The No. 1 Oregon football team will look to cap a perfect regular season at home this week against rival Washington at Autzen Stadium Saturday night.
The game is set to kick off at 4:30 p.m.
Here are some highlights from Oregon coach Dan Lanning’s weekly press conference Monday night.
Oregon football’s Dan Lanning talks Washington QBs Will Rogers and Demond Williams Jr.
Washington has played two quarterbacks — fifth-year senior Will Rogers and true freshman Demond Williams Jr. — all season, but will keep who it plans to start against the Ducks secret until game time Saturday.
No matter who starts for the Huskies, the Ducks are going to prepare for both.
“This is a team that’s played multiple quarterbacks throughout the season so we’ve seen a little bit of both guys and they’ve had times where they’ve had both guys out on the field at the same time,” Lanning said. “I don’t know that it presents a huge challenge, either way we were going to prepare for both because they’ve utilized both throughout the year.”
Mississippi State transfer Rogers has started every game this season for the Huskies but has struggled in recent weeks. The senior has completed over 70% of his passes but with just 14 touchdowns and seven interceptions. The freshman Williams took over for Rogers in the second half of Washington’s recent 31-19 win over UCLA and impressed. He has 369 passing yards, 217 rushing yards and four total touchdowns.
“He’s a guy that can operate, he has great athleticism but he can make great throws as well,” Lanning said of Williams. “I don’t see a huge change in their system. They’re both guys that can operate the system. I think he just becomes a threat from a run game standpoint with what he can do with his legs. They do a good job of matching their scheme to those guys’ traits and skillset.”
Dan Lanning speaks on rivalry with Washington and what it means to him
Lanning, who has yet to beat the Huskies in his two seasons at the helm in Eugene and most recently lost to Washington in the Pac-12 Championship last season, downplayed what kind of motivation recent history would give the Ducks.
Lanning said that rivalries is what makes college football special, but also said that Saturday’s game was another opportunity to get better.
“Ultimately, it is another game, it’s the next game,” Lanning said. “You don’t get out there playing with emotion, it’s about execution over emotion. These games are going to have emotion, that’s the way these games are played, but that’s not what’s going to lead to success on the field.”
When asked whether he thinks his players would be more motivated due to Washington’s recent three-game win streak against the Ducks, Lanning once again said that “motivation is overrated.”
“It’s always about performance,” Lanning said. “It’s always about what we’re able to do on the field. Motivation is overrated. Our guys have to want to go out there and execute at a really high level. Since the beginning of the season we’ve talked about playing our best football at the end of November. We’re there. This is our opportunity to go play our best football against a good team.”
Lanning and Oregon’s players last season aren’t the only ones with potentially extra desire to beat this specific team. Oregon cornerback Jabbar Muhammad, a former Husky, will face his former team for the first time on Saturday as a rival.
“I’m sure it means a ton,” Lanning said of Muhammad. “In fact, I know it means a ton. He knows that it’s more about going out there and executing than anything else.”
Dan Lanning on UW coach Jedd Fisch: ‘They adapt to the personnel that they have’
Though the Ducks and Huskies have had tight battles in each of the last three meetings, UW’s team in 2024 is strikingly different from the team that suited up in purple in 2022 and 2023.
Washington returned just 40 players from its national title runner-up team a year ago, along with most of its coaching staff, which is led by former Arizona coach Jedd Fisch.
Lanning was complimentary of Fisch, who he had played against before while he was at Arizona, and the job he’s done in Seattle this season.
“What they’ve always done a good job of is adapting to the personnel that they have and taking advantage of it,” Lanning said. “You see things that cause stress on both sides of the ball. It’s obviously a different defense now that they’re running at Washington but they still cause stress. They make it tough for you to game plan because they have answers in their scheme and again they make an impact out there on the field.”
Alec Dietz covers University of Oregon football, volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball for The Register-Guard. You may reach him at adietz@registerguard.com and you can follow him on X @AlecDietz.
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Oregon football’s Dan Lanning talks rivalry matchup vs. Washington
