Embarrassed? Absolutely!
Surprised the Oregon defense wasn’t as stout as advertised? No doubt!
Disappointed these Ducks didn’t perform better against a highly regarded team on a national stage? You have good reason to be.
But throwing in the towel on this team and coaching staff is a bit absurd, and quite honestly ridiculous.
Yes, Oregon got their hind ends handed to them in a most public and humiliating way, but make no mistake, this is a good team with marque talent.
“I’m taking our team. I’m taking our players” said Lanning Saturday evening when asked what he learned about his team after being taken to the woodshed by No. 3 Georgia.
“We have to do a better job as coaches of coaching our guys and growing them and developing them, but let’s not discredit Georgia,” he said. “They have a lot of talent. They have a lot of talent. They’ve been recruiting there and building a program for a long time. I won’t take anything away from them, but we have guys that we can play winning football with, and we have to grow this team to do that.”
Lanning and his staff will do just that.
There’s much to look forward to including attracting some of the best talent from around the country to Eugene. It’s already happening. Lanning and his fellow coaches are working tirelessly to build what Georgia has right now, and what the Bulldogs used Saturday to throttle the Ducks 49-3 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
If you don’t believe that, then you don’t know much about Lanning, his work ethic and knowledge of what kind of players and effort it takes to play championship college football.
“We’re really going to have to go back and look at the film” explained Lanning when asked what positives he came away with.
“I think one of the biggest positives, like I said, is we have a locker room that’s hungry to go get better. There’s not a bunch of finger-pointing going on in there. You don’t see guys throwing trash cans. That’s not the team that we have. You have a team that’s frustrated and that wants to improve, but I think we walked away saying how can we get better”?
Winning doesn’t happen overnight.
It’s a process of recruiting the right players, installing the right culture, and a lot of hard work and blood, sweat, and tears!
Georgia coach Kirby Smart is coaching his seventh season in Athens and has accumulated a 67-15 record. He didn’t reach the mountain top until his sixth season. And, let’s not forget, Lanning was right there next to Smart on that mountain top.
He knows what it takes to reach that plateau.
But it’s never easy. There’s a lot of heartbreak and disappointment while molding the exact team and culture you want.
“I have been a part of a lot of wins,” said Lanning in his post-game comments.
“I have also been a part of a lot of losses, and I’ve seen great coaches handle situations like this before. I was a part of one of these last year.
“We felt pretty dishambled last year walking off an SEC Championship game that we didn’t win and didn’t play well, and we turned that into an opportunity to get a lot better. I’ve seen the best do it, whether it be Coach Smart or
Coach Saban or any other coach. We have to take our team, and look for our opportunities to improve. And guess what, regardless of the result today, we would have to do the same thing. It’s about what can you go fix and how you
can improve.”
If you walked out of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium early, and with disgust, you have every right to feel that way. No one enjoys losing, and certainly, no one enjoys getting crushed by their opponent.
But to also walk out on the season is extremely premature and without a real understanding of what it takes to build a championship team and program.
“I told our coaching staff before this morning (Saturday), before we ever played the game, we had a staff meeting, and I said every single one of our goals is going to be ahead of us regardless of how this game comes out,” explained Lanning.
“Win, loss, draw, every one of our goals is still right here in front of us. Our players feel the exact same way. Tough locker room because we have competitors. Those guys are hungry to go get better. I think if you
asked our players, they would go right back out to the practice field today because they want to compete. There was no quit in them, but certainly getting to go against a good team, it’s a great gauge of where you’re at. They’re a good team.”
Be patient Duck fans. There’s good things to come.
The program is in extremely good hands!