Senior safety Alden Darby will be tasked with stopping Oregon State junior wide receiver Brandin Cook. (Photo by State Press Staff)For a while, the Oregon State Beavers were on a roll.
After losing their first game to FCS foe Eastern Washington the Beavers (6-3, 4-2 Pac-12) rattled off six straight wins and were blowing teams away.
During their first seven games, the Beavers averaged 44 points per game, but they haven’t enjoyed the same success in their last two games.
In OSU’s last two games against then-No. 6 Stanford and USC, both losses, the Beavers haven’t scored more than 14 points.
In those games, OSU junior quarterback Sean Mannion has been held well below his nearly 400 passing yard per game average. In the Beavers’ two most recent losses, Mannion has only averaged 274 yards per game.
While Mannion has been slowed down as of late, the one OSU Beaver who nobody has been able to find a way to stop is junior wide receiver Brandin Cooks.
Cooks has shown that he is one of the most explosive wide receivers in a conference that is loaded with talented wideouts.
Cooks is the nation’s leader in receiving yards (1344) and receiving yards per game (149.3) and second in the nation in receiving touchdowns (14).
Doing a better job of getting the ball to Cooks will be a priority for the Beavers.
“We gotta find ways to get him the ball better than we did in the last couple of games,” OSU coach Mike Riley said in the Pac-12 coaches’ weekly teleconference. “We have to make sure that, despite what they’re doing, that we find different ways to get him the football.”
As good as the Beavers’ passing attack is on paper, OSU coach Mike Riley isn’t taking the Sun Devils’ secondary lightly.
“They’re very aggressive,” Riley said. “They play tight coverage. They’re very confident. I think their experience lends itself to that.”
The Beavers will also need to fix their defense after they were roughed up by USC. In that game, OSU allowed 489 total yards including 242 rushing yards.
The good news for the Beavers is that they have had some time to correct their mistakes. OSU is coming off a bye week and has had extra time to prepare for an ASU offense that ranks eighth in the country in scoring offense (43.7 points per game).
The Beavers are finally bowl eligible, but Riley’s message to the team has been to not get complacent with what success the team has had.
“We are in a pretty good position to position ourselves very well as the season ends,” Riley said. “Certainly, just being bowl eligible is nothing to get complacent about. … This team will define itself in the next three weeks, and it has to start with a good game against Arizona State.”
Reach the reporter at ejsmith7@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @EricSmith_SP
