Beavers Eye Saturday Scrimmage

With the Oregon State football team now a week into fall camp with Friday's seventh practice in the books, all eyes within the program will now be squarely turned to the Beavers' first scrimmage of fall camp on Saturday.

Head coach Jonathan Smith expects Saturday's closed scrimmage to be relatively similar to those of the past, but that he's very excited to see the state of his team after a productive first week of practices.

"I'm anxious to see what it looks like tomorrow. It'll be pretty similar to past scrimmages, but we want to make sure every group gets turns," Smith said. "When you put the ball down and go live, that changes things a bit. Ball security is always something new when you're going live. I'm also excited to see where these young guys are in the next step of evaluation."

In terms of what's stood out to Smith after a week, there's no doubt to him that the defense has the potential to be very physical. The Beavers have been playing behind the eight-ball the past couple of years on the defensive side of the ball and now, all signs point toward the team yielding a very strong, deep, and diverse group that can wreak havoc.

"We can make it physical, and we've got some real athleticism defensively. Those guys have done a really nice job here in the first week slowing down the run game. It's still early on, but I've seen some really nice physicality from our defense early on."

Further speaking on individual groups and players that have stood out to him in advance of the scrimmage, Smith singled out the inside linebackers for their strong play throughout the first week, and also talked up the tight end group, saying

"I like the inside linebacker group a lot. Avery (Roberts), Omar (Speights), Doug (Taumoelau), Kyrie (Fisher), Jack (Colletto), that group has looked really good. I also think our tight ends with Teagan (Quitoriano) and Luke (Musgrave) have looked good and I think Jake Overman and Tommy Spencer can contribute this year."

NOTES

- Jonathan Smith said the team doesn't have an update from the NCAA on the status of running back Trey Lowe & wide receiver Tre'Shaun Harrison. Smith said he's hoping to find out before the first game to help with planning purposes.

- Despite the report earlier in the week that offensive lineman Onesimus Clarke chose to opt-out of the upcoming season, Smith wouldn't confirm anyone that hasn't made the news public. He said that there is a group of guys (about 5% of the team) that for varying reasons, chose to opt-out of the upcoming year. Those players will still be receiving all the academic, physical, and mental support that comes with being a student-athlete