STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - The lone highlight to come out of the Oregon State football team’s 45-14 blowout defeat at Penn State on Saturday was the emergence of Jacquizz Rodgers.

Much was expected from the 5-foot-7, 193-pound true freshman tailback, but the coaches didn’t want to dump too much on him early. The plan was to ease him into the season with redshirt freshman Ryan McCants.

However, Rodgers took control of the position Saturday over first-game starter McCants.

“I got the feel for the game last week, and today I was way more comfortable than last game,” Rodgers said. “I got my chance and I took advantage of it.”

Rodgers made his first career start, and took most of the snaps. He was used situationally in the first contest at Stanford.

It didn’t matter the down-and-distance or where the ball was on the field, Rodgers was used in place of the bigger McCants — even near the goal line.

“Yes, in a way,” coach Mike Riley said of if he planned to use Rodgers more this week. “He’s going to be in there on third down, so he’s going to be in there more automatically. He played a lot more all the time today because of the situation of the game.”

Rodgers ran for 99 yards on 22 carries and scored the team’s two touchdowns. He also caught four passes for 28 yards, all on a dinged ankle from the first week.

McCants was used on a limited basis. He ran the ball four times for eight yards.

“Coming into today we had to establish the run game and build off that because our passing game was always working,” Rodgers said. “Today we established the run, and had a couple good drives off the run.”

The offense couldn’t sustain many drives. The best performances were an 11-play, 80-yard drive in the second quarter and a 15-play, 73-yard possession for a fourth-quarter score.

“We started to run more, which was good,” quarterback Lyle Moevao said. “We tried to establish the run game, which was helpful for the passing game. We’ll definitely take that into consideration next week.”

Rodgers made both those drives go. He carried the ball seven times for 51 yards on the first one and six times for 24 yards, plus 17 receiving yards, on the second one.

He capped off the first one with a resilient 12-yard TD run, breaking tackles through the middle of the defense and dragging bigger players into the end zone. The second score was on a similar 4-yard power run.

“Guys might think I’ll go down easy without wrapping up, but I just run hard,” Rodgers said.