1. Back to a no fun reality check. For the fifth time in ten games we looked like we don't belong in Power Five football. Manhandled at the line of scrimmage, thoroughly uncompetitive, and rattled into bad decisions in a way that somewhat complicates our self-image as resilient and composed. We've bounced back other times and maybe will again but that's kind of the point: right now this team is capable of being respectable and of being execrable. We could get either in a given week. Since we want to be able to say there are signs of improvement it's really disappointing to have a stinker like this in the last road game of the season. Nonetheless, we shouldn't endow this game with too much significance in the grand scheme. Oregon State is a very good team still technically alive to win a very good conference going into the penultimate week of the regular season and we've generally been uncompetitive against the very good teams. We have a long way to go to being a competitive program and to the extent we thought an ugly win against a Washington State team in freefall meant we had turned the corner last night was a wake-up call.
2. I am not going to calculate points per drive for either side of the ball as the proper calculation subtracts garbage time and it's a multi-pronged test this game isn't worth devoting that brainpower to (e.g., one of the four prongs is "a possession in the second half of a game in which eight times the number of the losing team's remaining possessions plus one is less than the losing team's scoring deficit at the start of the possession"). Suffice it to say we got horridly boat-raced, playing Oregon State about as competitively as UC Davis did. Oregon State has a great offense (#10 in points per drive, #12 in Offensive FEI, #9 in yards per play, #14 in scoring) but given our insane degree of difficulty for our defense it's only the fourth best offense we've played. In that context this really didn't go well. Only USC had more yards per play against us and nobody scored more. Even more disturbingly, the Beavers had a mammoth 1.1 yards more per play against us than they have against anybody else this season and 1.81 more than their season average (even more than the 1.5 yard per play differential to season average USC had). Conventional scoring metrics, opponent-adjusted yards per play analysis, and PFF all agree that last night surpasses the USC game as our worst defensive game of the season, a real gut punch from the perspective of wanting to see signs of improvement.
3. The offense was smack dab exactly on its yards per play average for the season and we had our fourth worst yards per play game against the third best yards per play defense we've played. We were right around the Beaver average for yards per play and had more than Colorado, Utah, San Diego State, UC Davis, and San Jose State. The offense did far better on a yards per play basis than our defense did. But there's a big but. Yards per play misses a big part of the story when the turnover margin is wildly one-sided. We played about how you'd expect against a defense like this.....except for the interceptions. So many interceptions. This was the first four interception game for the Beavers in just over a decade and the first one we've been on this end of in nearly two decades (since 2004 Arizona State). It's impossible to judge the offense writ large when there are so many turnovers. Daniels took us out of the game essentially right away with extremely poor decisions on two of the first three drives, and then sloppiness in the turnover game continued beyond that. In fact, the margin could have been even worse as both QBs fumbled but we recovered both (fumble recovery tends to be lucky/random). The QB ball security was the worst part about our game. We were outmanned in the trenches and almost certainly would have lost handily regardless, but the game could have been a lot closer if we were not so careless throughout the game and by both QBs.
4. There was more to like on offense than defense (but the interceptions). We know there is no real run game this year outside of the QBs and indeed this was the fourth time in the last six contests we had under 100 yards rushing, but this was actually a relative bright spot last night, thanks largely to Daniels. Believe it or not, five of Oregon State's other nine opponents had even fewer yards per carry against them than we did. This Beaver team takes care of business in the trenches and not just against us. In the pass game, we were above-average in yards per play both by our standards and by the standards of teams that face Oregon State (but the interceptions). If we want to find a silver lining it may be continuing growth, or at least stability, in the offensive line. PFF judged this as our fourth best pass blocking game and fifth best run blocking game (and notably the best run blocking game since September). Not bad against such a famously high quality trench team. In contrast, this game was miserable for the defense. After being on a very encouraging uptick in recent weeks, the run defense fell apart against a genuinely spectacular run game (#9 in yards per carry). We tied with the 2021 Utah game for the most rushing touchdowns allowed in recent memory. The Beaver run game is spectacular but it's not this spectacular. Nobody other than UC Davis has been gouged like this. In fact, it's the most yards per carry the Beavers have had against a Pac-12 opponent in almost eight years. We've seen some glimmers of hope for run defense this year, but the two times we've faced a great run game (the two Oregon schools) we haven't even belonged on the field. Lots of work to do. In pass defense, it was the highest yards per attempt Oregon State has had in the last 22 games and their third best passer rating of the season (and very close to #2, but yikes what DJU & Co. did to Cal's pass defense). We've now played four top 20 passing offenses and been sliced and diced each time. We are clearly not capable of hanging with the great air attacks, which bodes poorly for the finale against Notre Dame.
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