maybe better, we’re going to stay in that rhythm and continue to do it and lean on the strength of our offensive line and let our backs run. That’s really what I think you saw on Saturday. We had a good numbers count out of a couple different sets, we’re able to present it out of different personnel groups and we’re going to keep going back to it until the other team gets their numbers right.”

On third-down defense

“You’ve got to take the whole sample size. There’s some third downs where we got a third-down stop but they convert on fourth. So what does that equate to? Still a loss. I think there are some much-improved situations and then some situations to get better. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out if you’re in third-and-1, you’re chances of stopping them are a lot shorter than if they’re in third and long. It goes back to still creating more of those moments. I thought we did some things better than we had done during the season. But we’re still looking for improvement moving forward.”