Oregon State passing offense shows potential with Luton
Despite a season opening smackdown at the hands of Colorado State, the Beaver offense showed passing potential that has been non-existent in the Gary Andersen tenure. Jake Luton threw the ball more times than he probably should have, and the Beavers had to abandon the run late in the game trying to get back into it, but that shouldn’t worry fans moving forward, because this offense has the talent to be a very efficient and high scoring unit.
Here are some of the basic passing stats from OSU’s loss to CSU:
426 total yards
304 passing yards
3 penalties for 21 yards
5 turnovers
Translation? The Beavers still amassed 426 total yards of offense while committing five turnovers. Let’s say OSU had just two turnovers. How many more yards would they have had on offense? 500? 550?
“We should have easily had 40 points on Saturday,” Luton said. “If you go back and look at the film we missed too many opportunities to get the ball down the field. We had too many drive killers. You can’t win with five turnovers, so execution is what it comes down to. 40 points is easily attainable; we showed we can be a great offense but we can’t beat ourselves.”
One of the reasons that the Beavers have the potential to be great on offense is the return of tight-end Noah Togiai. His ability to stretch the field is the reason he’s been able to build great chemistry with quarterback Jake Luton. Togiai echoes Luton’s thought on what the offense should have been able to do against CSU and what they can do going forward.
“I’m with Jake on that,” Togiai said. “I feel like there was 40 or 40 plus points out there that we left and probably 500 yards out there as well. Watching this film kind of opened it up to us that we really can do what the coaches tell us we can do, we just have to execute better.”
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There is no sugarcoating how badly OSU got beat in their opener, but there is no doubt that if the offense can clean up their timing, execution, and turnovers, this team can be a team that consistently scores between 30 and 40 points a game.
For the Beavers, it all starts with Luton on offense. Luton showed flashes of brilliance on Saturday, completing deep passes that OSU hasn’t had since Sean Mannion was under center. But at times, he looked like he was playing his first division one game in over a year as he sometimes forced throws and didn’t take the easy read while trying to bring OSU back into the game.
“We have to be more effective and execute better,” Luton said. “That’s the bottom line.
One of Luton’s favorite targets against CSU was Togiai. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s followed the Beavers in spring and fall practices as Togiai has been one of Luton’s top targets and he showed in on Saturday as he was often the safety valve when Luton had nowhere else to go. Like Luton, Togiai feels that this offense could be very special when they put it all together.
“There’s a lot of yards that we left out there,” Togiai said. “Whether it was misreads, too deep of a route, or general protection, we just left too much out there. Everyone sees that from the coaches and the players and we see that we can do more.”
One player who did have a big first game against Colorado State was senior receiver Jordan Villamin. Villamin had a down year by his and the coach's standards in 2016, but wanted to prove that last season was just a fluke. In his first game of 2017, he appeared to be well on his way to proving his point as he tallied seven receptions for 77 yards to lead the team in both catches and yards.
Even though Villamin turned in a solid performance against the Rams, he didn’t sugarcoat OSU getting thoroughly beaten by CSU.
“It was a lack of effort and focus that really killed us during the game,” Villamin said. “We let all of the little elements get to us. Little details here and there caused a chain reaction of things that went wrong. We just have to go out here and try and lessen that and stay focused longer and it won’t happen again.”
The Beavers have their work cut out for them as a team if they want to improve in all three aspects of the game with offense, defense, and special teams, but offensively, if they can make the minor tweaks and clean up their turnovers, this offense could have the potential to be the best we’ve seen under Gary Andersen.
“We threw for 304 yards, but we didn’t put up the touchdowns that we wanted to,” Villamin said. “If we make those minor changes we could have thrown for 500. We already know what our offense can do, what we can accomplish and it’s definitely eye opening.”