What Dan Lanning, Dante Moore, Brandon Finney said after No. 5 Oregon shut out No. 4 Texas Tech in Orange Bowl
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — No. 5 Oregon defeated No. 4 Texas Tech 23-0 in the Orange Bowl Thursday afternoon at Hard Rock Stadium.
Dan Lanning recapped the 13th win of the season for the Ducks (13-1), who advance to the semifinals of the College Football Playoff to face the winner of No. 1 Indiana and No. 9 Alabama in the Peach Bowl.
Quarterback Dante Moore and cornerback Brandon Finney Jr. were also at the postgame press conference.
Below is a transcript of Oregon’s postgame press conference.
DAN LANNING
Unbelievable game. A lot of fun. We’ve talked to our guys about being battle tested all year and having to win in different ways. That game went back and forth in a lot of ways, struggled at times to go score points, and our defense did an unbelievable job getting the ball back. And then our offense showed up when it mattered most at the end of the game. I think we out-physicaled our opponent at the end.
A lot of respect for Coach McGuire and the team that he’s had. This shouldn’t discredit them. I remember this feeling last year when you have a really good team, you play really good football all year, and then it comes to an end. And that’s the way it is for every team but one.
Certainly grateful for our fans and excited to see them show up in Atlanta.
Proud of our players, the resiliency they showed, their ability to stay calm and poised and collected under pressure. It’s not easy in big moments. But these guys have shown and proven time after time, these two guys up here, that team in that locker room have shown time and time again that they’re ready for big moments.
Q. Dan, one of the storylines coming into this game was about the Texas Tech defense and how dominant they had been. How much did you guys take that to heart, knowing that you had a very good defense and have that show up in this game?
DAN LANNING: Yeah, we thought they were. They are a good defense. Their performance today, I think it showed it. You walk into halftime, it’s 6-0, that’s a great indicator of them being a good defense. And they had some guys that played some really good ball.
We just felt like in this moment it was going to be about chipping away and eventually it was going to break. It kind of broke open with us creating some extra opportunities there with takeaways, opportunities on special teams. I thought our special teams played really, really well.
But we had a lot of respect for Texas Tech’s defense. They don’t play the way they’ve played all year and not be good. And they are. They’re good. We thought it would be about explosive plays. There weren’t a ton of explosive plays in this game really for either side. But the physicality showed up for our guys down the stretch.
Q. Brandon, one of the things that they talked about when Tech was here was about the interception in the end zone and he didn’t see something — he wasn’t expecting what y’all were doing on defense essentially. Can you talk about what it was that y’all had seen in film and what you had planned for? Were you expecting some of the things that you saw that enabled you to make those picks?
BRANDON FINNEY JR: Well, I feel like our defense is the best at preparing in the nation, so what Coach Tosh Lupoi and what Coach Lanning do just throughout the week, just preparing us as players, getting ready for the game plan, just helps us as players to just be ready and execute. That’s our job.
Q. Coach, how did you negate their passing offense? They didn’t seem to have any rhythm today. Brandon, you can help with that, I guess.
DAN LANNING: Definitely it starts with players like Brandon. I think Brandon would tell you the same thing. It’s about 11 guys executing, and that’s how you get an opportunity to create plays like that.
I think when we pull up this film and we watch it, we’re going to see 11 guys playing the same call. We knew their tempo would be an issue. So ultimately we wanted to be able to get the call in fast and let our guys line up. I thought we did a really good job of that.
I thought Coach Lupoi did a great job of calling the game, and our defensive coaches preparing them. I felt like it was probably faster in practice than it was in the game, which is ultimately what we wanted.
And then we knew their strengths. They’ve been really good at completing shots down the field. They’ve had a really good screen game. Those are things that we really prepared for and worked really hard for, and guys like Brandon showed up.
Q. Just what you can say about going for it on 4th down, trusting your offense? And, Dante, having a coach that leaves you out there on the field and believes that you can get after it on 4th down?
DAN LANNING: Well, it worked sometimes and didn’t work sometimes. So I assume all the times it didn’t work I’m stupid and all the times it worked I’m smart. That’s kind of how it works. I feel like — we talked about it at halftime. We made some adjustments. They were playing really good 4th down defense, and we decided, hey, let’s take the points in the second half.
But I think that’s our mindset. We make those decisions early in the week, and I certainly trust our offense. They ran a really tough defensive call for what we called down there in the red area. That’s one that you wish you had back, say we could have took the points there. But points are never guaranteed. We missed a field goal, too.
But I felt good about — we had an early look on punt and felt like we were going to have a look at the punt fake. That was an opportunity to go be aggressive.
And just felt like ultimately, if you limit the opportunities for their offense to be on the field, you were going to increase the opportunities for us to go score and them not to, and that showed up today.
