Weeks before Opening Day this season, Major League Baseball sent a memo to all 30 clubs highlighting a rise in catcher’s interference. The instances of catchers being struck by the bats of opposing hitters were rising rapidly. Catcher’s interference was called 94 times in 2023, nearly 20 more times than in 2022.

What was causing the dramatic uptick? Catchers kept moving closer to the plate. In the era of pitch framing, teams deduced that the closer a catcher is to receiving a pitch, the better chance he has to “steal” a strike.

It worked well enough that catchers kept shifting closer to the batter’s box. The memo this spring essentially warned teams to cut it out and move catchers farther behind the plate to minimize risk.

But anyone who saw St. Louis Cardinals catcher Willson Contreras sustain a fractured left arm Tuesday night knows that risk remains ever-present.

Catcher’s interference calls continue to skyrocket at a historic pace. The average catcher’s interference total from 2010 to 2018 was 31. This year, it’s been called 33 times — less than two months in.

MLB’s concerns were already growing. There are more than double the interferences in 2024 compared to the 2022 season at the same point (15). The league is on pace for a record 148 catchers interferences this season. The push to frame the lower strike has inadvertently put the safety of catchers in jeopardy.

“The risk is high,” Cardinals manager Oli Marmol said earlier in the week. “We just experienced it.”

Contreras was struck flush by the swing of New York Mets’ designated hitter J.D. Martinez. The catcher underwent surgery on Wednesday and will miss a minimum of six to eight weeks. Contreras was one of baseball’s worst framers last year on borderline pitches below the zone. The Cardinals, a defense-oriented club, worked extensively with Contreras to improve in that regard.

Over his first year in St. Louis, the Cardinals overhauled Contreras’ approach, including his set-up behind the plate (Contreras ditched the traditional crouch behind the plate in favor of the one-knee down method). They also did indeed move Contreras closer to the plate.

The Cardinals are hardly the only team in baseball to deploy this method, but they were the first to pay the price for it this season.

“The more catchers are evaluated on framing, the closer they’re getting to the hitter in order to get to that low pitch,” Marmol said. “You’re seeing more catchers do that based on being able to get the low pitch, but you’re also seeing more catcher’s interference and backswings getting guys based on them being closer. Sometimes the catcher unknowingly could get closer and closer from hitter to hitter without noticing.”

That seems to have been the case for Contreras, who was caught by the swing of Martinez, who has a naturally deep swing and sets up as close to the back of the batter’s box as possible. Replays showed the head of Martinez’s bat hitting Contreras’ left arm square. It also showed just how far Contreras had reached in his attempt to frame the pitch.

Willson Contreras will leave this game after taking a J.D. Martinez swing to his left arm. pic.twitter.com/mJfiqOBf4t

— Bally Sports Midwest (@BallySportsMW) May 8, 2024

“There’s always a risk being a catcher,” Contreras said after the injury. “Could have been something different. It could’ve been off my knee, it could be a concussion. That risk is always going to be there. I’m not blaming any part of my game because this happened tonight.”

Perhaps that’s the problem. No position player in baseball takes a more constant beating than the catcher. And as teams across the board covet the low-strike call, catchers take the brunt of the consequences.

“We used to always talk about catcher interference being long strings on your glove or ticking your glove,” Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch, who caught seven seasons in the big leagues said. “Then it turned into the glove in its entirety. (Contreras) is one of the first I’ve seen on a limb.”

“That is risky,” Hinch added. “The closer we get to the plate the more strikes we can grab at the bottom rail. Catchers are getting evaluated. They’re getting paid on how well they can control the bottom rail. That’s led to more and more catcher interferences throughout the game. … We do want our guys close enough to be impactful with the low strike but not walking into harm’s way. It’s a tough balance when the incentive to do it is real and the risk is extreme.”

Some teams stress the low strike more than others. Philadelphia Phillies manager Rob Thomson was a catcher in the Tigers organization for four seasons. He was taught that as the bat comes through the zone, the glove should follow.

“You’re going to catch more foul tips,” Thomson said. “You’re closer to the plate, you’re closer to the strike zone. It’s a better presentation for the umpire.”

Still, Thomson prefers his catchers keep some distance from the plate.

‘”We keep our eye on guys that do that and remind the catcher, ‘You got to back up a little bit,’” he said. 

