How Mariano Rivera, ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ and Martha and the Vandellas explain Dan Lanning’s Oregon Ducks
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Paolo Uggetti, ESPN
“DO PEOPLE THINK Oregon and think tough?”
An animated Dan Lanning stands in the front of the Oregon team room asking his entire team the rhetorical question. It’s the eighth week of the season and a 7-1 Ducks team is headed to Salt Lake City where it’ll face a Utah team that’s won 30 straight games at home and whose “national narrative,” as Lanning puts it, is one of being tough to beat.
“What’s the narrative on us?” Lanning continues. “Flashy.”
Oregon, with its Nike partnership, history of teams with offensive firepower and equally bold uniforms, has come to represent a certain kind of football, a certain kind of program, over the years. Whether you want to define it as flashy or otherwise, it’s no secret that effective marketing combined with success has turned the Ducks into a national brand. What that brand is exactly depends on who you ask.
“People don’t think you’re tough?” Lanning asks.
All you have to do is watch Lanning speak — sometimes yell — to realize he cuts against that very grain. And all you have to do is watch Oregon these past two seasons to realize that very same approach Lanning embodies has permeated throughout the program.
“He’s developed a culture of toughness,” offensive coordinator Will Stein told ESPN. “I mean his program’s built on toughness, mental and physical.”
It’s not that Lanning eschews flash, confidence or even, at times, arrogance, in place for the traditional idea of a buttoned-up college coach. In fact, the 37-year-old appears to embrace those outward displays of emotion and pride more than most. Just take a look at the speech he gave (and presumably allowed to be aired) during the Ducks’ commanding win over Colorado, where he said Oregon was a team “rooted in substance, not flash.” Since then, Oregon has arguably showcased both while backing it up with results.
Or how he gives the outside world glimpses, even if curated, of his coaching style and approach through cinematic recaps Oregon’s video department releases following every game this season.
Lanning stepped into the job in December 2021 and proceeded to give Oregon a new identity as it heads to the Big Ten next season by utilizing an approach that has resonated throughout the program.
“He’s a players’ coach,” wide receiver Tez Johnson said, referring to Lanning’s ethos to give players a voice, even in-game decision-making. “He’s the best coach in the country and anybody can come and argue with it, but he’s the best.”
Lanning isn’t without his young coaching mistakes, but two seasons in, he has Oregon playing like one of the best teams in the country, is a win over Washington away from a Pac-12 title and has a likely shot at the College Football Playoff.
“He’s got a relentless consistency,” quarterback Bo Nix said of Lanning. “I don’t think he has ever had a day where he’s been complacent.”
MARIANO RIVERA. “Top Gun: Maverick.” Martha and the Vandellas.
What do those three things have in common?
The answer is nothing. But somehow, all three have found their way into being a part of Oregon’s season thanks to Lanning.
Lanning, his players and fellow coaches say, is someone who lives and breathes football, while also constantly wanting to tether parts of the game to his real-life interests. A movie and music buff, it’s no surprise some of those pop cultural references make their way into team meetings and motivational material.
As their final regular-season cinematic recap showed last week, the theme was putting an emphasis on closing out games and seasons — something the Ducks did not do last season in Lanning’s first year.
It hasn’t been all sunshine and roses in Eugene for Lanning. His first game in Oregon colors was a 49-3 blowout at the hands of his former team. Later on that season, he found himself having to answer questions about his late-game management and decision-making multiple times, especially after a 3-point loss to Washington and a fourth-quarter letdown to their rival, Oregon State.
This year, there’s been a clear evolution despite some remaining growing pains. After a failed attempt at a fourth-and-3 near midfield with two minutes left against Washington, Oregon, which was up by 4 points at the time, eventually lost by 3, and Lanning took the blame.
“This game’s 100% on me,” Lanning said. “I don’t think you guys have to look anywhere else but me.”
