Everything Dan Lanning said ahead of Oregon's trip to USC

The stage is set for an all-important Big Ten clash at the Coliseum. For the winner, expectations will soar. For the loser, plenty of questions without easy answers.

The Oregon Ducks hoped to begin to answer some of those questions in an 84-0 blowout win over Portland State on the heels of an upset loss on the road to Oklahoma State. While the Ducks had few negatives in the win, the competition will be drastically different this week against the USC Trojans, which are eager to get over the hump in the rivalry.

Dan Lanning understood that although the Ducks performed as they should against the Vikings, this is the week to prove that the Ducks are still contenders. USC won a shootout on the road against Rutgers, so the blueprint is available for Oregon's offense to succeed, but can the Ducks execute on the road?

Lanning provided good and bad injury updates on a few key Ducks, and broke down what USC does well and how the team is focusing on themselves to earn a big win to open conference play.

Here is everything Lanning had to say on Monday before the Ducks travel to Los Angeles to take on USC:

Opening Statement

Dan Lanning: "Alright, hopping into it. We had a good day of attack today. Obviously, want to always take the time to thank our fans for Friday. They were unbelievable. They do a great job and allow us to get a jump on USC. Obviously, this will be a really big challenge this week. Coach Riley's teams are always really hard to stop offensively. I think they've become pretty dynamic when it comes to special teams. Obviously, I know they had the fake against them in the last game, but they're doing some stuff different there. That's a challenge. New coordinator on defense as well with coach Patterson, who provides a myriad of looks that are challenging to prepare for. Then they have a team that has a lot of talent as well. The environment, I'm sure, is going to be unbelievable there at the Coliseum. My first time getting to play down there since we've been at Oregon, been there in the past as a GA, but it can be a really special place, and that's what we're anticipating: their absolute best. But we look at this roster that they have; they have a lot of great players that are playing at a high level. Obviously, it starts there with their quarterback, and then they have some dynamic pieces around him. So this will provide a really good challenge for us. Our players are certainly focused and excited about this matchup. It's a great way to start off Big Ten play for us, and looking forward to the challenges that present."

Takeaways From Portland State

Question: You said on Friday night that that's what it was supposed to look like against a team of that caliber. When you look at the tape from that, and there's that level of talent disparity, what do you actually take away that's meaningful from that performance?

DL: "There are still things that are for us to start to clean up, but I always think back to past experiences for us. Fox Crader's a guy starting for us right now. At tackle a year ago, he got 10 reps in a Montana State game. And then a couple weeks later, he's starting against USC. That's what you get. You get game experience. That's the first college game for a lot of players in our program. The opportunity to evaluate that, and then there's things that we were attacking from the previous week that we said, 'Hey, we have to be better at.' Regardless of who you're going against, you get the opportunity to see, OK, are we doing that at a higher level? I think penalties are something that still showed up first in the second half. In the first half, we had two. I think that's some of the details and stuff that we wanted to attack. That's where that showed up. Some creativity and some stuff in our run game, I thought, showed up better, but it's going to be different when you face the opponents that we're going to face in the Big Ten. But more than anything, experience. There are some guys that got their very first snaps of their career here at Oregon in that game, and that's really valuable for us."

Pass Rush

Q: How would you characterize the pass rush the past few weeks and how can that improve, and how important can that be against the (USC) offense?

DL: "Do you know how many snaps we played on defense in the last game? 37 snaps. Do you know how many passes there were? Around 20. Dropback passes? Six. I think we hit the quarterback three times. So when you look at it, like how many pass rush opportunities are there? Are you efficient? We got a sack basically off of the fact that they had a penalty for throwing it out of bounds. We got a sack with Aydin Breland. We hit the quarterback multiple times. They did cut protection, right? They did eight-man play action protection. So I don't think there's a huge concern looking at that game. There's a rush plan, and there weren't a lot of opportunities to rush, right? Especially when you're talking about 37 snaps on defense, it's a little bit different. This game will be a great game to be able to assess that and see what it looked like. It wasn't there in the Oklahoma State game, and then, similar, they had some good protection (and) adjustments that they were able to do. They moved the pocket at times as well, and we were close on the quarterback, but didn't finish. We had times we had to cover, and he scrambled in that game. So I don't think there's room for concern yet. When there's a bunch of opportunities and we're not taking advantage of opportunities, I think that's where there's concern. And then there have been some guys that have shown some really good rush reps throughout the year. Whether it's Bear in the Boise State game, Matayo in the Boise State game, I think Nas has gotten close to the quarterback several times. What did show up in that game is we had batted balls multiple times, which is, to me, just as much of a measure of pass rush. When you have batted balls and those lead to interceptions, I think that's a way you can impact the quarterback when the ball is coming out quick."

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