Oregon State needed more than a win Saturday night in El Paso.
After opening the season 0-2, the Beavers needed another sign that the 52-17 win over Montana wasn’t simply one good night. They needed to go on the road, beat a team they were supposed to beat, and keep some momentum going before Pac-12 play began.
A 33-7 win over UTEP accomplished all of that.
Oregon State controlled Saturday’s game almost from the opening kick. The Beavers marched 75 yards on their first possession, with AJ Newberry finishing the drive on a 12-yard touchdown run. They added a field goal on their next possession and another touchdown later in the quarter to build a 17-0 lead. By halftime, Oregon State led 20-0, and UTEP had managed only 31 yards of offense.
That start might be the most encouraging part of the night.
A team coming off a comfortable win has plenty of ways to make its next game unnecessarily difficult. A slow start on the road, a turnover, a couple of busted assignments, and suddenly an opponent that shouldn’t be hanging around believes it can win. Oregon State never allowed UTEP to reach that point.
The Beavers finished with 451 total yards while holding the Miners to 222. Oregon State averaged 7.9 yards per play and scored on five of its first six possessions, excluding the end of the first half. This wasn’t a game that required a fourth-quarter escape. The Beavers grabbed control and mostly kept it.
Braden Atkinson was once again at the center of everything.
Atkinson completed 24 of 34 passes for 301 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. It was his fourth consecutive 300-yard passing game to begin his Oregon State career, and he now has 1,423 passing yards and 11 touchdown passes through four games.
At some point, this stops looking like a quarterback getting hot to begin the season and starts looking like something Oregon State can count on every Saturday.
Atkinson has given the offense an identity very quickly. He threw for 376 yards at Houston, 413 against Texas Tech and 333 against Montana before adding another 301 against UTEP. Oregon State entered the season with plenty of questions under a new coaching staff, but the quarterback doesn’t seem near the top of that list anymore.
Neither does the identity of his favorite target.
Freshman Jesse Legree caught six passes for 109 yards and two touchdowns Saturday. He has now topped 100 receiving yards in each of his first four college games, joining Mike Hass as the only Oregon State receiver to put together at least four consecutive 100-yard games. Hass reached five straight in 2005.
Through four games, Legree has 23 catches for 585 yards and six touchdowns. Those aren’t numbers that need much embellishment, especially for a freshman who played his first college game three weeks ago.
The encouraging part for Oregon State is that Saturday wasn’t only the Atkinson and Legree show.
Newberry ran for a career-high 111 yards on only 11 carries, an average of better than 10 yards per attempt. His 35-yard run was also a career-long, and Oregon State finished with 150 rushing yards after entering the game with just 225 rushing yards through its first three games.
That matters moving forward.
Atkinson has shown Oregon State can throw the ball, and Legree has already proven defenses can’t casually leave him in single coverage all afternoon. If the Beavers can consistently produce something close to what Newberry gave them against UTEP, opposing defenses will have a much harder choice to make.
The defense gave Oregon State another reason to be optimistic.
UTEP managed only six yards and didn’t record a first down during the opening quarter. The Miners had just 31 total yards at halftime and finished with 222 for the game. Oregon State also recorded seven sacks, its most since collecting nine against California in 2019, and intercepted two passes.
That’s a pretty good night, no matter the opponent.
UTEP finally reached the end zone midway through the third quarter, cutting Oregon State’s lead to 20-7. The Beavers answered with a 75-yard touchdown drive of their own, capped by Atkinson’s second touchdown pass to Legree. That response effectively ended whatever small chance UTEP had of turning the night interesting.
Oregon State also did something it hadn’t done in a while. It won away from Reser Stadium.
The victory snapped a 10-game road losing streak that stretched back to Oregon State’s win at San Diego State in 2024. For a program coming off a 2-10 season and now starting over under JaMarcus Shephard, learning how to win on the road isn’t some meaningless footnote. It’s another small piece of evidence that this year’s team might be heading in a better direction.
One glaring problem stood out, and it wasn’t exactly hidden.
Oregon State committed 11 penalties for 120 yards. That’s a lot of free yardage to give an opponent, and it didn’t hurt Saturday badly because the Beavers dominated most other important areas of the game. Against better teams, 120 penalty yards can turn a comfortable afternoon into a loss very quickly.
That’s the obvious cleanup job for Shephard and his staff this week. Oregon State has enough offensive firepower to overcome mistakes against UTEP, but relying on that every week isn’t much of a plan.
Still, it’s hard to complain much about where the Beavers stand after the way September started.
Oregon State lost its first two games against Houston and Texas Tech, then responded by beating Montana 52-17 and UTEP 33-7. Over the past two weeks, the Beavers have outscored their opponents 85-24 and shown considerably more balance than they did early in the season.
Now the schedule gets more meaningful.
Oregon State opens Pac-12 play next Saturday at Colorado State. San Diego State comes to Corvallis a week later, followed by Washington State on October 17. The Beavers will eventually travel to Fresno State and Boise State as they try to establish where they fit in the first season of the rebuilt conference.
Beating Montana and UTEP doesn’t answer that question. It does, however, put Oregon State in a much better position to find out.
The Beavers are back to 2-2. They have a quarterback throwing for 300 yards every week, a freshman receiver who has been nearly impossible to contain, a running back coming off his first 100-yard game, and a defense that just spent most of Saturday night in UTEP’s backfield.
Two weeks ago, Oregon State was still searching for its first win of the JaMarcus Shephard era. Now the Beavers have won two straight and head into conference play with something they didn’t have after their 0-2 start: momentum and a much clearer idea of what kind of team they can be.
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