Harlan: Oregon State Needs Answers At Quarterback

With the Oregon State football team (4-4) idle this week, BeaversEdge Campus Insider Ryan Harlan gives his thoughts opinion style on the Beavers' quarterback play, where the team goes from here, and much more!

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As the football saying goes, when you have multiple quarterbacks, you have no quarterback, and the Beavers well might not have a quarterback on the roster they can reliably go to right now.

I know that sounds harsh to say but it’s been the truth since the start of fall camp and why the quarterback battle took so long to figure out because Ben Gulbranson, Gevani McCoy, and Gabarri Johnson couldn’t show enough to the coaching staff that they were the starter.

It wasn’t until they closed off open practices and turned into game week preparations, that McCoy ultimately came up with the job and did just enough to win the starting job.

Head coach Trent Bray mentioned something to that effect when he was asked how they ended up deciding on McCoy to be the starter. However, if a guy did just enough to win the starting job, that seems to be a bit eyebrow-raising and limits what you can do on offense if he barely keeps the offense on schedule.

I’ll preface what I’m going to say about the quarterback performance this season and say that I was out on McCoy being the starter for the 2024 season. The reason is what I saw in the open fall camp practices from him where he’d stare down his first read on a play, was late in his timing getting the ball to receivers, and not being able to push the ball deep down the field consistently.

Sound familiar? If you’ve been watching the past few games, especially the 44-7 loss to Cal, you may have seen some of these things I noticed.

So, to my surprise, I was a little perplexed when McCoy was named the starter, but trusted the judgment of the coaching staff to make the best decision as they saw more than what I did in fall camp.

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As the season has gone on, the things I saw in camp have made their way into a game and I’ve been waiting for improvement from the offense including McCoy to figure things out, but they haven’t, at least in the passing game.

The fact that we have four games left in the regular season and the Beavers are averaging around 185 yards passing yards per game one of their worst production levels from the quarterback spot since 2016, during the Gary Anderson era then that’s a good sign either.

If I had to give the quarterbacks a grade it would have to be incomplete because I still haven’t seen enough from them in that department.

The fact that they haven’t put things together in the passing game has bothered me throughout this season given what offensive coordinator Ryan Gunderson had said all offseason about how “fun” and “quarterback friendly” the offense would be this season.

The results though speak otherwise from the offseason chatter and while some of that is dictated by the game flow, maybe it’s also a lack of talent playing a role at the most important position on the offense at this competition level.

Not to say McCoy doesn’t have talent, everyone does when you get to the higher levels of competition in any sport. However, some guys may not have the ability to be as successful at the highest level of competition particularly in football and that’s not a knock-on FCS competition either. If you’re talented enough regardless of competition the National Football League will find you regardless.