Oregon State’s defense, running game permit quarterbacks to learn

By Cliff Kirkpatrick
Gazette-Times reporter

It was a combustible first dual-quarterback experiment and it nearly blew up in the face of the Oregon State football team.

Everything eventually settled down and the Beavers began the season with a victory. They may have even found a starter.

However, coach Mike Riley said it’s too early to tell who’ll be the starter for next week’s game. He wanted to review the video first.

For now, the Beavers defeated Utah 24-7 on Thursday night in a nonconference game before a crowd of 40,409 in Reser Stadium after sophomores Sean Canfield and Lyle Moevao settled into the game.

Both had their moments, but the game was secured under Canfield’s watch in the third quarter and early in the fourth.

“It felt good to get in there,” Canfield said. “I don’t know what coach Riley wants to do, but if the rotation continues, I’m fine with that.”

Canfield guided the Beavers to an 80-yard touchdown drive in the middle of the third quarter, to break a 7-7 tie.

Yvenson Bernard made the drive, so it may have been a case of being in the right place at the right time.

However, Canfield followed it up with a 22-yard drive to set up a 37-yard Alexis Serna field goal.

Canfield began the fourth quarter with the help of the ground game again to engineer a final touchdown.

“I didn’t do much,” Canfield said. “I just handed the ball off to Yve. He did the rest.”

However, it took some time to reach this point.

Canfield started out sluggish in the first quarter. It didn’t help that two consecutive passes were dropped to kill a drive, and he missed a receiver on one down the sideline to end another.

He did run the offense efficiently by getting the plays called and a clean snap from center. It was a solid, but unspectacular debut.

“It was slow to get going, but we got it going,” Canfield said. “It could have been better.“

Then there was a problem with the exchange of quarterbacks from the first to the second quarters.

It was a predictable issue of Lyle Moevao not knowing the speed of the game when he went in. That was his first experience at the Division I level after playing a year at a junior college and redshirting last year.

Canfield took the Beavers away from the goal line with a first down pass and then the clock ran out on the first quarter.

Moevao entered the game in the middle of the drive, and on the first play threw an interception to a wide open Sean Smith.

“I wish I could have that (drive) back,” Canfield said. “I just hit Chris Johnson for a first down and the quarter ran out.“

That gave Utah the ball on OSU’s 34-yard line. Three plays later, the Utes scored on a 36-yard pass from Brian Johnson to Brent Casteel.

Moevao continued his slow start when procedure calls stopped his second possession, but he would speed up.

Two dropped passes appeared to bog down Moevao’s third drive, but Riley called a fourth-and-7 pass deep in Utah territory.

Moevao took a big hit on the play as he connected with Darrell Catchings for a first down. That was the turning point in the game for him.

Bernard took over from there, pounding out the final 16 yards on two carries to the end zone.

“They were both good leaders,” center Kyle DeVan said. “They both controlled the huddle. You could tell they were nervous at first, but that happens when you play in front of 40,000 people.”

That left Riley to his halftime decision as to how to proceed with a tie ball game. He needed to see more, so Riley kept the experiment going.

Fortunately for the Beavers, the defense was as good as advertised. And Utah struggle with injuries, losing a running back and starting quarterback Brian Johnson in the first half.

“We just had to make plays,” Bernard said. “We have play makers all around. And Sean and Lyle are good quarterbacks.”

Cliff Kirkpatrick covers the Oregon State football team for the Corvallis Gazette-Times. He can be reached at cliff.kirkpatrick@lee.net