Oklahoma football: Is Georgia DC Dan Lanning the next Oklahoma head coach?
By Chip Rouse
Georgia defensive coordinator Dan Lanning could be named the new Oklahoma head football coach, according to Ryan Chapman, who covers the Sooners for Sports Illustrated.
After spending a season as the outside linebackers coach at Georgia in 2018, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart, who is a defensive mastermind himself, promoted the 35-year old to defensive coordinator.
Lanning led the country’s best defense this season at Georgia. Before losing to Alabama in the SEC championship game on Saturday, the Georgia defense led all FBS teams, allowing just 6.92 points a game and 230.8 yards per game in total defense.
The possible hiring of Lanning follows the mold that Castiglione has followed in the hiring of Bob Stoops in 1999 and Lincoln Riley, both assistant coaches (Stoops as a defensive coordinator and Riley as an offensive coordinator) before landing the head coach’s job for the Sooners.
Lanning comes from the SEC, which would be a beneficial factor as Oklahoma transitions to the SEC.
Like Riley before him as an offensive wunderkind, Lanning, 35, is touted as one of the brightest young defensive minds in college football today. Graham, who originally hails from the Kansas City, Mo., area, spent one season as a graduate assistant in 2011 under head coach Todd Graham at Pittsburgh and followed Graham to Arizona State for the next two seasons. He spent a year at Sam Houston State as defensive backs coach in 2014 before moving to Alabama as a graduate assistant in 2015.
Lanning served as linebacker coach at Alabama for two more seasons, 2015 and 2016, before coming to Georgia in 2018.
Lanning also built a reputation at Georgia as one of the most effective recruiters in the country. The 2022 Georgia recruiting class is rated as one of the top five in the country, and Lanning is personally responsible for earning the commitments of five defensive prospects rated in the top 100 in the country, according to 247Sports.
The Georgia defensive coordinator could bring a skill set that Castiglione is betting will complement an Oklahoma team that has long been loaded with offensive talent.
If named Oklahoma’s head coach, Lanning will need to hire a new offensive coordinator and a defensive coordinator, unless he chooses to call the defensive plays similar to what Lincoln Riley did with the Sooner offense for the five seasons he was the OU head coach.
UPDATE: Chapman retracted his original story to say that Lanning hasn’t be tapped as the new head coach, but is “in the mix”