Still, Lanning has done his best to use any failures to his team’s advantage and is likely going to do so again ahead of a rematch with the Huskies. In the lead-up to its rivalry game against the Beavers this season, the TVs around the team’s practice facility played last year’s fourth quarter against OSU — where Oregon allowed 21 points to cough up an 18-point lead — on a loop. In the eventual recap of the week on YouTube, shots showed images of billboards Oregon State had put up all season declaring it “Won in the Trenches” — images that were then printed out by Oregon and taped all over the team’s facility.
“They don’t have respect for you,” Lanning said. “We played three quarters last year. It’s time to play four quarters.”
Closing, then, was what Lanning wanted to harp on. So, of course, he brought up Rivera. He explained his prolific ability to deliver in high-stakes situations and secure wins late in games. That was his job; now it was Oregon’s job to ensure it wouldn’t repeat last year’s letdown to Oregon State and close out its season with a win.
But the comparison didn’t stop there. Lanning showed a video of Rivera walking out to “Enter Sandman” — the longtime Yankees closer’s patented walkout song — and said the Ducks would have their own closer’s song too: “Nowhere to Run” by Martha and the Vandellas.
“‘Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,'” Lanning said. “In the fourth quarter, when you hear this, you’ll know what time it is,”
Sure enough, with Oregon up 24-7 on OSU last Friday night heading into the fourth quarter and on its way to a 31-7 win, the Autzen Stadium speakers began to blare a now-familiar tune.
Nowhere to run to, baby (nowhere to run, nowhere to hide)
Nowhere to hide (ooh-ooh-ooh)
Got nowhere to run to, baby (nowhere to run, nowhere to hide)
Nowhere to hide (ooh-ooh-ooh)
Somehow, through pop-culture references and his own version of coach-speak, Lanning comes off less like the older guy trying to remain cool and more like the younger coach who believes being the most authentic version of himself will make him the best possible leader.
“He’s still got that young personality and still enjoys other things outside of football,” Nix said. “I think sometimes we see head coaches as strictly football, but he’s still a young coach in this profession and he still enjoys other things outside of football and X’s O’s. He’s knowledgeable about a bunch of things that us players are knowledgeable about, so he can kind of connect with us that way.”
Take the unofficial slogan of this Ducks team, for example, which has made its way onto T-shirts that Lanning has worn multiple times.
“FEBU”
There’s some debate among Oregon fans as to what the “F” exactly stands for, but the rest stands for “Everybody But Us.” You can connect the dots.
STEIN’S NEWBORN SON was not yet a full month old when the former co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at UTSA, got a call from Lanning.
“Do you want to be a Duck?”
Stein didn’t think twice. This was an opportunity he didn’t want to pass up.
Once Stein arrived in Eugene, it didn’t take long for him to see what kind of program Lanning was building. The word that came to mind, one that Lanning and Oregon players mention repeatedly when asked what has made this team succeed, is “connected.”
“I’ve never seen a more connected team,” Lanning said after the win over Oregon State. “I’ve never been around a team that is anxious to grow and learn even from wins. Talk about being a tough team and there are moments last year when I felt like these guys needed to bang at practice and we probably weren’t as excited to bang at practice. Now I put them in spiders one day and they ask why we aren’t in shoulder pads, and I think that speaks to their toughness.”
And whether it’s through his motivational speeches or how he’s established a curriculum of offseason “get real” sessions that push players to discuss topics and goals outside of football, everyone from Nix to Stein to wide receiver Troy Franklin credit Lanning for establishing said connection.
“Dan’s an innovator,” Stein said. “He’s got a lot of swag and a lot of confidence and it’s due to his preparation.”
Lanning’s self-assuredness has always been part of his coaching journey. His own backstory includes a 13-hour drive from Missouri, where he was a high school special teams/defensive backs/wide receivers coach, to Pittsburgh just to create an opportunity for himself. He had heard about a potential opening at Pitt and, though he hadn’t heard back despite sending countless emails to the staff, Lanning decided to make sure he had every chance to secure what was eventually a defensive quality control position by going the extra mile. Or the extra 710 miles.
Since then, Lanning has held every position from graduate assistant to recruiting coordinator to defensive backs coach, linebackers coach and defensive coordinator at Power 5 programs like Alabama, Georgia, Memphis and Arizona State. It’s all prepared him for the job he’s doing now, which Stein aptly describes as the CEO of the program.
