Oregon State defense needs to improve, and fast
Oregon State's matchup with FCS opponent Portland State was supposed to be more of a tune-up game for the Beavers, and quite honestly, it was supposed to give the Beavs an easy win as they try to reach a bowl game.
But it wasn't an easy win as Portland State took the Beavers down to the wire. Oregon State had to come from behind on two separate occasions during the game, including Jake Luton's go-ahead touchdown pass to Isaiah Hodgins, but Portland State nearly sent the game into overtime with field goal attempt in the final seconds of the fourth quarter.
There are the negatives that come with the victory, but at the end of the day, like OSU head coach Gary Andersen put it, the Beavers won.
"Well, we won," Andersen said to open his postgame press conference. "My message to the team is that you can't win two until you win one. We've got one underneath our belt."
Offense, defense, and special teams - the Beavers are clearly not where they need to be after losing by 31 points to a Mountain West team and now barely beating a Big Sky opponent, but the No. 1 issue (at least, in my eyes) with the team is the defense.
Here's a very troubling statistic: the Beavers have given up 1,040 yards through two games.
"The biggest problem right now I would say is that there's not one part of the run game defense that we're playing well," Andersen said about OSU's run D. "The edges of the defense aren't secure, we aren't tackling well, the middle of the defense is soft at times, and we have to become a team that can tackle and secure the edges in the run game."
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Oregon State's next opponent is Minnesota as they come to Corvallis this upcoming Saturday for a 7:00pm PT kickoff on FS1.
The Beavers lost to the Gophers on the road to open the 2016 season, and Andersen is familiar with Minnesota from his short stint coaching at Wisconsin.
"These guys we're playing next week (Minnesota), their (running) backs are real," Andersen said. "You better become good tacklers real fast to be able to control and maintain those guys."
Andersen, his coaching staff, and his players got to work on Sunday to correct their mistakes and will hit the practice field on Monday.
"We're not where we need to be from a fundamental standpoint at times and the attacking ability," continued Andersen. "I just think these kids are a lot better, and I know they're a lot better. We just have to continually work with them and the youth cannot be an excuse. We have seven young guys out there on the field at that point, then that's what we've got... It is what it is.
"I'll break down that film again and these kids will focus and look at it. You can't just keep doing the same thing expect that all of the sudden that the results are magically going to change. We know where we're at after two games from a personnel standpoint. We know what we have to address."
As Andersen always says: 'it's better to learn from a win than a loss.' I'm sure he'd agree with that after OSU's win on Saturday afternoon.
"It's great to win," said Andersen. "There's no doubt about it. ... I wouldn't say I'm relieved. I'm happy. I love to win. Winning is what you do this for, and these kids should remember it.
"Every win is one more notch to getting us where Beaver Nation wants us, where we want to get, where everyone involved with this program wants us to get, and we are definitely a work in progress. Victories are extremely, extremely valuable."