Preview: Washington and Oregon State

The more time you have to prepare for something the better it turns out right? Well, the Oregon State Beavers will have had two weeks to prepare for the Washington Huskies when the two teams meet up at Reser Stadium on Saturday evening.

What can Oregon State do to pull off a huge upset?

That’s an excellent question.

Chris Petersen has brought back Washington to national prominence that includes a berth in the College Football Playoff last season and winning the Pac-12 Championship last year as well.

A few players have left from the Husky team from last year, but they are still a deadly team. Just ask Colorado.

In the rematch from last season’s Pac-12 Championship Game, the Huskies went to Colorado and destroyed the Buffaloes 37-10.

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That served notice that the Dawgs are not just a one year wonder.

Jake Browning, Myles Gaskin, and Dante Pettis are just the new quarterback-running back-wide receiver combo for the Huskies. These three Huskies have just dominated whoever they have come up against.

Browning has a 9-2 touchdown to interception ratio and has completed 69% of his passes. He is simply picking up where he left off last season. Myles Gaskin, the lightning quick running back has also left his mark in early part of the 2017 season. Gaskin is averaging around seven yards a carry and has seven touchdown through four games. Dante Pettis who took over for John Ross who went pro has amassed 265 yards total so far. That creates an average of 17.5 per catch.

When you put these three players together that creates a huge scoring average. Washington has a 44.5 scoring average this season and that creates a dilemma for their opposing teams.

Let’s not forget that the Husky defense is one of the best in the country.

Washington’s defense is only allowing 11 points a game. The Huskies are allowing 272 yards/game. Look for the trifecta of Tevis Bartlett, freshman Ryan Bowman, and DB Myles Bryant to make life extremely difficult for Oregon State on Saturday.

Meanwhile, it’s just about the opposite with the Beavers.

Gary Andersen has had his work cut out for him since he arrived on campus in Corvallis. With having two weeks to prepare for the Huskies he isn’t sure what is the best course of action when trying to slow down this big offensive attack.

“When dealing with this kind of attack, tough choices have to be made.” Andersen said in the weekly teleconference.

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Extremely tough choices if you ask me.

With last weeks conference opening 52-23 loss at Washington State, things are not looking up for the Beavers. Coming into this season with all of the momentum of the Civil War win, the Beavers have fallen on some hard times.

These hard times have been exasperated with the injury of starting quarterback, Jake Luton who is expected to miss the remainder of the season because of the spine injury.

“Darrell Garrettson will be the starter and Conor will be the back up.” Coach Andersen said today.

The offense will continue to flow through junior running back, Ryan Nall. After a slow start, Nall has racked up 323 yards with four touchdowns. He is also averaging 6.1 yards per carry. As Nall goes, so goes Oregon State.

The receiving corps are solid for the Beavers. With Jordan Miller and Isaiah Hodgins anchoring the receivers, the Huskies have to guard against letting the Beavers go off in the passing game. The tight end, Noah Togiai, can also pose match-up problems for the opposition. Each one of these receivers have more than 14 catches, so it’s clear that the Beavers do like to throw the ball.

The struggles of the Beavers have been on the defensive side of the ball. Statistically, the Oregon State defense is one of the worst in the nation. The Beavers give up 47.5 points a game and 485 yards of offense per game.

Playing a team like Washington doesn’t help those averages at all for Oregon State.

In the end, Washington just has to much to contend with for the Beavers. The talent difference is just to great right now for the Beavers to compete with a team like Washington right now.

On a positive note for the Oregon State football program, Allstate Insurance has announced that the Beavers are the newest school in the “Good Hands” Field Goal Net Program.

With every field goal and extra point made during home games Allstate will generate money for their school’s general scholarship fund. Allstate will donate $300 for every field goal and $100 for every extra point. Oregon State is now one of 90 teams that are participating with the Allstate “Good Hands” program.