The happy medium for some teams seems to be self-monitoring. The Minnesota Twins, for example, monitor their catcher every pitch. It’s one of the primary in-game responsibilities of first-base and catching coach Hank Conger.

“A good, tight setup generally speaking is better than worse, something you prefer. But it’s obviously to avoid not just catcher interference, but injuries, too,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I think there’s a few reasons why (being closer) is helpful, but there are other times that we’re yelling at them to back the hell up to also be helpful, you know?”

The Atlanta Braves have two coaches assigned to catching duties. Sal Fasano is the catching coach. He’s assisted by Eddie Pérez, who spent nine of his 11 big-league seasons catching for the Braves. Pérez certainly understands the strategy behind being close to the plate but thinks the responsibility to inform the catcher he’s too close falls on those watching the game from the dugout.

“It’s always a good idea to be closer to the hitter,” Pérez said. “It’s thought that if you’re closer to the hitter, you’re going to get more calls.”

“Sal always reminds them to go back, you don’t want to get hurt,” Pérez added. “From (the dugout) you see better. When you’re catching you don’t know how far you are from the hitter, and every hitter has a different setup, so you have to adjust. … As a catcher, they’ve got to tell you from the side how close you are to the hitter.”

But the accidental blows behind the plate can sometimes be a two-way street. Catchers are frequently clipped by hitters’ swings regardless of where they’re positioned. With the average bat speed registering roughly 75 mph, some argue the responsibility lies on the batter to ensure not just their physical body remains within the parameters of the batter’s box, but their swing as well.

“The thing I don’t necessarily agree with is it can be the way people are swinging, too,” Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “It can be the way catchers are setting up, yes. But it also can be kind of the way some people are swinging. And it’s dangerous.”

With the league on notice and MLB clearly aware of the risks, what can be done to cut down catcher’s interference — and the inherent injury risk? Cardinals’ starting pitcher Miles Mikolas suggested a physical line behind the plate that catchers cannot cross, a box of their own in a way. Could the automated ball-strike system (which theoretically eliminates the value of framing) be the answer? Possibly, but it’s an imperfect system in the minor leagues and is far from being a big-league product.

“I don’t know what they could possibly do other than reward the hitter with more bases, put him on second base,” Hinch said. “There are things you could probably do to make it super impactful to the game, but I don’t know if anything can be more impactful than losing one of your best players for six to eight weeks, 10 weeks, whatever it’s gonna be.”

The Cardinals now know how severe that impact can be. The bigger question looms: Does baseball?

— The Athletic‘s Matt Gelb, Cody Stavenhagen, Aaron Gleeman, Patrick Mooney, David O’Brien and Eno Sarris contributed to this story.

(Photo of Contreras being helped off the field: Jeff Roberson / Associated Press)

It doesn’t take long in conversation with Tom Cartledge, the Nottingham Forest chairman, to realise that the dispute threatening the future of the City Ground has accelerated the possibilities of a stadium move.

“The club continue to be frustrated,” Cartledge tells The Athletic in relation to Forest’s standoff with Nottingham City Council, which owns the land where the team play. “Neither the leader of the council, the CEO nor any of the commissioners appointed by central government have reached out to the club.

“Nobody is knocking on the door. Nobody is trying to start the relationship again and say, ‘How do we find a way?’. And in the meantime, other councils and landowners are providing opportunities that we have to consider.”

It is three months since Cartledge spoke to The Athletic about his “masterplan” to upgrade the City Ground into a 40,000-capacity stadium with two new stands bankrolled by the club’s Greek owner, Evangelos Marinakis.

Cartledge showed off the designs. He talked about wanting to create something special and long-lasting at the riverside setting that has been the club’s home for 125 years.

Yet he also accompanied it with a stark warning that the whole project might have to be reconsidered if Forest could not agree terms over a new lease with the council — and that, in a nutshell, is exactly what has happened. Nothing is moving, attitudes have hardened and, as it stands, the entire negotiation is going nowhere fast.

What does all this mean for a stadium regarded as one of the gems of English football?

Well, for starters, the impasse has led to a rethink from Marinakis when it comes to the “corner boxes” of executive suites that were meant to go either side of the Trent End before the end of the season. Work started in February to prepare the ground, including bringing down one of the floodlights and replacing it in a new position.

That, however, has been put on hold. The development would cost up to £7million ($8.7m) and Forest, according to Cartledge, want more clarity from the council “before we spend significant money on capital projects”.

