What Oregon is doing to fix offensive, defensive penalty issues following win over Texas Tech

It would have been easy for Josh Conerly Jr. to come up with an excuse for the flurry of false starts he committed in Oregon’s Week 2 win over Texas Tech.

Just minutes after the game ended, his head coach provided a pretty reasonable explanation.

“(Texas Tech) were using a cadence on defense that was similar to our cadence on offense, and it was causing some issues with their moves,” Ducks’ coach Dan Lanning said during his post-game press conference.

But when asked about the three false starts he committed against the Red Raiders, Conerly, the Ducks’ standout sophomore left tackle, refused to blame anybody but himself.

“That was all me and just my anxiety being too high,” Conerly said while speaking with reporters on Tuesday. “I really just had to take a deep breath and calm down.”

Conerly was far from the only Oregon player who struggled with unforced errors in Lubbock, though.

In total, the Ducks committed 14 penalties for 124 yards. Will Stein’s offense was responsible for eight of those penalties — four false starts, one holding call, one illegal substitution, one illegal formation, and a delay of game.

While speaking with reporters during fall camp, Stein, the Ducks’ first-year OC, mentioned that one of the team’s mantras is “DBO” — or, “don’t beat ourselves.”

Against the Texas Tech, Oregon shot itself in the foot during numerous pivotal drives.

“Monday’s our day to go to the doctor day,” Lanning said. “We were able to go to the doctor and acknowledge a lot of things; one being, especially, the penalties.”

Oregon’s coaching staff began Monday’s film session by showing each penalty that the Ducks committed against Texas Tech, and then detailing how the drive unfolded from that point.

Three of Oregon’s false starts on the day — two from Conerly and one from Jackson Powers-Johnson — occurred on drives that ended with the Ducks punting. An illegal formation penalty on 1st-and-10 at the Texas Tech 13 hindered an otherwise promising drive and resulted in Oregon having to settle for a field goal to take an 18-13 lead.

“Of course it’s a simple fix, you know what I’m saying?” Conerly said of his false starts. “But I did take ownership of it and apologize to all the guys; just being the left tackle and being a starter, I have to hold myself to a higher standard and I can’t have such costly penalties like that.”

Lanning said on Saturday that Oregon will make dealing with stems from opposing defenses a major point of emphasis during practice.

“It’s gonna be something we’re gonna see the rest of the year,” Lanning said. “We’ve got to become the best team in the world at dealing with stems.”

Oregon’s defensive issues, on the other hand, might be more of a straightforward issue to fix.

Tosh Lupoi’s group was dinged for 80 yards on six penalties — three pass interference calls, one personal foul, one unsportsmanlike conduct, and one illegal substitution.

Khyree Jackson’s pass interference in the first quarter occurred on 3rd-and-18 at the Texas Tech 17 — just one play after Bryce Boettcher put a massive hit on Red Raiders’ quarterback Tyler Shough to force a fumble. Three plays later, Tysheem Johnson was flagged for another pass interference penalty.

After the pair of errors, Texas Tech went on to score a touchdown and trim Oregon’s lead.

In the third quarter, Mase Funa committed a pass interference on first down that pushed the Red Raiders to midfield. They scored five plays later on Shough’s five-yard keeper to take a 20-18 lead.

Lanning said he and Oregon’s coaching staff will be working to create specific situations in practice to address the issues that occurred in coverage on Saturday.

“I think all three pass interferences that we had were a little bit different, right?” Lanning said. “You look at Mase’s; he was not necessarily in panic mode, but the receiver is working back to the ball and he’s got to turn and be in a position to be able to play the ball and not just run through the receiver.

“Khyree was — he was in panic mode, and the ball was thrown. But looking back at that one, that’s one where we have an opportunity to go play the ball. So again, it’s just calming down. And looking back at Tysheem’s, I watched it several times, I don’t know that I’d call that pass interference very often. But it was called, so now we’ve gotta go play. I thought (Johnson) played aggressive. … There was a little bit of hand fight back and forth. But what you would say is creating some out-of-phase drill work where we can figure out where the ball might be underthrown and you have to be able to play the ball and play through without making drastic contact with man.”

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