Sweet Victory #1: The Offense

Coach Babers said that the offense would hit its stride in the early to middle part of this year.  And, in his post-game presser, he still felt that there was room for improvement, especially when missing deep balls, which are integral to the scheme.

Having said that, as a preview of what could be...that was pretty good.

BG finished with 692 yards of total offense.  That's 14 short of the school record...on the road against a Big 10 team.  That means that for all of the games against Temple and Liberty and VMI, etc, this game was only 14 short of the overall record.  That's strong.

BG ran 105 plays, which nets out to 6.6 yards per play.  Get this...Bowling Green had 35 first downs...they made a first down on exactly one out of every three plays they ran.

Matt Johnson had what might be a career day for many people, but I believe will be viewed as a typical day when this year is done.  He was 36 of 55, which is 65%, which Coach says is the minimum he needs not to "get in trouble."  In Coach's words...if you have 65% and "a bunch of big numbers after that" you are in good shape.

He did have that.  BG had 491 yards passing and 6 TDs.  That's 8.9 per attempt and 13.6 per reception, which is just eye popping when combined with a 65% completion.  There was one INT...a throw behind Moore that got off his fingers and probably belongs to both of them...but one pick in 55 passes is totally workable.

Those 36 completions were distributed to 9 different receivers.  The clear leader was Roger Lewis, for whom Maryland had no answer at all.  Tennessee succeeded in taking him away, but Maryland did not.  Lewis went 15 for 200 and 2 scores.  Honestly, he might not generate big numbers for the whole year because I don't think teams are going to let him do that in general and other guys will get the benefit of his ability, but he had a great day in College Park.

Ronnie Moore had 8 for 79...Rhodes had 2 for 108 (!) and 1 TD.  Besides Lewis and Rhodes, Burbrink, Dieter and Lee also had TD catches.

The running game was also effective.  BG ran the ball 50 times (I know, right?) and had 201 yards for the game.  That's not great...but it was good enough.  After the game, Coach said that BG would like to run the ball, but teams are taking the run away and we take what they give us.  (I suspect that might change in the coming games).

Fred Coppet had a great game.  He had 109 yards on only 15 carries, which nets out to 7.3 yards per carry.  Travis Greene struggled more at 65 in 18 carries (he may not have been 100%) and Donovan Wilson had 28 yards on his 7 game killing carries.

BG also turned the ball over only once.  There was another fumble, but BG recovered it.

So, a nearly record setting day in this setting...a great success for BG.  Defense next.