Q. Coach, David Bailey had a lot of plays today. What’s the biggest challenge in defending a player like that?
DAN LANNING: They’ve got good players, man. They’ve got really good players. They’ve got a great front. Ultimately they rushed the passer really, really well. I’m excited to evaluate the film and say how can we shore that up.
I think there’s going to be some small things that we can attack and make better. There’s some plays we were really efficient at today, and then there were some plays that weren’t. When you have a player like David Bailey, when you have players that you’re going to see in the College Football Playoff, you’ve got to have a plan for them. At times our plan was really good, and then there was some times that we could certainly improve that.
Q. I’m going to follow up on the question about the interception. They ran a hitch with a corner route over the top. The hitch is supposed to hold you, but you drifted into the end zone and another defender came and took the hitch. Was that a wrinkle you guys put in to try and take that away because that’s something you knew they did, or how did that come about? He threw it like he just knew the corner —
DAN LANNING: You want us to tell us all about your defense? Don’t give them too many secrets, Brandon.
It’s a strategic play. He did it exactly like we asked him to do. We tell him to play low to high down in the red area. He did exactly that. He played low until the player was able to show up and take away the low and then he creeped to high, and he made an outstanding play. I was just as impressed with the fact took a knee after he caught it.
How bad did you want to run that back?
BRANDON FINNEY JR: Very bad. (Laughter.)
Q. Dante, you obviously led the team in here and come out with the win. Obviously the goal is to come back here in a couple of weeks. I don’t want to ask you to look too far ahead, but how did being in this place — did you allow yourself to think about what could await for you here if you guys keep taking care of business the rest of the way?
DANTE MOORE: Yeah, overall, like Coach Lanning always says, you never want to look too far ahead. You want to be where your feet is at, being in the present moment. We have to have safe travels back to Eugene, make sure we get recovered.
Yeah, being in Miami was great. Great weather, of course. I’m just proud of the fans that traveled out here from Eugene. But yeah, of course that’s everybody’s team’s end goal, but you can never look too far ahead; we’ve got to worry about the next day.
Q. For Coach Lanning, now that this game is behind you, what do you think of not having a first-round bye this season?
DAN LANNING: I guess it works, right? I’ve been a proponent for games to be happening much quicker for a long time. I think that’s best for college football. Again, I felt like this game — the Orange Bowl, first off, was unbelievable. I should have really given kudos to the Orange Bowl because it’s been a great experience, but it’s not the same bowl experience anymore when you talk about playoffs.
Our guys didn’t leave the hotel. They had a mindset that we can celebrate when this thing is all over with and they were really focused, but the hospitality here was unbelievable.
But we’re trying to serve two different purposes here, and this is a playoff. A playoff in my opinion should have been played in Lubbock, Texas. I’ve said that before. That’s not because we wanted to go play in Lubbock; I certainly didn’t. I’m glad we played here in Miami, and it was good prep for us, but last year very similar situation for us. I feel like that game should have been played in Eugene.
There’s a lot of people that do playoffs. I feel like the playoffs have looked a certain way for a long time, and we’re trying to serve two purposes here.
The amount of time in between games, obviously, is tough for teams. We experienced it last year.
Q. Dan, what do the next 12 to 24 hours look like for you? How long do you celebrate this win? How are you going to watch the game this afternoon, and what’s the plan for you?
DAN LANNING: Well, it’s going to start with about a five-hour flight, five-and-a-half-hour flight, but we’ll be watching film on the way back, start trying to evaluate the opponents that we could potentially play. Hopefully we get some wi-fi up there in the air and we can flip on a game and check it out.
But it always starts with us. That’s where we’re going to go back and look at this game and say, okay, what did we do really well. Let’s go to the doctor, let’s figure out what kind of medicine we’ve got to take for the next game because I think that’s always the greatest indicator of what you have to improve, when you start to analyze what you have in front of you.
Then we’ll have kind of a bonus day here tomorrow and then we’ll hop right into a normal week prep, Sunday prep. I don’t even know what day today is. Today is Saturday in my mind. But we’ll get a bonus day, and then it’ll be Sunday the next day.
Q. There’s been a few times this year where the explosiveness wasn’t there on offense, like Penn State, like Iowa, where you had to play under control, crisp, clean, get rid of the ball. Can you talk about how you played and how the offense played, responding to the fact that they had a devastating pass rush that you had to make sure you got rid of the ball quickly against?
DANTE MOORE: Yeah, we seen on film that Texas Tech defense was really good. At the end of the day, getting a win, what we have to is run the ball, throw the ball, defensive stops. Just getting the win is the biggest thing, especially in moments like this.
Of course, everybody loves the deep throw. Everybody likes the long runs. But like Coach Lanning said, just got to keep chipping away. Next-play mentality. But overall got to give credit to Texas Tech, and I’m excited for the future.