On a wider level, however, Forest’s ongoing dispute with their landlord has left the club contemplating what could, in theory, be one of the most seismic and important decisions in their history.

When Cartledge uses the word “opportunities” he is talking about possible sites where Forest can explore a Plan B — putting up a 50,000-capacity stadium in another part of the city. One area that has been discussed is Toton, six miles south west of the city centre.

The Athletic has been to see the relevant site, earmarked originally for the now-abandoned HS2 railway project. It is land owned by Nottinghamshire County Council. In the coming weeks and months, we can expect more and more discussion about the pros and cons of staying at the City Ground or building something new elsewhere.

“That (Toton) is one of several potential spots,” says Cartledge. “It’s not as easy as to say, ‘Here’s a piece of land, go and build a stadium’. There are highways, transport and connectivity issues. But it’s fair to say we are progressing due diligence on different sites.”

Through the estate, past the Toton Fish Bar, a hairdresser’s called Flicks and some typical Nottingham suburbia, you will eventually come to a mini-roundabout on Epsom Road where you can hear the hum of industry from the railway sidings on the other side of the trees.

The River Erewash is nearby, running along the county border between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. There is a Tesco supermarket on the other side of Stapleford Lane, a tram stop and a garden centre, Bardills, that has its own history with the city’s major football club.

In 1898, when Forest moved to the City Ground, the nurseryman and landscape gardener William Bardill was on their committee. Bardill was put in charge of the playing surface and is credited in the club’s official history book for creating a pitch “that was soon recognised as one of the best, even the finest, in the country”.

Today, Bardills looks out on the stretch of dual-carriageway that is named after Brian Clough, Forest’s two-time European Cup-winning manager, and leads all the way from Nottingham to Derby.

And, yes, it feels strange — very strange, indeed — to look down at Toton Sidings from the grassy embankment off Banks Road and try to imagine what it would be like with a gleaming new stadium dominating the skyline and a different set of match-day routines.

“All mist rolling in from the Erewash…”

OK, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. For now, it is only an idea. That idea is in its embryonic stages and, before anything, Forest are acutely aware they need to undertake a long period of consultation with fans, understanding the sensitivities and why many supporters might find it unsettling.

These are always emotive subjects. Some fans might be receptive to a move, others will hate the idea.

Toton sidings, one possible stadium site being considered by Forest (Rui Vieira/PA Images via Getty Images)

Cartledge, in particular, is aware of local feeling, given that he grew up in Nottinghamshire and has been going to matches at the City Ground since the early 1980s. It is all he has ever known and if you want to know why the former manager, Steve Cooper, used to say it “oozed football soul”, there is a 4,000-word love letter here courtesy of one of its biggest admirers.

Critically, though, the issues with the council come at a time when Forest — deducted four points this season for breaking the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules — feel the only realistic way to challenge the elite teams is to generate more revenue.

Uppermost in Forest’s mind is finding a way to do this on non-matchdays — something that has been missing from their ground for many years — and accommodating the thousands of fans who cannot get tickets. Forest reckon they could have sold 50,000 for some games since their return to the top division.

Against that backdrop, Forest’s decision-makers are open about the fact they have to consider every option and, to quote Cartledge, there is “a discussion to be had about, ‘Yes, the City Ground is our home, but just imagine if we did something amazing.’”

On top of that, the club have been re-evaluating everything since negotiations fell through recently over a multi-million-pound deal to buy land off the eastbound A52 for a new training ground.

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Unreported until now, the deal is off because of what Cartledge describes as “a financial disparity between what we believe the land is worth and what the land-owners are asking”. And that is disappointing when Forest’s hierarchy had drawn up some exciting plans and fully expected it to go through in February. The club readily admit their training ground is not big enough.

So what next? Forest, it transpires, have already started looking elsewhere. The relevant people are wondering whether they should think more ambitiously and take their lead from Manchester City, the reigning Premier League champions.

“Because of the noise being created out of the disruption of whether we stay or go, we are getting quite a lot of interesting things put our way,” Cartledge explains.

“The terms on that (training ground) project are prohibiting us, but other things have come forward that have given us time to think. Where do we want to be? Where are those campuses where we can try to put all of this together in the way Manchester City have done?”

City are the only club in the Premier League who have a stadium and training ground on the same complex — and this is one of the ideas Forest think is worth exploring at a time when Marinakis has set aside a huge pot of money for development.

