What Oregon football's Dan Lanning said ahead of Ducks' 2025 fall camp

After a long summer reflecting on the successes and failures of last season, the Oregon football team is entering fall camp with renewed hope and focus on the future.

Ducks' coach Dan Lanning spoke for around 20 minutes with local media during the Ducks' media day July 28 at Autzen Stadium ahead of fall camp on July 30.

Here's what Lanning had to say about the state of Oregon's program in his fourth year as coach.

Dan Lanning elaborates on 'double down' theme revealed at Big Ten media days

After unveiling his theme for the Ducks this season at Big Ten media days in Las Vegas, Lanning elaborated further on what exactly that means.

Lanning said in Las Vegas he was satisfied with how Oregon's process has led to constant growth throughout his first three seasons in Eugene, but that they can continue working through that process by "doubling down."

He recognized the excitement ahead of fall camp that comes with a new group in seeing what they embrace and what they want to attack.

"Everyone's Day 1 is always elite. There might be some mistakes but they're mistakes made at full speed, I know that's going to happen with us," Lanning said. "More than anything I'm just ready to attack it and figure out what we're really great at and what we have to improve at. That's the fun part for me is what problems do we get to solve."

Among those expected problems is the Ducks' ongoing quarterback competition to replace 2024 starter Dillon Gabriel, now with the Cleveland Browns. Third-year QBs Dante Moore and Austin Novosad are the top competitors to replace Gabriel. For the first time since his first year at Oregon, Lanning and his staff do not have a starting quarterback named heading into fall camp.

How are Dan Lanning and the Ducks looking to build off Big Ten championship in 2024?

Lanning often keeps football simple when he describes what leads to winning: being able to run the ball, stopping the opponent from running the ball, creating explosive plays, avoiding turnovers.

When asked how he and Oregon plan on building off a historic 2024 campaign that saw the Ducks win a Big Ten title in their first year in the conference, Lanning kept that answer simple, too.

"We have high standards," Lanning said. "We came here to win championships, obviously we got an opportunity to taste that last year with the Big Ten championship. We want to win them all, not just some of them."

Lanning recognized that's not "very common" and hard to do.

"The biggest goal is to be uncommon, to do things other people can't do and we have to figure out who we are to get there," Lanning said.

The Ducks had an undefeated run to the College Football Playoff, with marquee wins over Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State in the Big ten title game before losing a rematch to the Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl.

With a new roster in 2025, Lanning says the goals haven't changed but the challenge is figuring out how to repeat that success from last season and improve upon it.

Dan Lanning speaks on injury to star receiver Evan Stewart

Though Lanning has kept the details of star receiver Evan Stewart's significant injury vague, he did say Stewart would be down for awhile and several other receivers will have to step up at least over the first half of the season.

"We'd be lying if we said there wasn't an opportunity for other guys to step up and create a role for themselves," Lanning said. "I'm excited to see how that all plays out. I have a lot of confidence in that room, I have a lot of confidence in coach (Ross) Douglas and coach (Will) Stein and what they do with our offense. But part of that is figuring it out through fall camp."

Stewart caught 48 passes for 613 yards and five touchdowns for the Ducks last season, but did not play in the Rose Bowl after a lower back injury hampered him during bowl prep.

He also did not participate in Oregon's spring game due to an undisclosed injury.

Names like Justius Lowe, Gary Bryant Jr., transfer Malik Benson and true freshman Dakorien Moore will be asked to fill in for Stewart's absence in the early season.

Alec Dietz covers University of Oregon football, volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball for The Register-Guard. You may reach him at [email protected] and you can follow him on Bluesky and X.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: What Oregon football's Dan Lanning said at Ducks' media day