Beavers bury demons alongside Ducks, 1 win from repeat glory

MIAMI — Football, despite its grand and elegant design, is a problem that cannot be solved. For all the mathematical precision and quantifiable reactions to chosen actions, perfection is impossible. But for four quarters in Miami, and with the eyes of the football-watching world fixed on the field, Oregon State got as close as any team dares to dream.

“That was flow-state, man,” linebacker Will Armistead said after the 47-17 rout. “The stuff you dream about. Every moment felt like slow motion and a flash. Everything slowed down so you can see it perfect, but you’re faster than you’ve ever been.”

For four years the Beaver seniors were tormented by their in-state rivals. They rebuilt a program, won more games than any four-year class in school history, and delivered national prominence. They shattered records, brought home a title, and promised more.

Yet Oregon remained the big dog at the bowl, and every season come feeding time, they reminded the upstarts from Corvallis that blue bloods still eat first. Even this year, when Micah Thoman and the offense blew the ink off record book pages, the Ducks were the unforgiving gatekeepers barring OSU from getting their upper-echelon membership card. An early season loss was a stinging reminder: The Beavers might be winners, but they were just passing through this part of town; renting an Air BnB in the neighborhood Oregon calls home.

So if Oregon State wanted to get behind the velvet rope, they needed more than just back-to-back titles. They needed to beat the Ducks, they needed to do it in the playoffs, and it had to be without help.

“This wasn’t just like any other game. I know we’re supposed to say we treat every game the same, and handle our business like always and all that, but nah brother,” said senior Justin Childs. “This was like Rocky training for Drago. We weren’t practicing for this game, we were practicing for this game against them.”

OSU showed their work from the opening kickoff, playing like they were in Oregn’s huddle and using every bit of that anticipatory edge to inflict maximum damage. The Beavers’ opening drive rolled right down to the four yard line in a blink, and when they went for it on fourth and goal, the entire stadium seemed sure quarterback JJ Bailey’s pass to Thoman was going to open the scoring. But a massive hit from two defensive backs jarred the ball loose, and the bile started to creep into fans’ throats. Oregon, always bigger, stronger, and faster, had killed another dream.

That was the last time there was any doubt.

The first Oregon play was a rush snuffed out at the goal line, the second saw Childs rip through two blockers to bring down quarterback Josh Winters for a no-doubt safety. OSU had taken back control, and they ruled with ruthless efficiency. The Ducks kicked out of bounds for a penalty on the kickoff, and Bailey was in the endzone on an end-around scramble less than two minutes later. The defense mauled Winters again, and the Beavers got the ball back with 1:48 to go in the first quarter. Backup running back Cornell Hatcher Jr. crossed the goal line with 28 seconds still on the clock.

“We knew their defense was great, almost as great as ours, so we knew we had to play clean the whole way,” said Bailey. “When we do that, we have the wheel. We can go wherever we want to go.”

And the Beavers drove it like they stole it. By the end of the third quarter, it was 33-10 and every flash of life by the green and gold was met with a thunderclap from the orange and black. Winters fought valiantly to keep hope alive, but Childs, Armistead, and their young charges put him in absolute hell. The senior was sacked six times for -59 yards, gave up a safety, threw a pick, and completed only 16 passes. He was a man trapped in a phone booth with a rhinoceros- overwhelmed by violence with nowhere to run. The senior managed to get a long TD late in the game thanks to a substitution mix-up, but he lived a miserable lifetime in 60 minutes.

“Once Bulldog got the safety, we felt something change,” said Armistead, who had eight tackles, four TFL, and a sack. “It was like spotting someone’s tell or seeing someone tipping pitches in baseball. We started to sense what they were about to try and our sense was right over and over. That almost never happens like that, but we knew exactly where to be and we didn’t miss.”

If Winters was a man fighting for his life, poor running back Fred Lyerla was flatlined from the first snap. The Big Ten rushing leader ran 20 times for 39 yards, and only two of those yards were gained before contact. These Ducks, for all their talent, walked straight into a combine thresher; one guzzling high-octane propellant and kicking out primo horsepower. With the yards lost to sacks, Oregon finished with -16 on the ground and went 3-for-15 on third down.

“Nobody was walking out of here with any questions. I kept telling our huddle that,” Childs said. “We have to beat em, and we have to make it f—-ing stick.”

Childs delivered the message himself in the fourth quarter, extinguishing the last flickers of “crazier-things-have-happened” hope for Oregon with a titanic fourth-down sack with a little over five minutes to go and the Beavers up 40-10. While the defense was sending blood and feathers everywhere, Bailey and the offense dissected what many thought was the best pound-for-pound pass-stopping unit in the country. The senior went 26-for-37, cruising to 332 yards and three touchdowns. Three receivers had 70 yards or more, but it was once again Thoman’s show.

“I don’t remember having 12 catches,” he said at the lectern after the game, looking skeptically at the box score laid out by the microphone. “It was 12? Someone check that. Could be right, it was that kind of game. The good things keep happening and you lose track of the details at a certain point.”

It was, in fact, 12 catches, and the all-world tight end turned them into 180 yards and a pair of touchdowns. A big chunk of that was a 53-yard catch and run score on the possession following Childs’ drive-ending sack, putting an exclamation point on an exquisitely crafted statement.

“I know I joke a lot, but that one was big,” Thoman said. “My legs had all the juice on that one. It felt like if I could get to the promised land, it would kill off those demons or something. I think we needed it. I for sure needed it.”

Halfback Josh Charbonnet rounded out the perfection (or near-perfection), running for 167 yards on 24 carries, scoring once on the ground and once through the air. He had nearly 100 rush yards in the first half alone and has more than 1,500 on the season, emerging this year as yet another bonafide Beaver draft target.

OSU may have had the burden of history going into the contest, but they delivered the game everyone will remember from this era. Hear the train whistle blow, feel the rails rumble, get-off-the-tracks-or-get-torn-apart type stuff. Domination nearing the point of degradation delivered by players Oregon will have to face again at the next level.

But the NFL can wait. There’s work to be done and a final chapter to write. One more win and Oregon State will join Georgia, Alabama, and Nebraska programs that won back-to-back national titles in the modern era. That’s an undeniably elite legacy and would mean the graduating stars leave behind a true-blue dynasty. Better still, they could do so knowing the status has staying power since the balance of in-state authority so clearly shifted in the Orange Bowl.

And, as it has so many times this season, fate wove a little extra drama into the fiber. One last loose end to tie up.

Who do the Beavers draw in that defining final game? None other than the top-seeded Clemson Tigers, led by (cough) Heisman-winning quarterback Christopher Vizzina. Say, anyone know if there’s something significant about that?