Inside Providence Park, the creaky plastic seats, and hallowed North End begins to fill with world-class fans ready to jump, clap, and sing for victory. 

The noise swells, and the supporters sing, “When I Root, I root for the….Beavers?”

It won’t be the Portland Timbers or Thorns kicking, throwing, and scoring in front of the famous Timbers Army and Rose City Riveters supporters section this Saturday at 5 pm, it will be a showdown between the 2-0 Oregon State Beavers and the 2-0 Montana State Bobcats. 

Saturday’s Providence Park meeting between the Oregon State Beavers and the incoming Montana State Bobcats will be a game day that fans won’t soon forget. 

This will be the first time that Oregon State has played in the former Multnomah Civic Stadium, now Providence Park, since 1986.

Jayden Grant, a West Linn High School Graduate, and Kitan Oladapo, a Central Catholic Highschool Graduate, will be keen on showing everyone what Rose City Football is all about, both of them having high-profile high school games being played at Providence Park. 

Both Grant and Oladapo lead the aggressive Beaver defense with consecutive Pac-12 defensive player of the week honors these past two weeks. The Beavers are prime and ready to continue their success against the Bobcats.

Montana State reporter, Victor Flores, states that the Bobcats will be missing their four best running backs, all out with injury. 

This provides a special opportunity to an already hot Beaver secondary. It would not be surprising if the Bobcats work themselves into plenty of throwing downs, especially on third down. The Beaver secondary is poised to lay the hammer down against the potentially one-dimensional Bobcats.

The Beavers have notable injuries of their own, with running back Trey Lowe and star tight end, Luke Musgrave, unable to suit up for the Beavers in Portland. 

This likely will have little impact on the Beaver run game as running backs, Deshaun Fenwick and Damien Martinez, have carried much of the rushing load this season so far. Coupled with coach Johnathan Smith’s hardened commitment to a healthy inside run game, Montana State provides the Beavers with an opportunity to improve on its first two performances. 

Where there is a healthy run game, there are play-action opportunities to be had. Chance Nolan has proven so far that he is more capable of hitting receivers in these key moments, having 47-yard and 74-yard touchdown throws so far this season. 

For Nolan, he will have ambitions to continue to clean up the inconsistencies and little mistakes from weeks prior. 

Holding a touchdown-interception ratio of +1 (3-2) going into week three surely doesn’t jump off the page, so the Beaver’s passing game will seek to gain some strong momentum going into the premier test of USC next Saturday, Sep 24. 

The Football Season is in full swing now, and it’s time for the strides that the boys are making in practice to create meaningful results on the playing field. The entire Beaver Squad will need to improve on penalties as they have conceded  an average of 82.5 yards on penalties per game. 

This is not going to be a part of the recipe for a successful season going forward. But do not worry. Conditions are prime for the Beavers to have a successful year on offense. The Beaver’s average of 6.9-yards per play, scoring over 30 plus points per game against two quality opponents speaks volumes about their offense. 

It is hard to think about the Beavers’ two prior games without mentioning senior swiss-army knife Jack Colletto, and fans should hope to see a heavy dose of Colletto around the endzone this week.

There are further implications that may arise after the result of this game. If the Beavers are to win, there is an extremely high chance that ESPN’s College Gameday will travel to Corvallis to cover the OSU versus USC game on Sep. 24. This will allow the Beavers to play in another nationally televised game, exposing their ever-growing talent to the rest of the nation.

First off though, the challenge at hand is to dismantle the Bobcats at Providence Park, and the rest will come from there.