Oregon’s 12-Men Penalty May Not Have Been an Intentional Gambit

Now widely praised, Dan Lanning's supposed late-game chess move sent immediate shockwaves through college football, resulting in a rapid rule change.

Lanning has been praised as a genius for Oregon's late penalty against Ohio State. / Ben Lonergan/The Register-Guard / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Oregon Ducks coaching staff came bounding toward the Autzen Stadium press box elevator at the exact same time I did Saturday night, along with a few other reporters. We all wedged in as best we could for the short ride down the main concourse.

The Oregon coaches were understandably pumped after defeating the Ohio State Buckeyes 32–31. But as is often the case with coaches and media interacting in the press box elevator, they kept their emotions muted until they could exit into the euphoric tumult outside. The coach right next to me, however, couldn’t resist grumbling one sentence under his breath:

“Twelve f—ing men on the field.”

This did not seem like the utterance of a coach who thought his team had brilliantly exploited a loophole in the rules to deprive Ohio State of precious seconds at the end of the game. And it makes me think that the Ducks were more lucky than intentional in taking a penalty that helped win that game—a penalty that has led to a hurry-up rule change in college football.

The change—excuse me, “rules interpretation”—was announced by the NCAA Wednesday:

“After the two-minute timeout in either half, if the defense commits a substitution foul and 12 or more players are on the field and participate in a down, officials will penalize the defense for the foul and, at the option of the offended team, reset the game clock back to the time displayed at the snap.

“The game clock will then restart on the next snap. If the 12th defender was attempting to exit but was still on the field at the snap and had no influence on the play, then the normal substitution penalty of 5 yards would be enforced with no clock adjustment.”

To recap the play that led to this change: The Buckeyes were trying to drive for the winning field goal in the final minute. With 10 seconds left, they had the ball at the Oregon 43-yard line on third-and-25. They needed about 15 yards to get in range for a kick, and had just one play to get there before attempting a long-bomb field goal or a Hail Mary pass into the end zone.

Just before Ohio State snapped the ball, Oregon called timeout. The Ducks came out of that stoppage with 12 men on the field, sending an extra defensive back out after some apparent confusion in who should be on the field in the front seven. The game broadcasters commented on Oregon’s apparent lineup consternation.

Buckeyes quarterback Will Howard arrayed his unit with three receivers to the right and one (star freshman Jeremiah Smith) to the left. The extra defender was on the side with three wideouts, creating an imbalance that may have forced Howard to throw the other way. He lofted a pass to Smith around the 30-yard line, which was broken up by Oregon cornerback Jabbar Muhammad.

Ohio State coaches immediately yelled to the officials that Oregon had too many players on the field and a flag was dropped. The Buckeyes got five yards closer to field-goal range, but lost four seconds off the clock. In that situation, time mattered more than yards—Ohio State was down to likely one last play, and Howard erred by scrambling and sliding too late. The clock expired and the game was over. Oregon won.

Day and the Ohio State coaching staff quickly pointed out to officials that Oregon had 12 men on the field during the consequential play. / Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Under the newly altered rule, the game clock would have gone back to 10 seconds and the penalty would not have worked to the Ducks’ advantage. But in the aftermath of the game, people began to surmise that head coach Dan Lanning pulled a fast one by intentionally taking the penalty to shorten Ohio State’s window of time to score.

Lanning was asked about it earlier this week, particularly whether he ran the extra defender out to force the throw away from the three-receiver side of the field. 

The last part of the question: “Was it indeed intentional to induce the throw one-on-one to Jabbar in that spot?”

Lanning’s full answer: “It wasn’t one-on-one. We actually had a safety on top. So it’s called ‘dog.’ He wasn’t in an extremely tight coverage. He was in dog coverage, where you have a safety on top of him. Yeah, you know, there was a timeout before that. We spend an inordinate amount of time on situations. There are some situations that don’t show up very often in college football but this is one that obviously was something we had worked on. So you can see the result.”

The grin on Lanning’s face, coupled with the reference to being prepared for “situations,” was universally interpreted as confirmation that Oregon pulled a fast one within the existing framework of the rules. I’m not so sure.

First, there is nothing in Lanning’s answer that definitively says that the penalty was intentional. Media folks ran with a non-confirmation confirmation, which then stoked the usual end-is-near outcry from coaches terrified that someone was gaining an unfair advantage. The chain of communication in these situations is often thus: coach complains to athletic director, who complains to the NCAA, which overreacts and changes a rule—this one in record time, it seems.

Second, the strategy is fraught with peril. Since this wasn’t a dead-ball foul that nullified the result of the play, what if Howard’s pass to Smith had been complete and Ohio State had the necessary yardage to kick the potential winning field goal? The Buckeyes would simply decline the penalty and take the yards. It’s also a decision that, if it really was part of Oregon’s late-game thinking, the Ducks might have utilized earlier in the drive to bleed time off the clock in exchange for five yards.

Third, Lanning’s non-confirmation confirmation might have been a guy willing to take credit when offered to him for getting lucky. He wouldn’t be the first person to go along with portraying a fortuitous mistake as a genius move. The microwave was invented when a scientist testing a vacuum tube accidentally melted the chocolate bar in his pocket. If someone wants to hail your coaching acumen, it’s not your job to talk them out of it, right?

And fourth, there was the cussing coach in the elevator. Perhaps the coach—I’m not sure which one—was not privy to the master plan on the sideline. Or perhaps he was doing some performative grumbling for reporters to make it seem like Oregon hadn’t pulled a fast one. But that seems like a lot of conjured-up theatrics in an impromptu moment.

If forced to choose, I’d land on the side of Dan Lanning making a genius move being fake news. But the play helped his team win the biggest game of the year to date, and sparked a needed rule change in the process. Twelve men on the field have never looked so good.