Rewinding Oregon State’s 36-24 win over UCLA on Saturday at Reser Stadium with 5 takeaways:

1. The break comes at an excellent time

Oregon State heads into the bye week ranked 12th in the country with a 6-1 record. The Beavers have won three consecutive games, and quarterback DJ Uiagalelei is as sharp as he’s been all season. Is this a good time to take a week off? Wouldn’t the Beavers be better off playing while they’re streaking?

There’s a case to be made, but the bye week seems to be coming at a good time. Oregon State has been going full out since Aug. 2, a stretch of 11 weeks. That’s a lot for young adults. The Beavers aren’t completely beat up, but there are several players who could use the time off to heal. School started three weeks ago, so it’s a good time to assess how things are going academically. It’s also ideal for the coaches to clear their heads, look at how the team has played through seven games and make some tweaks for the stretch run.

Hot or not, OSU coach Jonathan Smith said this week’s break is welcome.

“We’ve got some guys who are banged up. These games are physical. Proud of the guys the way they finished this one off knowing that we get an off week, and we get to recover and get refreshed,” Smith said.

2. Run defense needs work over the break

If there’s an area in need of immediate attention, it’s Oregon State’s run defense. Ranked among the top 20 nationally two weeks ago, it’s fallen off a cliff after getting run over by California and UCLA. A week after giving up 241 yards to the Bears, UCLA ran for 284 yards, the most given up by an OSU defense in almost two years.

To put the crisis in simpler terms: the Beavers gave up 336 rushing yards the first five games. They’ve given up 525 the past two weeks.

That’s a problem, as Oregon State has yet to play Oregon, the conference’s No. 1 running team at 221.7 yards a game. Even the Beavers’ next opponent, Arizona, can produce on the ground, averaging 165 yards a game.

3. One reason for defensive breakdowns

Oregon State’s defense couldn’t get off the field against UCLA. One stat backs this up. The Bruins ran 84 offensive plays, the most by an OSU opponent since Arizona amassed 88 plays during a game in 2019. In six previous games this season, Oregon State opponents averaged 63.7 plays a game, with a high of 66 (San Diego State).

4. Jack Velling soaring on stat sheet, record book

Over an eight-day stretch, Oregon State tight end Jack Velling has made a name for himself, after scoring five touchdowns combined in wins over California and UCLA. Velling has seven touchdowns this season, tied for second among all Pac-12 receivers and easily best among tight ends. Velling leads the country in touchdowns for a tight end.

Velling needs one touchdown reception to break OSU’s single-season record for a tight end. He’s tied with Tim Euhus (2003) and Joe Newton (2004, 2006) with seven.

Newton has OSU’s career record with 15. Velling, a sophomore, has 10.

5. Oregon State developing a potent receiving trio

There’s Velling in the end zone. But Oregon State receivers moving the chains are Anthony Gould and Silas Bolden. Both rank among the Pac-12′s top 15 in receptions and yardage, notable because Oregon State leans hard on its running game. Bolden has 32 catches for 456 yards, and Gould 27 receptions for 443 yards.

Bolden and Gould are on pace for 750-yard seasons. Oregon State hasn’t had as much as one since 2019, when Isaiah Hodgins had 1,171 receiving yards. The last time the Beavers had two receivers with at least 750 receiving yards was 2013: Brandin Cooks (1,730 yards), Richard Mullaney (788).

6. He’s Automatticus

You know who no one is taLking about? The kicker. Which is the way it should be when the kicker is delivering. Oregon State’s Atticus Sappington went 3-for-3 on field goal tries Saturday, nailing kicks from 26, 36 and 43 yards. It’s the second time in Sappington’s career that he went 3-of-3 on field goals (2022, at Utah). The third-year sophomore, who won the job during camp as Everett Hayes aggravated an injury from last season, is 5 of 6 on field goals, the only miss from 48 yards. Sappington, unheralded when he entered OSU in 2021 as a walk-on, is 10 of 13 on field goal tries for his career.

7. Here we go again with Pac-12 (refs) after dark

Oregon State punter Josh Green was dangerously tackled by UCLA’s Carl Jones Jr. following a fourth-quarter punt. Just as Green kicked the ball, Jones came from the right side and sent the OSU punter flying. Green needed trainers before leaving the field. There was no flag. As the official explained, Green – who took two steps to his right after catching the snap — was outside the tackle box when he kicked the ball, making him fair game.

Had that been the case, then OK. But after watching video of the play, Green launched his punt within inches of the tackle box border; the tackle box is the width between the left tackle and right tackle. Jones was not blocked into Green. He came for Green and got him low. It was an extremely dangerous play. Was Green inside the tackle box? It was so close, it’s impossible for an official to say whether he was or wasn’t. There should have been a flag.

8. Time to take this show to Vegas

Oregon State is 7-for-7 in winning pre-game coin tosses this season. How improbable is this? Statistically, the odds of winning seven consecutive coin flips is eight-tenths of one percent. Put in simpler terms, if you tried a series of seven coin flips 1,000 times, statistically you’d pull seven straight eight times.

Your next question, of course, is what are the odds of going 12-for-12, the number of games in a college football regular season? It’s .0002, meaning if you did a series of seven coin flips 10,000 times, statistically you’d pull off seven straight twice.

That’s enough nerd talk for a day.

Oregon State Beavers football

Fans rush the field after the No. 19 Oregon State Beavers defeat the No. 10 Utah Utes, 21-7, in a college football game at Reser Stadium in Corvallis, Oregon on Friday, Sept. 29, 2023. Sean Meagher/The Oregonian

9. Can we stop with the routine field storming?

I get students rushing the field when Oregon State beat Utah. The Utes were No. 10 at the time, even if no one really believed Utah was that good. If the Beavers find a way to beat Washington later this season, that might be worth a field rush. But c’mon, can we have a few standards when it comes to an on-field celebration? Though it wasn’t the full-on rush we saw at Utah, there were far too many people on the field shortly after Saturday’s game ended. It’s getting to become a little too commonplace at Reser Stadium. Special means special. Not every win requires a midfield sea of humanity.

10. He said it

UCLA coach Chip Kelly, on Oregon State quarterback DJ Uiagalelei: “He did a really good job running Jonathan’s offense. Jonathan has a great system. He ran it at Washington. He’s had a lot of success here. I think DJ has really gravitated to what Jonathan is doing.”

Nick Daschel reported from Corvallis