Quarterbacks Gevani McCoy, left, and Gabarri Johnson drop back to throw during Oregon State's fall football camp in Corvallis on Wednesday.

CORVALLIS — When we last left the Oregon State football scene, there were issues with the Beavers’ offense, particularly through the air.

This took place during the team’s spring game in April, when balls often flew everywhere but their intended target. As understandable as it was — new quarterbacks, young receivers, several key players on the sideline, a new coaching staff and philosophy — this is a no-excuses business.

The Beavers went to work in May, June and July. With football camp beginning this week, there’s noticeable progress. How much? That will reveal itself over the next two weeks with a couple of lengthy scrimmages, and more so when the 2024 season begins Aug. 31 against Idaho State.

Offensive coordinator Ryan Gunderson said the offense was introduced to the team in the spring, then reinstalled in early summer, again in early July and then this week.

“This is the fourth time around, so I feel much better about it,” Gunderson said Thursday. “The mistakes we’re making are 300-level mistakes rather than 100-level mistakes.”

Gunderson said questions he gets from players have become good ones. He feels the offensive players now know so much about the basics that “they’re probably starting to get bored by it a little … that’s good to bore them. We want to be really good at the core of our offense.”

The basics of Gunderson’s offense aren’t complicated. Senior running back Jam Griffin said “it’s been quite easy” to learn. Junior receiver Trent Walker said he didn’t sense any handwringing over the offense’s fits and starts from last spring.

“There wasn’t too much frustration because everything was new,” Walker said. “Football is fun. We had a lot to improve on. I think you guys saw in the first two days (of camp), we were significantly better than last spring.”

It’s not just knowledge that has elevated the offense’s progress. It’s personnel. The Beavers were without key players during the spring — like four-year starting offensive lineman Joshua Gray, transfers Darrius Clemons (WR, Michigan) and Gerad Christian-Lichtenhan (OT, Colorado) — and depth at tight end. There’s also a full complement of quarterbacks, as Ben Gulbranson and Gabarri Johnson missed big stretches of spring ball.

There’s a lot to sort out over the next three weeks, including two important scrimmages where jobs are sometimes decided. The key question to be answered in August is starting quarterback. The contenders are Gulbranson, who begins his fifth year at OSU, and transfers Gevani McCoy (Idaho) and Johnson (Missouri).

Gunderson is specific and vague as to who plays quarterback, and what the offense looks like, and can produce.

Gunderson says his starting quarterback is “going to make good decisions. When we make the right call against the right defense, they’re going to make the play. And then when we are in a bad situation, not making a bad play worse.”

It could be quarterbacks.

“We’ll do what’s best for the team, best for the offense. If that’s playing two guys, we’ll be playing two guys,” Gunderson said.

In Johnson, Gulbranson and McCoy, Gunderson said he sees a group that has made a decided jump in knowledge from the spring.

“With that, you get a natural increase in confidence. They feel way better about what they’re doing right now,” Gunderson said. Where it becomes murky is how Oregon State will go about producing offense. Gunderson won’t be cornered by the label of RPOs, or big passing game, or a staple of the past several Beavers season, a physical running game. OSU may play fast at times, slow at others.

“I’m not a big stat sheet guy,” Gunderson said. “Only the top of the stat sheet where it has the score. That’ll be what’s most important.”