Lanning hits pause, not stop, on Jurrion Dickey’s career at Oregon

For now, Jurrion Dickey is off the team, but he's not out of chances. 

News broke yesterday that Dickey, a former five-star prospect from the 2023 recruiting class, was suspended from the Ducks after numerous altercations with coaches and teammates.

Naturally, there is a lot of speculation about whether it was one incident with Dickey or an accumulation of things that eventually led Dan Lanning to decide that Diickey needed to re-evaluate his priorities if he wanted to remain in the program.

But Lanning isn't ready to give up on Dickey. He knows what the young man has been through and wants to see him succeed. 

This is the Dan Lanning way. He believes in the culture he has created and that eventually the players that buy into it will have a level of success. He doesn't want to give up on Dickey because he knows what the young man is capable of and believes these are issues that he can get past if he just focuses on the things that are important.

There will always be people from the outside that criticize the idea of coaches giving players second chances, but that perception has never been a concern with Lanning. Last year, Lanning decided to handle the spitting issue with Traeshon Holden internally and the wideout didn't play the following week against Purdue. 

When Dickey arrived on campus, it was understood that he was immensely talented, but might take a while to breakthrough because he had some maturing to do. Clearly, he's still working through those issues. A couple of weeks ago, he described the Oregon offense as a "big brotherhood"

Unfortunately, all brothers fight sometimes, and it became such a distraction for Oregon, that Lanning had to send Dickey home. How long he's off the team depends as much on the player as it does the coach. Oregon is loaded on offense this year and doesn't need Dickey on the field to be successful. 

Oregon fans would love to see Dickey on the field as part of that loaded offense. They have seen small sample sizes of his talent and have been waiting for the breakthrough. Now Dickey has to want it for himself.