“The way that he oversees the entire program and that he has his hands on everything when it comes to facilities, when it comes to NIL, when it comes to offense, defense, special teams, I mean, he’s involved in every little detail,” Stein said. “But he also empowers all of us coaches to be innovative and to step outside the box and to keep growing and he encourages that, so he’s been really easy to work for.”
It goes beyond bulletin board material or catchy slogans. Lanning’s approach runs throughout his staff, which leans heavily on younger individuals, too. Both of Lanning’s top assistants are in their 30s and no coach on staff is older than 50.
Perhaps it’s his age, or his experience having had many jobs in the sport, but Lanning appears to be keenly aware of where, when and how he needs help as a head coach. Coming from Georgia, where his focus was defense, there were questions about how the Ducks’ offense would take shape under his tenure. In the Pac-12, with its talented quarterbacks and high-scoring offenses, a strong offensive system and a prolific quarterback are prerequisites to succeed. So, Lanning first brought then-Florida State offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham and his former quarterback at Auburn Nix on board. Under Lanning, the two reignited Nix’s career, then Stein continued the work once Dillingham left to be the head coach at Arizona State. The Oregon offense hasn’t missed a beat; it’s the top-ranked unit in the nation.
For as much as Oregon’s brand has been about offense in the past, it has not been a one-dimensional team. In fact, according to ESPN’s SP+ rankings, only Georgia, Michigan and Florida State have a combined offense-defense ranking that’s better than the Ducks.
Yet despite the dominant wins as of late and the impressive numbers across the board, Washington still looms. Lanning is 0-2 against the Huskies so far, with both results separated by only a field goal. One more loss and it’ll start to feel like Kalen DeBoer’s team is the first-time head coach’s kryptonite. And, as Stein and Nix will emphasize, Lanning hates losing.
“He’s one of the more competitive human beings I’ve ever been around in my entire life,” Stein said. “I’ve golfed with Dan multiple times. He might not be the best, but he wants to win. You play cornhole with him, shoot basketball, whatever it is. He’s a guy that wants to win.”
Whether or not Oregon overcomes its Washington hump and advances into the College Football Playoff, Lanning is determined to continue building — using everything in his power to combine toughness with plenty of flash and confidence, as Oregon transitions to the Big Ten not wanting to give up any of its success and momentum in the process.
But for now, the future can wait. Said Lanning last Friday, “We still have some unfinished business.”
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Greg Wyshynski
Boston Bruins forward Morgan Geekie can finish a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute.
“I mean, right now I’d be pretty rusty,” he said. “I’m not insane, like those kids that you see on TV, but I’m pretty good at them.”
When Geekie was around 10 years old, a cousin taught him how to speed solve the puzzle. While some have never found a way to line up that mosaic of colors despite years of trying, Geekie said it’s doable once one cracks the code. One summer at their lake cottage, his cousin wrote down its patterns. Geekie spent two weeks memorizing them and working out solutions while fiddling with the cube.
“It’s basically just all algorithms. You just do the same moves all the time once you get the pieces in the right spot. Once you do that, I mean, it’s pretty cut and dry. Everything goes in order,” he said. “I haven’t really forgot. It’s just one of those things that once you know it, you know it.”
Perhaps Geekie just knows how to score goals now, too.
That’s the simplest rationalization for the 27-year-old’s unexpected transformation into one of the NHL’s premier goal scorers. Through 34 games, Geekie is second in the NHL with 24 goals, trailing only the dominant Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche (28). Going back to the start of last season, Geekie is tied for 11th in goals scored (57).
Geekie scored 33 goals in 2024-25, which is 16 more than his previous career high set two years ago with the Bruins. He shot 22%, which obliterated his previous career best of 13.1% set in 2023-24.
There’s always an offensive player whose unexpected scoring surge in one season makes him the consensus choice for regression the following season. Entering this season, that player was Geekie.
He was the first player listed on ESPN’s rundown of regression candidates, with the expectation that he would top out at 26 goals. Sports Illustrated did the same thing, writing that his “offensive numbers are set to dip next season.” Daily Faceoff wrote that Geekie’s shooting percentage was “a strong indication that his performance isn’t sustainable, at least at this level” for the Bruins.