“Mr Marinakis is incredibly ambitious,” says Cartledge. “If we did something with those two things together — the training ground and the stadium — you do that only once. When it comes to these big decisions, he takes an enormous amount of pride and responsibility in getting it right.”

Another area of interest to Forest recently can be located on the other side of Meadow Lane, Notts County’s stadium, on a large expanse of industrial land where there is an incinerator plant and a waste-collection unit.

It is on the other side of the Nottingham Canal from the Hooters bar, a short walk from the city’s railway station.

One option for Forest is to leave the City Ground (foreground) for an area of industrial land (circled), next door to Notts County (David Goddard/Getty Images)

That idea has not progressed, however, because the land is permitted only for industrial use. The city council has indicated there is no scope for that to change. That, in turn, explains why Forest have been looking at the suburbs. At least four sites have been discussed, Toton in particular.

Those talks will continue even if Forest, 17th in the Premier League table, drop into the relegation places — but there have to be some awkward questions, too, about how the dispute with the council was ever allowed to reach this stage.

In 2019, Forest announced, via a blaze of publicity, that they had been granted a new 250-year lease. Nicholas Randall, then the chairman, said he was “delighted” to secure the future of the club’s home ground. Yet, for reasons unexplained, Randall did not follow that up by telling the club’s supporters the agreement was never, in fact, completed.

In reality, Forest have continued operating by the terms of their old lease, which has 33 years to run and, before starting a major redevelopment at huge expense, the club need the securities and insurance of a much longer agreement.

“The rent, if you add it up for the next 33 years, comes to about £9.5million,” says Cartledge, who replaced Randall as chairman in August. “The proposed rent the council wants us to pay over 250 years is more than £250m.

“So if we are talking openly about the Football Association’s desire for financial stability and the future of clubs to be secure, it is simply wrong for us to sign up and put this club in a position where we have to pay £250million in rent to stay here.”

Supporters of a certain generation might recall this is not the first time that relations between the club and landlord have been fractious because of their lease agreement.

In 1991, the council proposed Forest’s annual rent went up from £750, as agreed in 1963, to £150,000. In the end, the two sides compromised at £22,000. Clough threatened to quit if the council got its way with a proposal for Forest and Notts to share a ‘super stadium’ on the old Wilford power station.

This time, however, the issue is complicated by the Labour-run council issuing a Section 114 notice in November to declare itself, in effect, bankrupt, meaning the government has sent in commissioners to take control.

The council says it has “a statutory duty to ensure best value for taxpayers”. Forest, however, say it is exorbitant that the current rent is £250,000 and the council allegedly wants almost four times that amount.

Cartledge says he has not had a response to “a very strong letter” he has written to the council to argue that the proposed terms are unreasonable.

Evangelos Marinakis has grand plans for Forest (Naomi Baker/Getty Images)

Four local MPs — three Labour and one Conservative — have tried to apply pressure on Forest’s behalf but they have found out, Cartledge says, that “the council’s predicament is very challenging and it’s hard for politicians to become involved now the commissioners are running it”.

David Mellen, the council’s recently departed leader, has said Forest cannot expect “mates’ rates”. However, the club’s frustrations stem, in part, from the absence of any real dialogue to find a compromise.

“We had dialogues with some of the junior officers, but nobody senior came forward,” says Cartledge. “That’s important context for the fans to understand. We are not just sitting here in a black hole waiting and hoping. We are trying to be proactive.”

The Athletic contacted Nottingham City Council for comment.

One of the reasons Cartledge was appointed by Forest is that he is the chief executive of Handley House Group, the parent company for four international businesses specialising in design and architecture. One of those is the Nottinghamshire-based Benoy, which has designed the plans for a new-look City Ground and would also be prominently involved in any stadium move.

In the meantime, word has got back to Forest’s hierarchy that the Jockey Club, owners of Nottingham racecourse, had a lease dispute of its own with the council and it lasted seven years. So how long do the club wait when Marinakis is impatient, as well as ambitious, and many fans feel frustrated that not a brick has gone down since the initial stadium development was announced five years ago?

All that can really be said for certain is that safe-standing areas will be installed at the City Ground over the summer and the roof will be solar-panelled as part of a new agreement with E.ON to be the club’s sustainability partner.

