There is always a certain amount of game-week theater to the first press conferences of a season. Coaches respect the opponent, everybody had a good camp and everybody is excited to finally hit somebody wearing a different uniform, while nobody wants to reveal too much about what eight months of offseason work is actually going to look like when the ball is kicked off.
Every once in a while, though, both coaching staffs keep circling back to the same things. That was the interesting part of listening to Dan Lanning on Monday before going through what Boise State head coach Spencer Danielson, offensive coordinator Nate Potter and defensive coordinator Erik Chinander had to say about Oregon.
They were talking from opposite sides of the matchup, but the same subjects kept showing up. The line of scrimmage, physicality, early-down efficiency, tackling, communication, young players getting their first real test and the adjustments that have to happen once all the offseason guesses give way to actual football were common themes on both sides.
Maybe most of all, neither side sounds particularly interested in pretending the last meeting did not happen. Oregon won that game 37-34 two years ago, but Lanning did not frame it Monday as some comfortable reminder of what Oregon eventually figured out.
“You look at the last time we played these guys, and really they beat us in a lot of areas of the field,” Lanning said. “We were able to come away with a W because of special teams and some of that play.” That is probably the most useful place to start Saturday because Oregon remembers how close that game was, and Boise State clearly does too.
Neither Side Forgot What Happened
