If Penn State is good, they will be hard to beat. If they’re not, then they won’t.

We play tougher road opponents in the conference every year and do fine. The only difference here is that there’s more travel time and a time change.

Both teams are missing players, but nobody should be concerned about the players who won’t be playing. We should be concerned with the players who are playing. It’s like focusing on who graduated from one season to the next, instead of who is coming back and whether they’ve improved or not. What will happen with the players on the field?

For example, I’m sure that Maurice Evans has a good backup who wants to play a good game.

Also, a careful review of the film will show that Stanford didn’t dominate up front like it might appear at first glance of the stat sheet. About 40% of those yards were due to bad angles in the secondary or three guys showing up at the ball and then none of them tackling—on just 2 plays. That guy was hard to tackle, sure, but it was mostly just bad tackling on 2 plays.

Unfortunately, the Stanford game was just one of those games that came down to 2-3 plays going the wrong way. And that’s no knock on Stanford. They’re a decent, experienced team this year and they’ll win more games than last year.

Penn State fans should enjoy predicting a 7-21 point win.

I don’t really know the PSU team and to be honest I don’t (and as you might have gathered already many of Beaver Nation) have a good idea about the OSU team yet. The team is a mystery so far with all the new players lined up on both sides of the ball.

One thing is this is a Riley team and they don’t give up. The team might get flat out dominated and beat up, but one thing I give Riley teams for sure is that they keep coming at you. Does this mean that getting behind by 2 or more TDs the team will come back? Maybe or maybe not, but one TD? I would be very surprised to see a Riley team fold down one TD (or even two) in any circumstance. Penn State will have to beat OSU and you won’t do it thinking the “environment” will take us down, or the Beavs will have to make some big mistakes (a la Stanford) and beat themselves but this won’t happen because of being ga-ga over the hype.

The way Stanford ran the ball on us was a concern yes, but going to agree with CV here and repeat that a lot of that was due to brain cramps on positioning and some poor tackling which caused some big gainers. And yes the front line D was not really the big issue it was the LBs and secondary on the runs. There is a lot of pride about (and history going on with) that part of the game at Oregon State, especially the LBs. As such I expect that to be cleaned up. But you know who knows, maybe it won’t be cleaned up yet. I’m just armchair defensive-coordinating here you know and these are just guesses.

And wow CV nicely stated about we should be concerned with who is playing, for yep that is what it comes down to.

Oh, and yes you all can all keep thinking 21+ point blow out and we’ll see. If it is then more power to you all, if it isn’t well…

Is he is not a good single game coach. At this point, he can coach against the other coaches in the conference because he has seen their offenses year in and year our (one of the advantages of playing everyone every year). That is why I was most worried about Stanford because we really didn’t know what Stanford was going to do. By the time we figured it out, it was too late (which is also why you don’t start on the road against a conference opponent).

He can go ahead and win 9-10 games a year and do so by winning 7-8 conference games. But until he can prove that he can coach against unknown opponents, I won’t be sold 100% on him.

Mike Riley is 7-0 when given more than a week to prepare since the 2004 season, his 2nd stint at OSU. That does not include season openers but does include when we have a Thursday game one week and then a Saturday game the following week.

is that you guys played a good team last week. Although you lost, it was a close, competitive game, and the biggest part is that you had the opportunity to LEARN from the game tape were the mistakes were made and what needs to be fixed.

For us, however, it’s hard to find out what your flaws and weaknesses are when you play Coastal Carolina Vo-Tech A&T school of nursing. You guys already know what needs to be worked on, whereas we won’t know until after this week.
Just one more reason why I am completely opposed to scheduling cupcakes that offer absolutely no competition or opportunity for improvement.

Personally, I’m a bit worried about tomorrow’s game. Too many variable that could go wrong…the weather, the bong jockeys, the conservative JoePa play calling. I think it will be a close game. But good luck to both teams. God knows we’ll wneed it.

come on beaver fans, post up some predictions for the game. Or at least ballpark figures
- should be a close game that we’ll have a chance to take it in the end.
- We’ll dominate but let the nitts hang around till the end and blow it at a crucial point.
- We’ll get dominated but hang around and steal a victory.
- We’re going to come in and show you why it’s called Beaver Stadium!

Whats the feeling out there?