“Across all of our projects – new ground, existing ground, training ground; whatever we pursue – the owner is absolutely adamant the club should start to look to a future whereby we have no carbon footprint,” says Cartledge.

“Regardless of whether we are staying or going, the owner feels it is important for the goodness and wellbeing of the world. He won’t let the council delays stop us from doing what is right.

“We will work together on solar panelling and other energy-saving initiatives. And, critically, if the progress on other sites and discussions about where we want to go mean it is right to move, E.ON will form part of the team, looking at how a new stadium could be built off-grid and carbon-neutral.”

(Top photo: Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)

EUGENE, Ore. — Somewhere in those 6.5 hours of perpetual pain, Dan Lanning’s phone lit up. But he didn’t see it. He was wincing. He was breathing deeply. Alec Turner, the artist tasked with completing the massive tattoo on the left side of Lanning’s chest, saw the name on the screen, and his eyes bulged.

The incoming call? Phil Knight.

So Turner removed the needle piercing the ribs of Oregon’s gregarious football coach and deadpanned: “Hey, man, you should probably answer this.”

When Phil Knight calls, you stop what you’re doing. Lanning sat on the table, swiped his phone screen and took a respite to talk to the founder of Nike and Oregon’s most famed alumnus and donor. Lanning told Knight where he was and what he was cramming into one session.

The permanent portrait of Lanning’s wife, Sauphia, is sprinkled with various homages to their journey through life —and football — together.

Before Turner dipped the needle in ink on Jan. 4, 2023, he offered Lanning numbing cream. Lanning declined but now admits that, as the hours dragged on, he regretted that decision. He thought to himself: I’m a football coach, right? I should be able to handle this.

“I just didn’t have a big window of time,” Lanning says. “Pain is weakness leaving the body. Let’s go. Knock it out.”

He had just finished his first year as head football coach at Oregon, where the Ducks won 10 games, were in the College Football Playoff conversation most of the season and had a top-10 recruiting ranking for the 2023 class. He was already hooked on life in Eugene.

These were the first steps in Lanning’s project to not only build Oregon into a winner his way, but to sustain it for years to come. His second season with the Ducks in 2023 was another step forward, showcased by a record-setting offense that wowed even a fan base accustomed to them.

But nearly a year to the date he had his map charted in ink, the ultimate test of allegiance arose.

On Jan. 10, 2024, Alabama’s Nick Saban announced his retirement, rocking the college football universe. Lists of candidates to replace the seven-time national championship-winning head coach were formulated by the sport’s insiders almost immediately. Most put Lanning at the epicenter of the speculation cycle.

The Lanning-to-Alabama conjecture lasted not even 24 hours, despite false reports that he was in Tuscaloosa interviewing to replace the legend for whom he’d once worked. It ended with a close-up of Lanning, puffing smoke from a cigar, announcing that he was — as he says again and again — “10 toes down” in Eugene.

Ask Lanning if he turned down Alabama, and he flashes a grin. “When you’re in a situation where your answer is already going to be no, people don’t ask you those questions.”

At Oregon, Lanning enjoys a fully guaranteed deal that pays more than $7 million a year through the 2029 season and requires a $20 million buyout to leave early, in addition to the perks of running a program with the support of Nike’s deep pockets. But conventional wisdom posits that most coaches linked to the highest profile and most illustrious job in the sport would at least open up a lane for communication.

Lanning, turns out, isn’t all that conventional.

The digital clock inside Lanning’s office runs vertically on the wall to the right of his vast desk. The Ducks-green seconds tick away alongside the minutes and hours to tell Lanning how much time he has. On this visit, he would turn 38 the next day, but Lanning would rather talk about anything else.

“Twenty-one is the last time I celebrated a birthday,” he says.

So what about how, at 19, on a waiter’s salary at Outback Steakhouse, he purchased a house on Elizabeth Street in Liberty, Mo., while balancing life as a Division II linebacker at William Jewell College? He had four teammates move in who helped pay the mortgage. It’s been nearly 20 years since they huddled together for Nintendo 64 tournaments. If a roommate was short one month, Lanning would cover for them. But he wouldn’t forget about it.

Leaning forward in a chair, Lanning says, “Realizing early you can create your own success with hard work is something that stuck out with me.”

