Oregon and Ohio State Have Similarities This Season, and Dan Lanning Knows That

Oregon and Ohio State met for what was expected to be one of the best games of the college football slate this past Saturday. 

Unfortunately for Ohio State, it has dealt with multiple injuries this season, with the biggest to quarterback Julian Sayin. Ever since Sayin has gone down, Ohio State is a completely different team, something Oregon also understands after losing Dante Moore for the entire year.

This is just the harsh reality of college football nowadays, but a guy like head coach Ryan Day has heard the noise about possibly being fired. As crazy as that might sound, many Ohio State fans don't want him leading the program any longer.

There's also something to be said about how bad Oregon was to start the year and the thought that many wanted Dan Lanning gone. 

The two have been criticized because of their play throughout the year, but they also understand that this is part of the business. Speaking to reporters about what Day has had to deal with over the past couple of weeks, Lanning had some very interesting comments to make, and it's literally impossible to disagree with anything that he said.

“Coach Day is an outstanding coach. I said this to our team earlier. I showed some of the press conferences from this week of them, and I said, ‘Guys, that was me. That was me two weeks ago,’” Lanning said, per Bri Amaranthus.

“You guys felt that in our building, and it’s hard really to overcome because what you do in those moments is you just try harder and harder and harder to fix things, and you can’t fix everything,” Lanning added. “I know it’s hard when you change what you think you’re going to be throughout the year and somebody gets injured. It takes a while to kind of figure that out. And in college football, you just don’t have time to do that.”

The point I want to stick with here is that Lanning said you don't have time to do that in college football. 

Unfortunately for many teams around the college football landscape, it's impossible to expect your star quarterback and expected first-round pick to go down and just replace him overnight. 

Oregon has gotten great play out of Dylan Raiola, and Ohio State unfortunately can't say the same thing, but there are still a lot of similarities between the two this year, and unfortunately, many of them aren't great.

Ohio State is likely out of the CFP picture, while Oregon looks to have a sudden chance. It'll be interesting to see, but it goes to show how injuries can impact a season.