Blog Swapping...now I'm the pitcher

Here are my answers to Daily Gopher's questions....

1. What a win for the Falcons in week one. What is going on here? Is Bowling Green underrated or was Pittsburg vastly overrate living off their West Virginia upset from 2007?

Well, a little of both. I actually posted that I thought Pitt was making too much of the West Virginia upset, and a couple fans come onboard to dispute me. I didn't remember it as some momentous victory and I had a moment of ironic satisfaction on my way back to the car when I saw a T-shirt for sale that had the score of the game. Pitt has some players, but lots of problems, and we out-coached them big time. Wannstedt is back on the hot seat there. We also made plays on defense, and took care of the ball, both of which helped us win, despite a statistical inferority. So, far, I think we were underrated to start the season, but that's still a work in progress.

2. What can we expect from Tyler Sheehan this week? 163 yard performance on 40 pass attempts isn't very impressive, but Gopher fans remember his career game of 388 yards last year.

No, Tyler did not have big numbers against Pitt. He did get some plays when we needed it, and we were good on third down. His accuracy was somewhat low. He did have some drops, but there are always drops. I think you can expect BG to throw the ball a lot more than we did against Pitt, (more along the lines of what you saw last year), and perhaps a little more upfield, too.

3. Are the Falcons even going to try and run the ball?

Yes, we will. Willie Geter will be back for the game, and we must run the ball for our attack to succeed. In fact, its amazing to us we won the game against Minnestoa last year with as listen running as we did, and I don't think we'd be able to pull it off again. A couple notes on running. First, don't forget that we have two WRs (Anthony Turner and Freddie Barnes) who we direct snap to for some variety, and you can expect to see that again. And second, when the passing game is wokring, it opens up big holes for the running backs, so we will run, even if its a change of pace run.

4. Bowling Green's defense is arguably the best in the MAC, is Minnesota going to be able to rack up 400+ yards again or is there something different about this year's D?

A couple things about this year's D. First, we're very experienced. We have lots back from last year, and we expect to be better than we were last season. At least against Pitt, we tackled better, and we eventually started staying home on the weakside, and that kept their run game bottled up. The defensive backfield is chock full of playmakers. We were worried about the D-Line, but they seemed to rally against Pitt, but that's a week-to-week thing. One other change is that we seemed to be much more aggressive against Pitt, but they were using a West Coast Offense, which I believe gives more blitzing opportunities than a quick-fire spread.

5. It isn't very often that Bowling Green gets to host a BCS program, by my count this is the third in seven years. Even though Minnesota is a lower tier Big Ten team this year is there elevated anticipation for this game?

There is huge anticipation for this game. Check here for proof. While other BCS teams have played here, there has never been a Big 10 team play in our stadium. As someone who has been attending games there for 35 years, its a day I often thought would never come. We expect a very big or sell-out crowd, and I think Falcon fans will be really keyed up. We play everyday in the shadow of the Big 10, and having a Big 10 team in our stadium is huge.