On the night of Dec. 7, 2024, Dan Lanning was riding high.
His Oregon Ducks had just won the Big Ten Championship, conquering the prestigious conference in their first year as league members after a 45-37 win over the Penn State Nittany Lions in Indianapolis that Saturday night.
The high continued into Sunday when Oregon was named the No. 1 overall seed in the College Football Playoff, earning what was thought to be a coveted first-round bye and a matchup against either the Ohio State Buckeyes or Tennessee Volunteers in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. The euphoric feeling of dominance and success was intoxicating, and fans felt it throughout Eugene. It stuck through the holidays and built up as we readied for the new year.
Then the clock struck midnight, the calendar flipped from 2024 to 2025, and the high dissipated.
Oregon's 41-21 blowout loss to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl ended the Ducks ' historic season and left many fans with a sour taste after an incredibly successful season. To fans, it no longer seemed to matter that the Ducks went undefeated in the regular season for just the second time in program history or that they sent yet another quarterback to New York City as a Heisman Trophy finalist. The feelings of dominance and bravado that were so prevalent in Eugene less than a month before were but a distant memory. All that was left was frustration and, if we're being honest, disgust at how the season ended.
It's unfair to the players that their hard work and endless success will largely be forgotten because of how things played out on Jan. 1 in a blowout loss to the eventual national champions. It's unfortunate for Lanning that many now discount his ability to win the big games.
None of this means that his team can't use that loss as a positive going forward, though.
Oregon's 2025 season began on Thursday with the start of the spring football season . The Ducks now move forward into a new year with a new roster. Does that mean they're putting the past out of sight and forgetting what happened? Not exactly. Instead, they're choosing to learn from it and be motivated by it.
"I think life is all about experiences," Lanning said on Thursday after practice. "Every day we walk out here and we learn, we grow. You've gotta learn from wins, and you've gotta learn from losses. We certainly learned from that one. But this is a new season. That has no impact on our next season. All of the wins we had last year? They have absolutely no impact on this next season, either. So it's really about focusing on what's next and continuing to improve."
The idea of continued improvement is what is driving the Ducks this spring. Lanning will tell you early and often that each day's goal is to get 1% better and stack success on top of itself. Ultimately, it won't guarantee you the coveted glory at the end of the year, but it puts you in a position to compete again, at the very least.
That's what Lanning is aiming for again with this new squad in 2025. After an offseason that saw the likes of Dillon Gabriel, Jordan James, Tez Johnson, Jeffrey Bassa, and Jordan Burch — among many others — take off for the NFL, it will be on new faces in new places to shoulder the load and uphold the standard in Eugene.
They won't go forward as if the loss to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl never happened, but instead, they'll remember the feeling that it left and use that as motivation not to let it happen again. At this point, that's all you can do. The past isn't changing, but that doesn't mean you can't use it to help change the future.
This article originally appeared on Ducks Wire: Oregon Ducks ready for fresh start after learning from Rose Bowl loss
