The Oregon State Beavers failed to produce memorable offense as they lost a critical game against Stanford on Saturday, 26-15.

Entering this game the Beavers (2-7, 1-5 Pac-12 ) needed a win in order to maintain bowl game eligibility. With a loss today the Beavers will now be out of contention heading into the last 3 regular season games.

OSU was able to hang tough against Stanford’s (6-3, 4-3) stout rush defense, but ultimately the Cardinal’s physicality proved to be too much to handle.

A key component of OSU’s struggle was incurring nine penalties for a total of 102 yards. In a game where neither team was able to pass for 150 yards, self-inflicted wounds such as penalties were costly.

“The administrative penalties are completely inexcusable,” said head coach Gary Andersen. “It’s a continued problem. Obviously, it’s my problem, and I thought I addressed it. Apparently, I didn’t address it well enough. So it’s my fault.”

By contrast, the Cardinal incurred only 4 penalties for a total of 43 yards, consistently maintaining their focus and composure throughout the game.

“They were definitely physical but more than anything they were disciplined,” said senior wide receiver Victor Bolden.” “They made sure that they were in the right spots and did a good job of not making mistakes.”

The Beavers were able to hold star junior running back Christian McCaffrey to only 15 yards in the first quarter. However, the star power, as well as physicality of Stanford, began to chip away at Oregon State’s defense.

The Cardinal finished with a total of 365 rushing yards on 58 attempts. This played a major role in the stark differences between time of possession. Stanford held the ball for 39:04 compared to 20:56 for the Beavers.

Anderson spoke to how big of a factor that time of possession was in the Beaver loss.

“It’s huge, said Anderson. “Can’t win when you play like that. We can’t and we won’t. Can’t possess the football.”

A critical focus for the Beaver offense this week was improving and fixing the finesse mistakes made.

Sophomore quarterback Marcus McMaryion talked after the game about what the Stanford defense did to cause difficulty in the passing game, as well as promote offensive mistakes.

“Really it’s just execution on the offensive part,” said McMaryion. “Everybody doing their job, the same thing over and over. Just got to clean up the little things.”

Coming into this game the Beavers were a 16.5 point underdog against the Cardinal; they finished the game losing by 11. This means that Oregon State is now 7-2 in terms of beating the spread so far this season.

Although the Beavers may be 2-7 on the season, their success in overachieving predictions shows that they are improving on a game-by-game basis throughout the season, giving the team something to build upon.

“I feel our team as a whole has come a long way,” said freshman defensive tackle Elu Aydon. “We can only get better from here. We are this close to the team that I know we can be and that coach (Andersen) wants us to be at.