Dam City Reactions and Observations

On a sunny day at Hillsboro Stadium the Beaver football had their time to shine. Beaver Nation came out in droves for the scrimmage, including some people already in mid-season form with their tailgaters.

Thank you #BeaverNation for coming out to #DamCity! Back at practice this morning getting ready for the Spring Game!https://t.co/lVxvKMbGAJ

— OregonState Football (@OSUBeaversFB) April 11, 2016

On the field the first show were the quarterbacks as warm-ups were ongoing. The drill had Marcus McMaryion, Darell Garretson, and Mason Moran all side by side making throws on various routes. From this demonstration none of the quarterbacks were overly impressive in regards to their arm talent. McMaryion seemed to have the most fluid and natural release, but the throws were not consistently on the spot. Garretson does have a bit of a wind up and it seemed like a considerable amount of labor to get the ball going. Moran seemed to be pushing some throws, although that came and went. When it looked more loose it still appeared to be work to get the ball going though.

Shortly after that the scrimmage was underway with the 1s. The offensive line that first emerged was as follows:

60 - Will Hopkins

64 - Fred Lauina

75 - Brayden Kearsley

51 - Kammy Delp

74 - Dustin Stanton

This is not the likely fall starting group in the fall due to injuries and the reinforcements may help with a unit that had a pretty rough outing. The theme of the whole session was defense, especially on the ground. Ryan Nall looked like the same wrecking ball that he was last season, but there was not a lot of room for him to run. Once he got some room to run he was breaking tackles left and right, one of his runs in the first drive was maybe the highlight of the afternoon as he barreled through roughly five tackles on the left side of the defense.

That was most of what the offense could muster as the passing game was extremely limited. They started by going three and out, after that they reset the ball and ran down the field where they turned it over on downs. The 2nd unit came on after that led by Moran at qb. Tim Cook was the running back with the 2s as well though Kyle White got some run later on in the afternoon as the third back.

The second unit was not necessarily out-executing on offense but they were moving the ball better through the air partially thanks to Trevon Bradford and to defensive lapses. Bradford was all over the field, winning on routes, finding soft spots in the zone and was very clearly the preferred option of Moran. He earned it though and he was probably the biggest winner of the day.

In the end after their movement down the field the second unit was unable to score when they fumbled at the goal line. McMaryion was in next and the offense moved the ball enough to get into field goal range and then Garrett Owens missed the field goal.

It continued to be brutal though, the 2s had more success moving the ball due to errors by the defense and after another couple failed attempts to move the ball by the first unit the second team finally broke through. A Bradford reception, Togiai catch against the flow of pursuit, and then was completed by Tim Cook breaking into the end zone for the first points of the day.

The day was capped by a couple goal line drills which resulted in touchdown passes from Mcmaryion to Tuli Wily-Matagi and Mason to Bradford.

It was a day for the defense though as the secondary allowed few openings and generally won against the offensive line.

Notes:

• Defensively for the second unit Elu Aydon was making some plays on the defensive line, and consistently penetrating into the offensive backfield. That may have been have been due to playing against the backups but I liked what I saw.
• The kickers had a rough day, Owens went .500 from his kicks on the field although he did hit a 50 yarder. Crist missed an extra point as well.
• The defense still shifts to different looks especially in third and long, where they had what seemed to be a 2-4-5 look, though it was tough to see everything from my seat.
• Nick Porebski had several punts and they averaged around 45-50 yards.
• The defensive play of the day was Dwayne Williams ripping the ball away from Victor Bolden for an interception, they were battling for the ball after a throw from Garretson but Williams ended up the better man in that encounter.
• At the BBQ Andersen and Stansbury had speeches. First off both are superb speakers, they have some real presence to them. Stansbury made a point to express that there will be plenty more events in the Portland area and how it is part of the OSU mission to improve the state of Oregon. Andersen had a talk about how last year was unacceptable, but the classroom progression was something he pointed as a demonstration of the program moving in the right direction. He also expressed several times that the culture of the program was previously broken when he arrived, which made me wonder what exactly was happening under Riley.