Trent Figg, head coach at Division III Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Mich., is one of Lanning’s former teammates and roommates. Figg says Lanning hasn’t changed since he’s ascended college football’s coaching ladder. Figg’s scouting report of his friend Dan Lanning (not head football coach Dan Lanning) is succinct:

• He’s a social butterfly and the life of the party at all times.
• He loves action movies.
• He likes to smoke a cigar.
• He likes to cook steak on his own stovetop.
• He still wears white Nike dress socks to work every day.

“That,” Lanning says, “is mostly true.”

Lanning’s former roommates and former employers offer up a common theme: He carries with him a unique devotion to people who believe in him.

“He’s the most loyal person I’ve ever been around,” says Figg. “Like, if you talk about why he stayed in Eugene instead of going to Alabama, he sees the value in how people have invested in him, and he fully believes in himself. He’s a very confident person. And he totally believes in what he has at Oregon.”

It’s been over a decade since Lanning left his post as recruiting coordinator at Sam Houston State in Huntsville, Texas. Longtime head coach K.C. Keeler remembers when Lanning approached him and said he got a call from Saban to join Alabama’s staff as a graduate assistant for the 2015 season. Lanning’s body language was telling, Keeler says; he wasn’t grinning. He felt like he was going to let Keeler down.

Keeler told Lanning he had to go, because that’s where he’d meet someone who would eventually notice him as a future head coach.

“It doesn’t take you long to figure out Dan Lanning’s style,” Keeler says. “I remember telling my wife back then, ‘I’m going to have this guy for a year.’ This guy was always on a different path.”

That path is forever detailed on his ribs, shown through Sauphia’s portrait.

The Oregon symbol on her neck features a yellow ribbon in the center, commemorating her battle with an aggressive type of bone cancer in 2016. Their three sons, Caden, Kniles and Titan, are there. There’s the state of Texas outline for Sam Houston State, the Sun Devils pitchfork from Lanning’s time as a graduate assistant at Arizona State, the Pitt emblem for his year with the Panthers and Alabama’s signature “A.” There’s a boomerang honoring Outback Steakhouse, where Dan and Sauphia met as co-workers. The “816” is the area code of Lanning’s hometown in Missouri, and 33-18 is the score of Georgia’s win over Alabama in the national championship after the 2021 season when he was the Bulldogs defensive coordinator.

“It definitely hurt,” Lanning says.

The tribute to his life’s work isn’t meant as an ode to himself. It’s to his wife, his kids, his faith, his journey, the night shifts at Outback when he was courting Sauphia by paying for her 18th birthday dinner. It’s also a reminder to Lanning that the work is just starting.

“The seat I sit in now, I remember what it was like when I wasn’t sitting in it,” Lanning says. “Loyalty to me is giving the best you got every day, 10 toes down on the job that you’re responsible for and owning that and realizing success will come from that. I get to live my dream. I get to do exactly what I signed up for and what I’d hoped.”

Existing in one’s dream doesn’t mean it’s without its constant demands. The home office where he does video calls lately doesn’t have an impressive array of trophies and photos in the background; the office is his closet. It’s where he can tap in when needed to talk to players, parents or recruits. And when that’s done, it’s done, and he’s out on the couch informing his three boys the night’s movie is “Field of Dreams” or “Back to the Future.”

“In a lot of ways in our jobs now, you’re a doctor on-call,” he says. “Something can happen at any moment and it requires your attention. What I think I’m getting better at is making sure I take advantage of those moments when it does arise. I’ve been poor at that. I’ve gone through basketball seasons where I got to see my son play once. That’s not something I’m proud of. I want to get better at it.”

He may sound like how a football coach is supposed to sound when he’s dissecting depth charts in media scrums, but Lanning is not a caricature of a football coach. It’s helped, he says, that the stops that brought him to Oregon have meant working for Saban, Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Florida State’s Mike Norvell and others.

“Great head coaches have to be themselves,” Lanning says. “If they try and be something else, or if you do what you think everybody else is doing, then you catch yourself in a trap.”

One avoids such traps by staying a step ahead. And Lanning, his friends and colleagues say, always has been. Since he was a 26-year-old on-campus recruiting coordinator at Arizona State, he possessed a preternatural ability to recruit.

And apparently he doesn’t miss when a window into his world swings open. Before Oregon’s 42-6 trouncing of Colorado last September, Lanning allowed ABC cameras into the Ducks’ locker room to capture a speech that went viral. Speaking of Deion Sanders’ Buffaloes becoming the topic du jour of the sports world, Lanning told his team, “They’re fighting for clicks, we’re fighting for wins.”