Geekie gets it. He called the predictions “a fair statement” given that he was scoring less than 10 goals in a season with the Seattle Kraken just a few seasons ago.
“I see it all. It’s an easy cherry to pick to be like, ‘Obviously he’s shooting 22%, it’s going to go down.’ It didn’t bother me at all,” Geekie said.
Rather than regress, Geekie has progressed this season. Through 34 games, he is shooting 28.2%.
“I mean, it’s got to go down at some point,” he said, with a laugh. “Like I said, I don’t really pay attention to that and I’m not somebody that has 10 shots a game, so I just try to make the most of my opportunities when I get the puck.”
GEEKIE IS AMUSED by the focus on his shooting percentage, because he feels there are easy explanations for it. The first is that he doesn’t believe he shoots the puck all that much. Over the past two seasons, David Pastrnak averaged 3.79 shots per game in 110 games. Geekie averaged 2.11 in that same span. Only Sidney Crosby (2.45 shots per game) has a lower average than Geekie (2.48) among the top 10 goal-scorers this season.
“I feel like I’m a big quality over quantity person,” he said.
His first season in Boston, coach Jim Montgomery stressed the need for Geekie to get chances from deep inside the attacking zone.
“I think a high-danger chance is better than just shooting it from the wall. That’s kind of the mentality that I’ve had always. I’m not trying to waste shots that aren’t good for anybody,” Geekie said. “Unless I’m trying to create something off it, I’m honestly not trying to put it on net. Maybe that’s why I end up where I end up.”
Pastrnak recently said the Bruins were reminding Geekie to shoot the puck more often. In fairness, Geekie is shooting more this season. Pastrnak said Geekie is “definitely trying to be a little more selfish to take them” when he fights into high-danger areas of the ice. But Geekie acknowledged there are sometimes philosophical differences between his striving for quality over his team’s desire for quantity.
“I think it’s a push and pull,” he said. “It’s like, I don’t think I need to be shooting this, but other people think that it still gives us an opportunity to create a chance. So I just try to keep that in mind when I have the puck”
This is Geekie’s seventh season in the NHL. He was selected by the Carolina Hurricanes with the 67th pick in the 2017 draft as a goal-scoring forward with the WHL Tri-City Americans. His first two seasons as a pro were mostly spent in the AHL with the Charlotte Checkers, before playing 36 games with the Hurricanes in 2020-21.
That summer, the Seattle Kraken held their expansion draft as the NHL’s newest team. Geekie was left off Carolina’s protected list. At the time, it wasn’t expected that former Hurricanes GM Ron Francis would select him for the Kraken, with options like defenseman Jake Bean and forward Nino Niederreiter available from Carolina. But Geekie was the choice, a player whom Francis had drafted while with the Canes.
Geekie had 22 points in 73 games in his first season in Seattle, skating 12:36 per game with just seven goals. His second campaign saw him jump to 28 points in 69 games, but with even less ice time (10:27).
He was a restricted free agent after the 2022-23 season. Francis attempted to re-sign him before the deadline for submitting qualifying offers, but Geekie and his representatives declined it. The two sides couldn’t find common ground. Rather than go to arbitration, where the Kraken weren’t keen on Geekie potentially setting the terms of his next deal, they chose not to qualify him, making him an unrestricted free agent.
“With Morgan, we did make what I felt was a pretty fair offer,” Francis said at the time, via Sound of Hockey. “It didn’t work out, and he has the right once we don’t qualify him to go elsewhere.”
And so he went to Boston, signing a two-year deal worth $4 million in total.
While he wasn’t seeing much time with the Kraken, Geekie felt he was improving as a player. He said a “integral part” of that development was thanks to Jonathan Sigalet, a skills coach who improved all facets of his game.
“When I first started working with him, he was adamant that he wasn’t going to try and make me play like I’m on the first line,” Geekie recalled. “He said, ‘We both know that trying to do things that you do on the first line on the fourth line is going to get you in the press box.'”
