Dan Lanning knows there’s a spotlight on Oregon’s offensive line right now. And not in a good way.

A season ago, the Ducks had one of the best o-line units in the entire country and kept Bo Nix off his back throughout the season. Dillon Gabriel has not been so lucky with Oregon already surpassing its sack total from the 2023 season in the first 2 games this year.

At his Monday night press conference, Lanning admitted there are positives from every o-line group Oregon has used, but the coaching staff is still working to determine the best group across the board. The head coach also acknowledged that playing the same group all year long might not be what’s best for this season, especially while the Ducks try to get healthy.

“It’s interesting, you know, there were positives and negatives to really each group,” Lanning said. “I think a lot of people will look at the line and say ‘Well this is the best.’ We actually watch every single clip with our staff… Across the board, we’ll continue to work to figure out what’s the best group knowing that it might not just be one group that plays along the offensive line for us… Until people get healthy, it may continue to look different. We’re going to have to keep challenging ourselves to figure out what that looks like.”

Matthew Bedford has missed the first 2 games of the season with an injury sustained in training camp but figures into the starting picture at guard when healthy. The hope is Bedford returns sooner rather than later while Lanning reiterated how intensely his staff is monitoring the line.

“I promise you nobody looks at it closer than we do. We spend a lot of time and effort looking at it, and we see every rep practice which everyone else doesn’t see,” Lanning described. “We’ll keep evaluating it. We’ve got guys who we can play winning football with and that’s the big key, making sure we’re able to utilize those guys.”

As for rotating the center position at times this season, Lanning actually said the practice is not a novel one and is something the Ducks did last year. All it boils down to is finding the best combination of skills to play center and the right combination of players to make the line as effective as possible.

“We rotated it last year, right? If our best chance to win was to have one person there for the entire game, we’d absolutely do that. But maybe the guy who snaps the best, if he’s also getting blown off the ball, you need to take a look at another option, right?” he explained. “… We had some miscues with snaps on Saturday which is something that has to be addressed but it all plays a part into it.

“If we had a clear 5 ‘These are the guys, no-brainer’ and that’s exactly how it should play and they were clearly better than everyone else, then that’s the way we would roll every single time. I don’t know there’s that consistency yet.”

Lanning also pointed to the skill set of Gabriel as something that could necessitate a change of schematics, especially if defenses continue to exploit a weakness.

“You don’t just keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. We have to continue to adapt to his skill set and to our players here… We have to challenge ourselves to do some things different schematically,” Lanning admitted.

While Oregon has survived the first two weeks, the Ducks get a matchup against Oregon State this weekend before 9 straight Big Ten games to finish the year. If Oregon is going to make good on the preseason expectations, time is running out for the offensive line to fix their issues.