Oregon State Football Preview 2025: One More Year Before the Beavers Get Back to the Conference Grind

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Offense & Defense Breakdowns
Season Prediction, Win Total, Keys to Season

Oregon State should’ve been included in the Big 12 expansion party, but everything should turn out okay.

The new Pac-12 next year won’t be anywhere near as good as the old version - it’ll be more like Mountain West MAX - but at least there’s hope for a real conference life as opposed to the two-school quorum making up what amounts to the Pac-2.

The football team lost head coach Jonathan Smith to Michigan State, along with almost all of the key players to the transfer portal, and the relatively inexperienced starting 22 became a problem once the lack of depth was exposed.

But there was a win over a Big Ten team. It was against a horrible Purdue squad, but it still counted. But there was a loss to a 3-10 Nevada, too. There was a win over Washington State, but that was the only fun moment in a 1-6 finish.

This year’s schedule is a little easier - Oregon at least has to make the trip to Corvallis - and there’s far more depth under second-year head coach Trent Bray.

Remember, from 2014 to 2020 - from Mike Riley, to Gary Andersen, to Jonathan Smith - the program failed to win more than five games in a season, and failed to get to three victories in three of them.

This is still a rebuild, but things have settled, Oregon State has a better team than last year’s version, head man Trent Bray knows what he’s doing now, and …

Yeah, it would’ve been nice to be in the Big 12. But next season Pac-12 life starts to begin again.

Offense & Defense Breakdowns
Season Prediction, Win Total, Keys to Season