He arrived with the blueprint and the coaching chops. Insert plan, change a program.
Three seasons later, his team is down 34 points in the second quarter as the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff.
“It’s not about getting knocked down,” says Oregon coach Dan Lanning, “It’s about what you do next.”
So here we are, and the road to becoming Alabama and Georgia has reached nearly every milestone, every point of the process that leads to the development of a championship program. Except the one defining result.
Winning the whole damn thing.
“Ultimately you have to be great teams to beat teams at the end of the year,” Lanning said.
Great teams don’t give up late fourth quarter leads in the last month of the season, two that cost Oregon a chance to play in the College Football Playoff in 2022, and one in 2023.
Great teams don’t get overwhelmed as the No. 1 seed in the CFP in 2024, a redemption moment for the previous two failures that hit flat — and has now become the motivation for 2025.
This all or nothing, of course, is the problem. Not because the Ducks haven’t won big under Lanning, but because Oregon isn’t Alabama or Georgia.
And Lanning – all of 38 years old and in his first head coaching job – isn’t Nick Saban or Kirby Smart. But like it or not, he’s tied at the hip to two of the greatest coaches in the modern era of college football.
Saban built the Alabama dynasty, and Smart was his top lieutenant for eight seasons (winning four national titles). Smart eventually built the best team in college football at Georgia, and won a national title with Lanning as his top lieutenant.
So the natural progression in the land of unrealistic expectations is Lanning taking Saban’s famed “process” program buildout, the same process Smart used at Georgia, and building a beast at Oregon. If he doesn’t, it’s failure.
Which is absolutely absurd.
But like it or not, fair or not, that’s the backdrop to this offseason, to eight long months of finding a way to be better than the only unbeaten team in college football at the end of the this past regular season. To go one step further than beating three playoff teams in the regular season, despite the inherent challenges of a new conference and the unique travel obstacles of playing in the Big Ten.
Eight long months with this backdrop for the rebuild: Oregon loses an NCAA record-breaking quarterback, four starting offensive linemen, four of its top five wide receivers, and the majority of a defense that finished No. 16 in the nation in scoring.
But it’s at these inflection points where Lanning and Oregon mirror Alabama and Georgia in terms of process. Lanning has signed back-to-back top five recruiting classes, and three in the top 10, according to the 247Sports composite ranking.
Elite players are arriving, both from high school recruiting and the transfer portal. Lanning and his staff are developing at a high level (hello, Bo Nix), and they’ve won 35 of 41 games.
It looks and feels just like Alabama and Georgia, with the nagging exception of big game struggles. But Saban and Smart went through similar problems, and eventually found a way out.
It took Saban one season to figure out how to beat Florida, and then another season to figure out how to beat complacency. It took Smart and Georgia three years to rebound from a gut-punch loss to Saban in the 2017 national championship game.
Saban and Smart did it by recruiting elite difference-makers on the defensive line, and Lanning is following the same plan. Now those same emerging defensive linemen and edge rushers — Matayo Uiagalelei, Teitum Tuioti, Aydin Breland, Blake Purchase — will be the foundation and attitude of a reloading team.
Scoring points won’t be a problem. They system is in place, the talent is there.
It’s the Alabama and Georgia attitude, the might and fright of a defensive line that dictates games, that controls everything. And by everything, I mean, everything.
That’s the final piece to the puzzle, the last step to completing the process. That’s what’s next, not some easy, boiler plate ideal of winning it all.
That’s just the reward of figuring it all out.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.