OU Dismantles "Out of Gas" BG

Well, and up and down regular season came to a down conclusion last night in Athens, as OU completely outplayed and dismantled Bowling Green on their way to a 38-14 win.  

Give OU credit.  That's a really solid team.  They lost their best player (and their QB) and they won the game anyway.  They executed their game plan--they completed only ten passes--but they ate up time, made 21 first downs, averaged 19 yards a completion when they did pass.

They beat BG in every phase of the game.  They just destroyed the BG offensive line.  The Falcons could not run the ball or pass it.  They took Hilaire out of the game.

Of course, the offense could hardly get on the field.  BG ran 53 plays and OU ran 75. 

Coach said after the game that BG just "ran out of gas, pure and simple."  That's a good description of what I think we all saw.  BG tackled really poorly and didn't seem to fly to the ball the way they have in other games.  You saw that on run plays, QB screens and some WR screens.

It's disappointing.  Coach says we need to learn to play two tough games in a row. Which would apparently be true.  Look, we were thrilled to win Toledo and to have a shot this late in the year, but I think we're not a championship team yet.  We have made progress in that direction, but we are not there yet.  When you look across at the other sideline last night, you can see what one looks like.

There was one more odd thing.  Coach talked about McDonald playing with a concussion.  There are a few weird things.  What I have transcribed below didn't make the Blade story, nor did it make the official summary of the press conference that BGSU issues.  The other odd thing is that he refers to McDonald as "the quarterback."  Just weird.

The quarterback was concussed.  Figured it out halfway through.  He was doing things that he hasn't done ever.  He's a tough son of a gun and he knows how to answer the questions. We figured it out.  He really struggled.

He came off and I would ask him, listen, what was your progression there and he could spit it out.  He's been doing this for seven years. It just got to the point where he was reading the wrong side and you knew something was wrong.  I asked him a thousand questions, the docs were involved and they figured out that he was really, really struggling.  There was three plays that he's done since he was a freshman at Boston College and did completely the wrong thing.  It was nothing about ability, he was struggling.

Well, next up is the bowl game.  We will know in a week and half what we are up to.  I haven't seen anything about which game we will go to or how many bowl eligible teams there are going to be.

So, disappointing, but we are who our record says we are:  a team capable of playing really well and really poorly and needing, in the coach's words "to take the next step."  A 6-6 season is not a success.  Whether it is a stop on the road to eventual success has yet to be seen.