Five interceptions, four punts keep offense from shining during first scrimmage

By Cliff Kirkpatrick

Corvallis Gazette-Times

CORVALLIS - Scrimmages tend to deliver good-news, bad-news situations.

Such was the case for the Oregon State football team in its first full-contact workout of training camp Saturday afternoon in Reser Stadium.

The defense, with its all-new starting secondary and defensive ends, came through with a stellar performance. That raised concerns over the offense.

"I thought there was evident speed on defense, big plays defensively and aggression," coach Mike Riley said. "I thought the defensive surge was awesome. The interior was about the same."

Nothing was easy for the offense in the 97-play scrimmage. To be fair, starting tailback Jacquizz Rodgers was held out because Riley didn't want him taking any hits.

Starting flanker James Rodgers didn't participate except for returning punts. Starting right guard Gregg Peat rested a sore hand.

"The defense played really well today," quarterback Ryan Katz said. "The timing was a little off. So we have a lot of stuff to work on for Monday."

The defense intercepted five passes, recovered a fumble and pressured the quarterback much of the day. The offense was forced to punt four times.

Defensive end Kevin Frahm, Ben Terry, Matt LaGrone and Gabe Miller would have mauled the quarterbacks if they were allowed to hit them.

"They are good," defensive coordinator Mark Banker said. "We feel good about the fact that we have four ends who are replacements for last year's group. We feel good about the four ends as far as who plays and when they play. There's no dropoff."

All the offensive tackles had trouble containing the ends, including starters Mike Remmers and Michael Philipp.

"We've always had trouble with our defensive ends (in practice)," Riley said. "They are good players, and our tackles have to do a lot of work playing against our defensive ends."

The picks were not stat padders that came off rookies, but starter Sean Canfield and the two battling for the backup spot.

Suaesi Tuimaunei intercepted a Canfield pass in the end zone. Devin Unga and Rashaad Reynolds intercepted Peter Lalich.

Keo Camat returned a Katz pass 60 yards inside the 5-yard line. However, that one was tipped into the air. Sean Martin grabbed a Cody Vaz pass.

"Oh, you know, they played the way they needed to," Banker said of the pass defenders. "They did a good job being in position and being responsible for coverage."

The offense could only muster four scoring drives, two touchdowns and two field goals of 20 and 42 yards by backup kicker Matt Barker.

Katz, the No. 2 quarterback at the moment, led the team to a touchdown on the second drive when running back Jordan Jenkins scored on a 14-yard run. The other touchdown came on a 9-yard pass from Katz to Jordan Bishop.

"It went OK," Katz said. "There are things to improve on. We had a lot of good stuff to go in the film room to look at."

He completed 11 of 18 passes for 121 yards. Starter Canfield was 6 of 14 for 69 yards, while Lalich went 2 of 8 for seven yards.

"We were disrupted a lot," Riley said. "Each quarterback had some great plays, but had too many bad plays. And they had situations with bad plays made worse. And that's important for a quarterback not to do."

Along with the turnovers and vulnerable pass blocking, there were a slew of procedure and offside penalties.

There's one more week of training camp, capped off with a scheduled scrimmage next Saturday. However, the Beavers have so many injuries Riley is undecided if there will be one.

"It was good for the mental part," Riley said of the scrimmage. "You call it a scrimmage, people show up and guys get nervous. I don't think we had that many procedure penalties in a year."