Craig Has The Scout - Oregon 2026
Coming Up
Who: Oregon Ducks
When: Saturday, October 24, 2026 – 2:00PM
Where: Home Sweet Home
How: BTN
Opponent Primer:
Head Coach: Dan Lanning.
Dan Lanning is a better-funded PJ Fleck. He’s taken the Nike money and leaned heavily into fleck’s motivational-industrial complex while stripping any trace of self-awareness. He talks like every Saturday he’s about to send young men into Normandy, not highly paid college kids playing a game for a shoe company with a university attached. Lanning has turned locker-room motivation into performance art, delivering every cliché with the conviction of a man unveiling a lost gospel. Lanning loves blowing out overmatched teams, drawing white lines for performance, and sniffing out every opportunity to remind you he’s a culture guy. At some point, you start wondering if the pregame routine is just a little too intense as Lanning paces the sidelines with enough nervous energy to power the stadium.
Lanning is operating at a level of intensity that should concern a physician, maniacally focused like somebody told him he’s got 45 seconds to diffuse the bomb. He’s sweating through a quarter-zip in 48-degree weather with pupils the size of saucers, rolling out waves of blue-chippers. Maybe that's just modern coaching. Maybe that's elite competitiveness. Whatever the explanation, he's got the persona of a guy who hasn't slept since signing day. If a pharmaceutical company ever needs a spokesperson for a product that causes excessive confidence, nonstop pacing, and an uncontrollable urge to scream about culture, they should get his agent on the phone.
The remarkable thing is that all of this intensity has produced results that are, by Oregon standards, completely familiar. Lanning arrived selling himself as the defensive answer to all of Oregon's problems, as though Mario Cristobal hadn’t already started a complete overhaul. Lanning talked of importing Georgia's recruiting strategy, Georgia's defensive philosophy, and according the media, Georgia's driver education program. Oregon still annihilates inferior teams. Oregon still stockpiles elite recruits. Oregon still finds itself explaining why the biggest game of the season didn't go according to plan. The program has changed aesthetically without fundamentally changing existentially.
Eugene used to be known for bicycles, weed, and a high tempo offense that couldn’t win the big one. It’s now filled with street racing, and an offense run on check-downs, and a coach that brings the ultimate downer after the high. Lanning has tried to change everything, except the annual tradition of ending the season wondering what might have been.
Offensive Style: Power Spread utilizing Tempo and multiple personnel groupings.
Drew Mehringer is a former Rice quarterback whose playing career ended early with an injury, giving him a head start on the coaching profession. He stayed at Rice as a student assistant under Tom Herman, then followed Herman to Iowa State and Ohio State like a loyal golden retriever that somehow learned how to break down Cover 3. He spent four consecutive years as a graduate assistant, which means he learned every possible coaching task short of actually being allowed to call plays. Then he left Ohio State for James Madison, where he became a co-offensive coordinator at just 26 years old, before rejoining Herman at Houston. Two years later, Chris Ash hired him at Rutgers, making Mehringer the youngest Power Five play-caller in the country. The idea was simple. If Herman's offense worked everywhere else, maybe it would work in Piscataway. It did not.
After Rutgers, Herman brought him to Texas as receivers coach and passing game coordinator. That ended with a December 2019 firing. Mehringer resurfaced at FAU with Willie Taggart, spent a year coaching quarterbacks at New Mexico for Danny Gonzales, and landed at Oregon in 2022 as Dan Lanning's tight ends coach. Since then he has survived the departures of Kenny Dillingham and Will Stein, both of whom left for bigger jobs. Eventually, enough people get promoted that the last guy standing gets handed the keys. Mehringer was given the explicit assignment to maintain what Stein had built. He inherited one of the nation's most talented rosters, a quarterback who turned down a first-round draft selection, and the easiest B1G schedule the Ducks have seen since joining.
Mehringer openly described his job as tweaking rather than rebuilding the Oregon offense. The Ducks still operate from a spread foundation built around 11 personnel, quick passes, wide-zone and duo runs, and tight ends who function as hybrid weapons. The goal is balance. As Mehringer likes to put it, nobody wants to keep call plays the entire stadium knows are coming. Players have described him as a scientist and even compared him to Albert Einstein, which what happens when you ask your quarterback what concepts he like, what he doesn’t like, and then adjusts the offense accordingly.
The early returns have been disappointing and the knives are out. Oregon needed a late rally to escape Boise State, ran for only 90 yards in a loss to Oklahoma State while going 0-for-3 on fourth down. Their get right game was supposed to be hanging 84 points on Portland State, an opponent that had as much business on the field as a middle school field trip. The scheme itself largely resembles what Oregon has been running for years. The issue is Mehringer’s inability to consistently deliver the big play. That's the difference between inheriting the offense and owning it.
Defensive Style: Four man front paired with five DBs and heavy pre-snap disguise
Chris Hampton is a Memphis native and former two-year starting safety at South Carolina who spent about a decade grinding through the coaching ladder. He worked as a graduate assistant at Arkansas State and Georgia Tech, coached safeties at Central Arkansas, then spent four years coaching defensive backs at McNeese State under Matt Viator. Hampton followed Viator to ULM in 2015 before leaving for Tulane without coaching a game, a career move that would make Manny Diaz nod in approval.
At Tulane, Hampton built one of the nation's most disruptive secondaries under Willie Fritz. The Green Wave led the country in pass breakups in 2018 and somehow set an NCAA record with 20 breakups in a single game against ECU. After a one-year stop at Duke, Hampton returned to Tulane as defensive coordinator in 2021 and inherited a defense that was an absolute mess. One year later, that same unit improved 70 spots nationally as Tulane won 12 games and beat USC in the Cotton Bowl. It was one of the better single-season defensive turnarounds of the modern era.
When Matt Powledge left Oregon, Dan Lanning targeted Hampton. Despite already calling plays at Tulane, Hampton was convinced to take what Oregon sold as a "growth mindset" opportunity. Hampton spent the last three seasons alongside Tosh Lupoi as a highly regarded recruiter and secondary coach before Lupoi departed for Cal.
Oregon's defense is built on four guys rushing the passer and seven guys making you hesitate long enough for those four to arrive. The foundation is a four-man rush paired with a defensive shell designed to eliminate RPOs and deep shots. The STAR nickel is the most important player in the scheme, which makes perfect sense for a coordinator who has spent virtually his entire career coaching defensive backs.
Simulated pressures are a staple. Oregon crowds the line of scrimmage before the snap, disguises who's actually rushing, and turns every passing down into a guessing game for the quarterback. The personnel should make it work. Bear Alexander and A'Mauri Washington are among the better run defenders in the country, while Matayo Uiagalelei is an elite edge rusher. The results, however, have been rougher than the budget would suggest. Hampton's entire career has been built around stopping the pass but struggled until he remembered to stop the run too.
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