App State HC Dowell Loggains On Oregon State: "They're Going To Create Problems"
With the Oregon State football team (0-5) preparing to face App State (2-2) at Kidd-Brewer Stadium on Saturday, BeaversEdge recaps everything that Mountaineers head coach Dowell Loggains said about the Beavers!
💬 Wondering what other Oregon State fans are saying?
Head Coach Dowell Loggains On Oregon State & MORE
Q: And then with this week’s opponent, Oregon State is 0-5. Their competition’s different than App State’s competition. App State’s two and two. They’re going to be fighting for that first win. What’s the spirit of the team going into hosting Oregon State, even though they are 0-5?
“Yeah, you guard against that, but you made the great point, is, look at who they’ve lost to. They’ve lost to really good football teams, to P4 teams with big NIL budgets. And you go back and you look at how they lost to Houston. I mean, they had a lead and they lost a lead because of special teams mishaps. And the line between winning and losing is so fine. It’s so fine. And sometimes the game gets away from you and you look at the end of the season, and it’s really the difference between having a really good season and a bad season. Do you win those close games? Do you eliminate? Do you continue to get better as the season goes on?
I look at us last year, South Carolina, we’re sitting there three and three and our fan base is freaking out. They don’t think we have a quarterback. And next thing you know, we went six in a row and we’re sitting there at the end of the season saying, are we in the college football playoffs or we’re not? Like, let’s see how this last weekend goes and see if we get in.
So, you know, you got to understand what it takes to win. You’re building our culture. You’re building a football team with a bunch of new people. And, you know, and you just keep coaching and educating because on social media, they’re going to look and they’re going to see their fans. The people are going to tell our players sitting here of how they’re O-ing this and O-ing that.
Well, I’ve also been the O-ing 10 team that was the New York Jets that beat the LA Rams and Cleveland Browns who were, who were also playoff contenders that year and went to the playoffs that year. So record, like you’re trying to go 1-0 this week. We’re going to have an opponent that’s really good, that has lost some really close games to really good teams. So we have a big challenge ahead of us this week.”
Q: Support-wise from the fans, maybe the loudest atmosphere that you’ve experienced here as a head coach, looking forward to any of that home-field advantage kicking in?
“It’s going to be a massive recruiting weekend for us. And you want to flip this thing around and you want to win and get back to where everyone wants to get this place, you’ve got to recruit. And it is about Johnnies and Joes, not the Xs and Os. So we need everyone to show up and show out and be loud from start to finish, which they have, they have every, if we’re 34 hours away at Boise, they’ve shown up. So I expect our crowd to be awesome like they always are.”
Q: As you look at OSU, what they are on the field, recognizing their competition level, what are they trying to do offensively and defensively that you see and say, yeah, I can see what they’re trying to do. They just had a really difficult schedule.
“Yeah, I mean, they’re a pro-style offense. They do a good job. They’re going to create problems. They’re going to lean, I’m sure, formationally on the Boise State stuff, because Boise did a good job with some formation stuff, creating some bunches, stacks, making sure they’re blocking safeties, were able to move the pocket to create explosives.
It’s such a copycat league or profession. And when you’re looking to formationally, like we better own what we did defensively against Boise because they did their pro-style offense. And they’re going to look at the themes and the schemes that they were trying to attack us on.
And then offensively, they’re going to do a good job of mixing fronts. They’re going to play a base out of a four down, but they mix in enough odd that creates problems. And the teams that create problems are the guys that can go in and out of fronts and just junk up looks and move and do these things. It’s a bigger, heavier defensive line than we’ve probably played all year. Boise was definitely the strongest group.
You could tell it was homegrown. They’d been in the weight room together. They’ve had a chance to develop these guys. These guys, it’s a heavier group. They would create a different type of challenge for us this week. So when you look at those guys on offense and defense, that’s what I’d say.
And then special teams, we need to continue to find advantages that way. And when you’re in a situation we’re in where you’re two and two and you’ve got to, we have to play comfort football. We have to be good in all three phases. We’re going to continue to find creative ways to maximize what we do have and hide what we don’t have.”
Q: Oregon State likes to pass the ball a lot. So how do you prepare for that this week?
“Yeah, well, I think it starts with our pass rush, number one. We got to do a better job getting home. You got to give Boise a lot of credit, and they blocked us. They’ve got a good offensive line. And so we need to create ways to get home, and whether that looks like what that looks like. You can do that in a variety of ways because the best defenses are going to be the ones, and it happened for us early when you can rush with four and get home and be able to play coverage with seven. Well, a lot of times in the game versus Boise, we knew it was going to be a challenge with their skill guys. So there’s a lot of drop eight. So we wanted to load our coverages, knowing that we were going to have problems with their receivers. And we have a good group of DBs, but it’s a talented group at Boise.
And so you got to look for creative ways to do you run more simulated pressure? Do you blitz more? When you do that, you’re going to put your corners and safeties in situations that are not advantageous all the time, or they got to win one-on-one battles. So you got to feel really good. And it talks about like the ultimate philosophy for all three phases.
And I think it’s just in every sport is how do you apply pressure, and whether it be pressure on the quarterback, Boise. We never controlled the game against Boise. When you don’t win up front, they control the game. They control the game on the offense and defensive line. So they were in control of the game the whole time. They were they can get home with four. And when they, you know, for us offensively, they were coming after us defensively when they knew they could handle our rush. And all of a sudden, they’re going to open it up and throw. And that’s what they averaged eight point four a catch and had nine explosive nine explosives in the game.
So we have to be more creative in finding ways to create matchups with its movement, pressures, those things. But there’s also a risk-reward to everything you do. And the risk, the more risk becomes on the secondary of, hey, we got to get home. And so the way our secondary plays better is we get better pass rush.”
Q: On the excitement of playing Oregon State at home
“We need our fans to show up for this one. This is going to be a big one. It’s a big one because it’s the next game. But it’s also Oregon State coming to town. And we’ve got a bunch of our premier recruits who are going to be here. And I want our recruits to feel what it’s going to be like if they come to school here. And that’s how you build as you win is we got to keep recruiting. And this atmosphere is going to be the biggest selling point we have to what’s different about this place. Well, it’s our fans. It’s the support you’re going to have. It’s a tradition of winning like no other. So we have to have our fans here. We have to have our students here and they got to be here early.”
TALK ABOUT IT ON THE DAM BOARD
LISTEN TO OUR PODCASTS ON APPLE & SPOTIFY
FOLLOW THE STAFF ON TWITTER – @Beavers_Edge, @b_slaught, @DylanCCOn3, @ryan_harlan, & @BroganSlaughter
