The fallout from Oregon’s Peach Bowl collapse put Dan Lanning directly in the crosshairs.  The Ducks looked unprepared, struggled on both sides of the ball, and even Micah Parsons called it “a terrible look” given the talent on the roster. That sparked doubts about whether Dan Lanning can take Oregon to the next level. But analyst Josh Pate pushed back, reminding everyone that Kirby Smart faced the same heat early at Georgia.

“There are a fair number of people out there who are taking this opportunity to dunk all over Dan Lanning and say he hasn’t won the big one,” Pate said on the January 11 episode of his show. “He’s not going to win the big one; he can’t win the big one. Those people don’t want you to remember what they used to say about Kirby. It’s been a little while now. It’s been over half a decade. See, Kirby didn’t win overnight at Georgia. He started to win regular-season games. He kept on running into Alabama and losing and losing and losing. And then finally, several years in, they lost to Alabama.

Then they got a shot in the rematch, and they beat him, and they won a national championship, and all of a sudden, the Saban hump that Kirby couldn’t get over, it just turned out he hadn’t gotten over it yet. The national title, the big one Kirby couldn’t win, turned out he hadn’t won it yet. Because then he did. And then he did it again. Then it was a non-issue. And what did they do? Did that little feral group of internet people disappear? No. They just moved on to the next piece of low-hanging fruit that they could swing at because they’re not very tall. So, it’s got to be low for them. It just happens to be Dan Lanning right now.”

Kirby Smart and Dan Lanning really aren’t that different, and that’s not a coincidence. Smart was a major mentor in Lanning’s coaching journey. Their story actually starts in Alabama, where Lanning was a graduate assistant, and Smart was running the defense under Nick Saban. When Smart took the Georgia head coaching job, he brought Lanning along a few years later.

Smart’s debut season at Georgia ended 8–5, a year he openly called a failure and “not the standard.” In year two, Georgia made the national title game but lost a heartbreaker to Alabama in overtime. Progress? Yes. Relief? Not at all.

The pressure only got intense, especially with constant comparisons to Mark Richt and the belief that Smart might be “Richt 2.0.” Smart admitted the pressure was too much. College football had become “win it all or nothing.” Soon, everything flipped. Georgia finally broke through in 2021 and followed it up with a perfect 15–0 season and another title in 2022. Just like that, the doubts turned into talk of a dynasty. Now, Lanning is living that same chapter.

His résumé is strong, boasting a 48–8 record through four seasons, including two College Football Playoff appearances. However, the Ducks have yet to reach a national championship game. Sound familiar? The similarities grow when you look at how those seasons ended. Oregon has suffered back-to-back ugly losses, losing at the finish line, as seen in the quarterfinal defeat to Ohio State in 2024 and this year’s brutal 56–22 Peach Bowl loss to Indiana.

However, Pate’s comparison overlooks one major factor that intensifies the pressure on Lanning: the substantial financial investment in the program.

The war chest isn’t helping

When Green Bay Packers star Micah Parsons went after Dan Lanning and Oregon, he didn’t hold back and harped on about one thing: money.

“This is a terrible look for Oregon! I can’t lie, a loss like this with a team that NIL rostered TEAM?!” Parsons tweeted.

And to be fair, Oregon’s resources are pretty vast. The Ducks are heavily backed by Nike founder and Oregon alum Phil Knight, and since NIL became legal in 2021, the same year Lanning was hired, spending around the program has reportedly been massive. Estimates for the 2024 roster have ranged anywhere from $23 million to as high as $40 million.

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Lanning has never shied away from that reality either. He’s had public back-and-forths about Oregon’s resources, including with Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy and even his mentor Kirby Smart. On top of aggressive transfer moves, Lanning also landed one of the nation’s top recruiting classes for 2025.

At the same time, Lanning also must remember that Smart’s naysayers went quiet because he won the big one. If that doesn’t happen for the Ducks soon, the noise is only going to get louder.