He said working with Siglet slowed the game down for him. He started to see the game differently. He began to see “little tendencies” that all of the NHL’s good players share. Geekie also appreciated having a “third party” assessment for his play, apart from that of his coaches and his own.
Geekie was immediately given an opportunity to thrive in Boston in 2023-24, playing 15:21 in his first game with the Bruins. He ended up averaging 15:25 per game, with 17 goals and 22 assists in 76 games. He earned time with Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha on the Bruins’ top line.
His follow-up season didn’t start well. Geekie scored one goal in his first 17 games and was a healthy scratch early in the season. Some trade whispers started about him as a pending restricted free agent. He had eight goals by the end of the 2024 calendar year.
How did he end up with 33 of them? With one of the greatest goal-scoring heaters this side of Alex Ovechkin: Geekie scored 14 goals in his last 20 games of the season. His chemistry with Pastrnak was undeniable — the Bruins scoring ace assisted on 21 of Geekie’s 33 goals last season.
Geekie expressed a desire to stay with the Bruins. The feeling was mutual, as GM Don Sweeney in June handed him a six-year, $33 million contract for a team-friendly $5.5 million annual cap hit.
WHEN GEEKIE SIGNED his new contract, he decided he wanted to join in the tradition of NHL players celebrating a windfall with their teammates. It’s usually a dinner or something of that nature.
But Geekie wanted to do something different.
“Everybody’s eating at the same restaurants in every city. And I’m sure they’d remember it for a little while, but I think it would be just one of those things like, ‘Hey, thanks for dinner.’ So I wanted to do something a little more nostalgic,” he said.
Geekie is a huge baseball fan who played competitively until his late teens. He was in the process of designing a personalized baseball glove for himself through a company called 44 Pro Custom Gloves when his wife, Emma, suggested that he design ones for all of his teammates as a gift.
Geekie started the process in July, sketching out what he wanted on the gloves for 30 teammates — including players that were on the bubble for the Bruins’ roster this season. He had the biographical information for them, from their birth cities and countries to their schools to where they played junior hockey.
“Honestly, for probably three weeks, I just sat in front of my TV watching baseball and I would just draft gloves up. I thought it was so fun,” Geekie said. “My wife got sick of me for a little while.”
He would FaceTime his brother Noah, a coach at Okotoks Dawgs Academy in Alberta, to bounce the designs off him and get input. He was cognizant of having the designs as unique as possible, despite some of the school colors being similar for his teammates.
Before a practice in October, Geekie delivered the gloves to the locker room stalls of his teammates. It went over well.
“Baseball is not that big in Sweden, but it’s obviously cool to have,” center Elias Lindholm told the Bruins website, having received a glove with a Swedish flag on it. “Hopefully, when my kids get a little bit older, we can play a little game or something. For now, it is just going to be at home, resting.”
0:17
Morgan Geekie nets goal for Bruins
Morgan Geekie nets goal for Bruins
While the gloves were a chance to celebrate with his teammates, there weren’t many celebrations anticipated for Boston this season. The Bruins were trading players away at last season’s trade deadline, sending mainstays like captain Brad Marchand (Florida), center Charlie Coyle (Colorado) and defenseman Brandon Carlo (Toronto) elsewhere. They had an incoming first-year coach in Marco Sturm. At best, it was supposed to be a transition year for the Bruins.
But through 34 games, Boston is second in the Atlantic Division with a 20-14-0 record, within a point of division-leading Detroit in the crowded Eastern Conference.
Many around the NHL were surprised. Geekie wasn’t.
“We underperformed. Last season was like the perfect storm of bad events with our kind of discombobulated training camp and then having a coaching change and just kind of everything that could have went wrong went wrong,” Geekie said. “The core group we have is just too good to be written off. But I understand why people had doubts about us.”
But defying doubts is what Morgan Geekie’s all about, whether it’s his team’s predicted finish in the standings or his own predicted regression as a scorer.
“He has everything to score 50 in this league,” Pastrnak said. “He has a heck of a shot. He has the goal-scoring instincts. He is going to get it one day.”
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