It's red meat for Oregon fans, ridiculing or criticizing Oregonian beat James Crepea. But in this case the writer was just doing his job.
Dan Lanning met the media this afternoon for his regular Wednesday availability, the last before Saturday's game at Rutgers.
Erik Sokpil of 247Sports recorded the scene for his site's page on X.
Crepea began, "Whether it was miscommunication or just really good defense on Indiana's part with simulated pressures and causing confusion up front..."
Lanning cut him off. "You guys know we're playing Rutgers, right?"
"But it's something that will come up again. So for Rutgers..."
"You've watched Rutgers?"
"Not as heavy of a simulated pressure defense. But in future games starting with this weekend, where do you feel the corrections are this week to what happened last week?"
Lanning said, "We corrected them. We corrected them on Monday. Any other Indiana questions? They played really good, guys. They had a better plan than us. And we played that game last Saturday."
On Lanning's part, reporters have asked him a lot of questions about the loss last Saturday, and like all good coaches he hates losing. Duck fans have to love that he's a little testy.
On the other hand, Indiana sacked Dante Moore six times, and their really good plan of pressure and simulated pressure completely wrecked the Oregon offense. A squad that had been scoring 47 points a game was held to one touchdown.
It's fair to ask the highest paid state employee why it happened and what he and the staff are doing to address it. It's even fair to ask, simulated pressures have been around since you were a defensive coordinator at Georgia. In fact, you helped invent them. Why didn't you and the staff do a better job of correcting this issue on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of LAST week?
Moore wasn't prepared for the heat he got from the Indiana Front 7. The Ducks were out-coached, badly. Lanning shouldn't be mad with anyone but himself, Will Stein, A'lique Terry and Ra'Shaad Samples. Crepea may be a pest, but in this case he was a complete professional.
As he often does he asked a tough question. His long preambles might be annoying but accountability and being asked tough questions come with the lucrative job. If a coach wants to rip his shirt off at ESPN College GameDay and stand on a chair, he also has to be prepared to answer an occasional tough and even repetitive question after he loses.
Maybe Lanning doesn't want to give up that much strategy. At that point he's free to say, "I can't go into the details, but yes, that's something we're working on and have to get better at."
He doesn't have a reasonable expectation of a series of softball questions like, "talk about Brandon Finney and what he's meant to your defense." No disrespect to the reporter who asked that one, but the hard questions have to be asked too.
Like it or not, like him or not, it's to Crepea's credit that he's usually the one to ask them.