Analysis

By Cliff Kirkpatrick
Gazette-Times reporter

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Season openers are all about getting a win and seeing what needs work for the next game and beyond.

With a rebuilt Oregon State football team this year, Thursday night’s contest at Stanford served as a good challenge — too good of a challenge.

The Beavers would have preferred a lesser opponent, not a Pacific-10 Conference rival, because it turned out to be the worst of what could have happened.

Stanford won the game 36-28 before a crowd of 30,223 in Stanford Stadium, which was the primary setback.

OSU nearly forced overtime with a last-minute drive. Flanker Darrell Catching caught a ball and was headed into the end zone, but he was stopped 2 yards short and he fumbled

the ball across the line and it bounced out the side for a touchback the other way.

“It wasn’t the way we wanted it to go,” linebacker Bryant Cornell said. “This was a game we thought we could win. We let some opportunities get away, on offense and defense. It’s unfortunate it was a Pac-10 game.”

Stanford is a team the Beavers usually beat in the latter half of the season. The Cardinal lack depth, so injuries make the team easy pickings late.

Stanford was a team the Beavers have used to give them a late-season boost, and now that’s not available.

“It was a rough start,” offensive guard Adam Speer said. “The only thing we can do from here is get better and keep fighting. And get some wins. We have to get ready for Penn State now.”

A long-term issue was how the Cardinal exposed the inexperience of the front seven in the run game. OSU allowed 210 yards with Toby Gerhart rushing for 147 and two touchdowns.

Then quarterback Lyle Moevao was asked to do too much, and he’s not at the level yet to carry a team on his back. After improving until the middle of the game, he threw two interceptions with one returned 34 yards for a score.

“We had way too many mistakes to win a game,” coach Mike Riley said. “Stanford minimized their mistakes. They didn’t have turnovers. We had a million penalties. We fumbled the ball, even though we didn’t turn it over. We didn’t look pretty smooth.”

Moevao started out well with conservative passing, and then opened it up. He hit Sammie Stroughter for a 55-yard touchdown pass in the first half, and a 3-yard TD pass late in the game.

He should have thrown two more TDs to Stroughter, but he missed a wide open deep pass to him and threw one too high in the back of the end zone so the defender pushed Stroughter out of bounds.

Moevao settled down and threw for 404 yards and three touchdowns. He spread the ball to four receivers and used Shane Morales as the go-to guy when Stroughter was covered. Morales led the Beavers with 13 catches for 151 yards and a score.

“I thought Lyle competed like crazy,” Riley said. “I thought he went to the well once too often for the interception for a touchdown. He missed some throws he normally would make all the time, but he made a ton of plays.”

Much was made in the preseason of the new starting defensive front seven, and for good reason. They started out fast, but Stanford wore them down even with heavy use of the second string.

That’s a concern going into next week’s game since Penn State is known for its power running game.

“I’d like to think it was the first game,” Cornell said. “We learned who we were as a team today, and now we have to fine tune some things. There were some runs that shouldn’t have happen. Those are some things we have to shore up before we go to Penn State.”

There were plays with defenders out of position, which led to big runs. Then there were the common early-season missed tackles.

“We’ll get better and better,” Riley said. “There are some young guys in there — a lot of first time starters. They fought, but we weren’t perfect. We’ve had moments in the run game in past worse than that. We’ll come back. We’ll be a good run defense by time this goes.”

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