Wednesday Notebook: Offensive Line Taking Shape

One of the bigger question marks coming into the season on the offensive side of the ball was how the Beavers were going to replace the consistent production that Blake Brandel, Gus Lavaka, and Clay Cordasco provided.

Offensive line coach Jim Michalczik, who's yielded a consistently solid group in each of his first two seasons at the controls of the trenches, feels that this years' group has a greater understanding of the mental aspect of the game.

Despite losing practice sessions in the wake of the pandemic, a positive byproduct has been that the digital time spent together could prove invaluable come game time.

"The one benefit of having all the time with zoom meetings was we were able to have a lot of football talk," Michalczik said. "We could take guys further in learning the game of football. Now being able to do something at the line of scrimmage is a whole different deal, but camp has been really good putting it all together."

While the group figures to look a lot different this season simply because there will be some new faces with new skillsets, Michalczik can already identify one thing that separates this group compared to others.

"I really like their work ethic. We've got a lot of competition for five spots and that gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of being able to move guys around. We just have to keep getting better every day. We'll get the starters dialed in the week before the game, but right now we're still moving guys around to see where they fit best. At the end of the day, I'll get the best five guys on the field."

Offensive lineman Brandon Kipper, who was able to immerse himself in what it takes to be a full-time starter at the Pac-12 level with 12 starts a season ago, feels that losing the experience of Brandel, Lavaka, & Cordasco hurts, but that the group has been hard at work fine-tuning their craft.

"We're replacing a lot of experience," Kipper said. "O-Line is one of those special positions where age, experience, and physical and mental development are all very very key. The scrimmage this past weekend was really key for our young guys to get some experience since we didn't have spring ball. They're coming along pretty good, but we've got a long way to go."

Despite the relative lack of inexperience amongst the group as a whole, Kipper already sees one area where from top-to-bottom, the unit is better than last year.