It was a flashpoint in the 24-hour news cycle. The payoff was a glimpse for recruits to see that what you see with Lanning is what you get.

For much of the past decade, Oregon fans felt slighted, because they invested in two head coaches who vowed that Eugene was the place for them, that they’d guide the Ducks to title contention, only to leave for other jobs. Willie Taggart spent one year as head coach in 2017 before leaving for Florida State. His replacement, Mario Cristobal, coached four years at Oregon and ultimately left to coach his alma mater, Miami.

So imagine the level of paranoia when college football pundits listed Lanning as their guy to replace Saban. Lanning quashed it with the minute-long video. “When good things happen, speculation occurs — and there’s been a lot of good things that happened to us at Oregon,” Lanning says.

Before it saw the light of day on social media, on the night of Jan. 10, Lanning was on the phone with the mother of a recruit who was afraid that their decision to choose Oregon would be fleeting. She’d read the headlines connecting him with the Alabama job.

“I said, ‘If I made an announcement for you, would that make it clear exactly what we’re going to do?’” Lanning recalls. “The mom said that, ‘Yeah, that makes it really clear.’ And then I told her, ‘Hopefully at some point they’ll stop asking the question.’”

New Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel says even though he’s been on campus for only four months, Lanning’s confidence in his program is infectious.

“How cool is that? That’s who I committed to,” Gabriel says. “That coach is the guy everyone wants for the right reasons. He’s great at connecting with people, he listens, he understands, he can translate that into action from a guy who’s been in it for a long time. Everything he’s said has come to fruition. He just keeps it real, and I think you can appreciate that. He just does the easy things at an elite level. He’s mastered it. That’s exactly why people want him.”

The Ducks are 22-5 in two years under Lanning and have cultivated one of the sport’s most explosive offenses with offensive coordinator Willie Stein calling the plays. With Heisman Trophy finalist Bo Nix at the helm last year, the Ducks ranked No. 2 in the country in total offense. Oregon’s defense finished top 25 in overall team defense, too. But the undoing of the team’s College Football Playoff aspirations were two agonizingly close losses to rival Washington.

The Ducks now prepare for a new era as they enter the Big Ten alongside the Huskies, USC and UCLA. Asked why he thinks this year’s Ducks have a shot at contending in the expanded 12-team playoff, Lanning says they’ve always been aggressive in looking to increase the talent on their roster, through recruiting high school players (the Ducks ranked No. 3 in the 247Sports recruiting team composite rankings in 2024) and in the NCAA transfer portal.

During the winter portal window, they added Gabriel (Oklahoma), cornerbacks Jabbar Muhammad (Washington) and Kam Alexander (UTSA), wide receiver Evan Stewart (Texas A&M) and former five-star recruit and UCLA QB Dante Moore. In the last week, the Ducks have further bolstered their defense with safety Peyton Woodyard (Alabama) and defensive lineman Derrick Harmon (Michigan State). Lanning staying put and believing he’s in Eugene for the long term has set up Oregon for both the present and the future.

“Dan likes to prove people wrong,” Figg says. “Dan knows he can win a national championship at Oregon, and he wants to show the world he can do it.”

Oregon is no longer an upstart. The Ducks made a national championship appearance, though it was nearly a decade ago in 2015. Lanning believes the program can win it all in this quaint remote town thousands of miles away from where the Southeastern Conference has reigned supreme the past two decades.

“I love being part of a program that’s proactive,” Lanning says. “They’ve always wanted a great product. This is a place where you can create that.”

Lanning talks about making the jump from good to great. The Ducks being agonizingly close in big games has to change in the Big Ten era. Ohio State visits Oct. 12, and three weeks later, the Ducks go to The Big House to face reigning national champion Michigan on Nov. 2.

With his ribs aflame with pain after being tattooed, Lanning posed for Turner so he could share the work done in one sitting on Instagram. Turner was born and raised in Eugene. For years, he has tattooed Oregon players and the “O” symbol on fans. Never could he have imagined Chip Kelly or Mike Bellotti walking into his shop. But in talking to Lanning, Turner says he felt like the head coach is sold on the life and pace of his hometown.

Before Lanning walked out the doors, he told Turner something the artist now fully believes.

“He told me he wanted to retire here,” Turner says.

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; photos: Tom Hauck / Getty Images)