The first thing is that we were completely ineffective on offense. When a series of events happen, people always remember what happens at the beginning and at the end, and not what happens in the middle.
So, looking at Bowling Green's offensive drives we actually get a much clearer picture of how dominated we were.
Of course, our first drive was 7:00, 65 yards, 13 plays, 4 first downs and a huge conversion on 3rd and 15. Ad we scored in garbage time at the end when it was all over. In the middle??
After the missed FG, the next eight Falcon possessions (not counting the one right at the end of the half), were all three plays......or less. In fact, we didn't even make it to punting on three of them. The most productive drive was 14 yards in that period. And, the string did not break until after it was already 43-0. So, while it is tempting to focus on Boise's speed scoring machine, we were not producing on the offensive side of the ball.
Also, when you look at our final numbers, you have to remember that many of the positive plays were after it was already over. For example, 12 of our 18 first downs came after Boise hit 43 on the scoreboard. We had 73 yards at halftime.
Kellen Moore just shredded us. He was 17-21 for 247 yards, which is more than 11 yards per attempt. Those are playstation numbers. And he would hit the killing pass over the middle about 15 yards downfield with plenty of space....Bowling Green used to be able to hit that all the time in the Harris/Jacobs days.
I don't think our defensive line was killed. I thought on the runs between the tackles we did a pretty good job on a number of plays. Jeremy Avery, who is a pretty good runner, had 92 yards on 12 carries, but one of those was for 71 yards, so he was 11 for 21. On the edges was another matter--we did not have the speed to cover that.
If Willie Geter can stay healthy, he is going to be a great MAC football player.
That's getting to be just enough Boise. I will still do the special teams report tomorrow, and then we will focus on the OU Bobcats as BG begins the chase for what we really want, which is a MAC Championship.
One last thing. We're 1-3, and that was a reasonable expectation for our team facing the four games we have played. There were no FCS teams lingering in there. We could easily have been 0-4, in fact. Let's not get too wrapped up in 1-3, and let's keep our fingers crossed that we find what we had against Troy.
Because I know this. We won't see anything the rest of the way that looks like what we saw Saturday.
What bothers me is that BG never seemed overmatched. They just made too many mistakes and seemed to stop believing in themselves.
ReplyDelete