Oregon State Beavers College Football Preview 2021: What Will Happen, Season Prediction
If a program fires a coach or allows him to leave before he’s whacked, the new guy’s job in the first year is simple: provide hope.
Show a vision for where the program is going, and give a glimpse of what might be coming after a little more time and with the right pieces in place.
Jonathan Smith did exactly that at Oregon State.
Along with showing the fans the potential of what the Beavers could be, he showed improvement with a two-win first season and then a 5-7 2019 that at least was a whole lot of fun.
And then 2020 happened and everything came to a screeching halt. However, as bad as the 2-5 season might have been, again, Smith brought the hope with a win over eventual Pac-12 champion and arch-rival, Oregon.
However, there were a whole lot of problems with the 2020 team, and the 2021 schedule is a whole lot of rough to come up with a huge step forward.
Set The Oregon State Beavers Regular Season Win Total At … 4.5
The defense has to go from lousy to mediocre, the pass rush has to show up, the passing game has to be more dangerous, and it all has to happen in a Pac-12 that should be a lot stronger.
Yeah, about that hope thing … hope sometimes smacks head-first into the reality of the schedule.
The 2019 team that won five games and showed so much improvement had Cal Poly on the slate and there was no USC.
This year, Idaho is the FCS layup, but there’s a road trip to USC and the team misses an Arizona team that should be the weakest in the Pac-12.
At Purdue, at USC, at Washington State, at Cal, at Colorado, at Oregon. Oregon State isn’t going to be favored in any of those.
It needs to beat a good Hawaii team at home, and there have to be a few big conference home upsets – that’s a problem with Washington, Utah, Arizona State and Stanford all likely to be the favorites.
But Oregon State will win a few games it probably shouldn’t.
This really is a better team than the 2020 version, Smith showed that he can coach up his guys to pull off something special here and there, and …
No, Oregon State isn’t going to break the streak and it’s probably going to be an eighth straight losing season.
But really, Smith is making this program better. Hope will turn into wins at this program soon enough.
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– What You Need To Know: Offense | Defense
– Top Players | Keys To The Season
– Oregon State Schedule Analysis