Bowling Green College Football Preview 2021: Keys To The Season
Bowling Green Biggest Key: Offense
Just complete a few more passes. This is supposed to be an up-tempo, dangerous offense that can get defenses on their heels and come up with a rhythm that takes over games. That’s hard to do when you only compete 43% of your passes.
The Falcons threw for a grand total of 712 yards in the five games with one touchdown pass and seven picks. Go back to 2019, and the offense failed to hit 52% in six of the last eight games. In the Scot Loeffler era, the O has thrown ten touchdown passes with 32 interceptions after the 2018 team threw 29 touchdown passes and 13 picks.
Again, just start completing passes.
Bowling Green Biggest Key: Defense
Run defense, run defense, run defense. Nothing else matters to this team than being able to slow down someone’s ground game. That kills the time of possession, which kills the offense that struggles to move the chains, which kills the team on soul-crushing drive after soul-crushing drive.
It’s been years since the program could stop a ground game, but last season was particularly bad allowing over 300 yards per game and over six yards per carry.
How bad was it? The second worst run defense in America – UMass – allowed 37 fewer yards per game. Only five teams in the last ten years allowed 300 yards or more per game, and 2020 Bowling Green was one of them. Which is why …
Bowling Green Key Player To A Successful Season
DT Anthony Hawkins, RFr.
The Falcons lost a ton off of last year’s line. That’s bad for a not-awful pass rush, but it doesn’t really hurt considering how miserable the run defense was. The 6-2, 302-pound Hawkins has to bring the bulk along with 6-5, 301-pound Billie Roberts on the inside.
Bowling Green Key Game To The 2021 Season
at Kent State, Oct. 2
It’s got to start somewhere. The Falcons have a winnable home game against Akron after starting the MAC season against Kent State, and they have winnable dates against Northern Illinois and Eastern Michigan to follow. They’ll just take any win looking ahead, but somehow stopping the slide against Kent State would be huge.
Bowling Green has been annihilated by the Golden Flashes over the last two years by a combined score of 124-44. It lost three in a row in the series after winning five in a row.
– Bowling Green Schedule Breakdown & Analysis
2020 Bowling Green Fun Stats
– 2nd Quarter Scoring: Opponents 80 – Bowling Green 7
– 3rd Down Conversions: Opponents 36-of-70 (51%) – Bowling Green 17-of-65 (26%)
– Points Per Game: Opponents 45 – Bowling Green 11.4