PASADENA, Calif. — Dan Lanning isn’t making excuses.
No. 1 Oregon football was pummeled, 41-21, by Ohio State in the Rose Bowl on Wednesday, sending the previously undefeated Ducks packing in the quarterfinal round of the College Football Playoff.
With much discussion in the media of late about changing the 12-team playoff’s format, and of the difficulty of top-ranked Oregon’s path having to face Ohio State after a long layoff, Lanning shut down the notion his team was at a disadvantage with more time between games.
“I think that’s an excuse,” Lanning said. “I thought our guys prepared well going in. Obviously, they had a better plan than us. But that’s an excuse.
“That’s an opportunity that we had to recharge. I thought our guys did practice well. I’d tell you if that wasn’t the case. I thought they had a great focus. I just don’t think our plan was good enough. I think they had a great plan to attack us. So credit to those guys.”
While Oregon faced a red-hot Ohio State team after nearly four weeks off, critics of the current CFP format have pointed out that Penn State — a team Oregon beat in the Big Ten championship game — needed only to get by SMU and Boise State to reach the CFP semifinal. The Nittany Lions did just that, with relative ease.
Lanning said that, in order to win a national title, you have to beat a great team along the way. The Ducks simply came up short of that task in this particular round, and are not complaining about their placement in the playoff bracket.
“We had an opportunity,” Lanning said. “We didn’t take advantage of the opportunity. I’m not going to make excuses for our opportunity. And, ultimately, you have to beat great teams at the end of the year, and we didn’t do that. This is the road we had to travel. And they did it better than us tonight.
“No complaints for us for having that opportunity. They just took advantage of it and we didn’t.”
— Ryan Clarke covers the Oregon Ducks and Big Ten Conference. Listen to the Ducks Confidential podcast or subscribe to the Ducks Roundup newsletter.
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