Midway through the 4th quarter of No. 19 Oregon State’s 21-7 win over No. 10 Utah on Friday night at Reser Stadium in Corvallis, the Beavers’ shifty receiver Silas Bolden carried the ball for an unceremonious 8-yard gain, and a rather startling statistic popped up.

The yardage gave Bolden 151 total yards on the day, just as many as the entire Utah offense.

Such was Friday night for the talented Bolden, who’d finish with 6 receptions for 100 yards and a score and 2 rushes for 53 yards and a touchdown.

And such was the game for the Utes offense, which started on a down note and never got better. Starting quarterback Nate Johnson completed just 8-of-23 passes, was benched for Bryson Barnes and then pressed back into action when Barnes was injured, and Utah’s passing game managed just 141 yards, 41 of them coming on one play.

With Cam Rising still out with a torn ACL for his 5th straight game to start the 2023 season, one has to wonder if time is running out this talented but tortured Utah squad, one with issues that go much deeper than the quarterback position.

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That snapping sound you hear is once again teeth on bone, the crunch of the Pac-12 characteristically cannibalizing itself.

It started last week, with the Beavers the first team to fall pray to a lower-ranked conference opponent. Then-No. 14 OSU’s near-comeback against the the No. 21 Washington State Cougars in Pullman sent the Beavers tumbling down the rankings, something Utah will certainly experience after Friday’s debacle. Had Oregon State defeated Wazzu then backed it up with this blowout, Jonathan Smith’s squad would have found itself knocking on the door of the top 10, which already includes 4 other Pac-12 teams ranked 7th through 10th.

That is life in the Pac-12: One slip-up, and all benefit of the doubt goes out the window.

Oregon State will have to settle for its first win over a top-10 Utes opponent since 1991, as thorough a win the Beavers have had in recent years. They weren’t flawless against a stout Utah defense, far from it. OSU managed to convert just 4-of-15 on 3rd down and had 11 penalties for 100 yards.

But they were much better than the Utes this day, as DJ Uiagalelei completed 14-of-25 passes for 204 yards and a score with an interception.

Down the stretch, the Beavers were even milking the clock.

“I thought it was a nice response from last week, which didn’t go our way,” OSU coach Jonathan Smith said. “They came out from the start and wanted to fly around and make a point and play really well. … That’s a good football team over there, and that’s the way the conference schedule is going to be, week in and week out.”

The Beavers gained 358 yards against a powerful Utes defense that had allowed about 100 fewer yards per game, one that was coming off a 14-7 win over No. 22 UCLA, holding the Bruins to 243 total yards.

The problem for Utah? It only had 219 yards against UCLA, then 198 on Friday, a 2-game total of 417 yards — a bad single game for Rising and the Utes last year.

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Watching the Utah offense labor under the youngster Johnson, you feel bad for the kid. He’s completed just 17 of his last 40 passes for 218 yards. It’s not that he’s not looking downfield — it’s that he has no idea where to look at all.

“We just couldn’t get things done,” Johnson said, according to KSL’s Josh Furlong. “Some easily missed throws, missed blocks, protection breakdown; it was a struggle tonight. Credit to their defense, they had a great game plan, they played their tails off. They had a really good defense and we’ve just gotta clean up things next week.”

With both the running game and passing game altered by injuries to Ja’Quinden Jackson and Brant Kuithe, the Utes are lucky to still be competitive. But Friday kind of felt like the other shoe dropping. They’ve been playing with fire all year and it finally caught up to them.

Now they head into a bye week with Whittingham and the coaching staff needing to soothe some wounded egos. Andy Ludwig and the offensive staff needs to reimagine the offense under Johnson for the long haul, almost creating parallel paths, one with Rising and one with Johnson, even if the fact that Rising has been cleared to return full-go in practice but hasn’t been game-ready is growing increasingly perplexing.

But it’s becoming increasingly obvious, as well, that Utah’s entire hopes rest on Rising.

“I’m not going to point out one position group or one facet of the offense,” Whittingham said. “We’re just not getting it done. We’re not in sync, we’re not productive, we’re not doing anything real well on offense right now.”