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Oregon State Beavers Football: Wednesday Notebook

After another poor defensive showing against Arizona State, Oregon State (1-4, 0-2) made some changes in practice this week, including incorporating live tackling for the first time since fall camp. BeaversEdge.com was in Corvallis to hear from the defensive coaches and players as they prepare to face Washington State’s (4-1, 1-1) high-powered offense.

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Beavers go live in practice

As the Oregon State football team prepares to face Washington State this Saturday in Reser Stadium, there’s no doubt that if the Beavers want to have a chance to win this game, they’ll have to be significantly better on defense than they have been in the first two weeks of Pac-12 play.

Against Arizona and Arizona State, the Beavers allowed running backs JJ Taylor and Eno Benjamin to run for over 200 yards each, and often had numerous missed tackles that allowed both backs to break small or medium sized gains into huge chunk plays.

With the last two weeks being extremely telling with how the Beavers still have to improve in every aspect of tackling, defensive coordinator Tim Tibesar and his staff made an adjustment to the Beavers’ weekly regimen. For the first time since fall camp, OSU has implemented live tackling portions of practice to get the Beavers more prepared for Saturday’s.

“The biggest thing is that we have to continue to progress,” Tibesar said. “We feel good about our process and we’ve tweaked it this week as we’ve tackled more this week than any other time. We’ve incorporated live tackling into practice, which we haven’t done since fall camp. It’s going to be something we continually work on, but tackling is something we just have to get better at.”

Tibesar expanded on why the Beavers are adding a live element of practice, adding that it was largely due to the numerous missed tackles against ASU.

“Three of the longest runs that Arizona State had, we had guys in a position to make a tackle within two yards of the line of scrimmage and they weren’t able to do it,” Tibesar said. “All three of those runs ended up being over 40 yards and so when we have guys in positions, they have to have the confidence to take the ball carrier down.”

Inside linebacker Jonathan Willis, who spoke to the media post-Arizona State about the importance of needing to tackle better, especially in practice, has really liked the live tackling approach Tibesar and the defensive coaches have brought to the table.

“Tackling was the main emphasis this week, because we missed a lot of tackles against Arizona State,” Willis said. “That was the main reason why the rushing yardage got out of hand is because we were there, but we didn’t make the tackle. We have to keep our feet moving, heads up, and finish.”

Preparing for the Air Raid

After OSU’s most recent opponents Arizona and Arizona State preferred a ground-first attack, the Beaver defense will be in store for a new challenge this week as they face one of the most high-level passing offenses in college football in Washington State.

“They’re extremely explosive and have found a lot of success with Gardner Minshew II,” Tibesar said. “Coach Leach has always done a great job of putting in the passing game with experienced receivers and they have very versatile running backs as well.”

Cougars' head coach Mike Leach, one of the innovators of the modern-day Air Raid, has run the ball much more in recent seasons to balance out the Cougars, but as exemplified by their zero rushing yards against Utah last week, WSU is still a pass, pass, and pass some more kind of team.

“The Air Raid offense is really unique in the way that they have no tight ends and are trying to spread you out horizontally and vertically,” Tibesar said. “From what I understand, every play is called in as a pass play and if they get a certain look they want, they’ll check to a run. It’s based on pass, but the intelligence part of it is that the’re going to work with what you give them defensively.”

Given OSU’s struggles stopping the run game this season, playing a team like Washington State might work in the Beavers’ favor. OSU got a taste of a mini Air Raid while playing Nevada and despite the Beavers dropping that contest, they got more comfortable in their defensive scheme as the game went along.

Making Minshew II uncomfortable and forcing him to throw when he’s not ready will be the key for the Beavers, who are trying to get their pash rush kick-started against a quick start Washington State offense.

“Washington State is mostly a passing offense, so we’re working on improving our pass rush and getting to the quarterback,” defensive tackle Elu Aydon said. “We want to be able to distract him and get him out of his groove, because when he’s in a groove, the whole offense moves very good.”

Tibesar believes that the Beavers’ experience against Nevada will help them on Saturday as they’ve seen what an Air Raid team can do.

“Absolutely it can help us,” Tibesar said. “Now that we’re getting to the middle part of the season, there are some similarities amongst teams we’ve played. The more we can use different schemes and sets as teaching moments is good for us.”

As they seem to do every year under Leach, Washington State once again possesses a quarterback who can throw the ball at a high volume with success in graduate-transfer Gardner Minshew II. Tibesar noted that he’s extremely impressed with Minshew and what he’s been able to accomplish in the first part of this season.

“Obviously Coach Leach knows what he’s doing and knows what he wants a quarterback to be able to do in a system and Minshew’s been able to do everything he wants a quarterback to do,” Tibesar said. “He’s been extremely efficient this year with touchdowns, completion percentage, and interception ratio and so he’s fit in to being an Air Raid quarterback quickly.”

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