What's Next For Oregon State Football After Firing Trent Bray?

Oregon State officials made the chise to move on from Trent Bray after an 0-7 start to the 2025 season. It's a difficult transition for any program, but the Beavers find themselves in a particularly difficult situation looking for their third head coach since Gary Andersen was hired in 2015.

Here are three things to keep in mind with regards to Beaver football as they keep fighting through the final weeks of the season under the direction of interim head coach Robb Akey.

Recruits are going to decommit

This is, unfortunately, an inevitable part of letting go of your head coach. The question now isn't whether recruits are going to decommit-it's how many of them will. ATH Lance Mcgee already announced his decommitment from Oregon State less than three hours after Bray's firing, and more players in the 2026 class are likely to follow over the next few days. While there is certainly still time for OSU to bring in new players to next year's class, they are unlikely to get the quality of class they were hoping for going into this season, as many of the better recruits are expected to decommit. As a result, the Beavers will want to focus on making up for this in their 2027 class, once their head coaching situation is more stable.

MORE: Oregon State Announces Interim Head Coach Robb Akey

The offense might become less reliant on the run

As the season drags on, it's become clearer with every passing week that Oregon State's offensive line is bad at run blocking. Because of this, interim head coach Robb Akey(who has decades of experience) might want to make changes to the overall offensive system. In his time at Duke, Maalik Murphy found success under an air-raid type of offense, where he was able to find multiple targets on all different sorts of routes. Part of his struggles this season could be due to the spread style of offense that the Beavers have been rolling with, which doesn't seem to be where Murphy is most comfortable. While it's unlikely that the Beavers will make a full-on transition to a completely different offensive style, it wouldn't be surprising to see their overall percentage of pass plays go up.

Anything could happen the rest of this season

Ironically, when you consider the title of this article, it will be hard to know what exactly to expect from this Oregon State team over the final five weeks of this 2025 season. There is a world where a football team rolls over and simply goes through the motions after the firing of their head coach. On the other hand, we could also see rejuvinated energy and a desire to fight for the new guy at the helm, especially if the players buy into Akey's message and the overall direction that he has in mind for the program. We should be able to tell a decent amount based on the team's effort and performance against FCS Lafayette this weekend, and see if the Beavers have that motivation to grind through the winnable games remaining on their schedule. If so, things could get more interesting when Washington State comes to town on November 1st.

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