BOWLING GREEN — As Bowling Green begins Mid-American Conference play this week, the Falcons don’t plan to make any radical changes to their struggling offense.
Bowling Green has scored just seven points in its past eight quarters, but won’t do anything drastically different — including at quarterback, where Darius Wade still is the Falcons’ starter.
The Falcons fell 35-7 to Louisiana Tech last week, a final score that belied the sheer amount of chances BG had on offense. The Falcons had possession inside Bulldogs territory seven times in the first three quarters, yet saw six of those drives result in zero points.
Reviewing the game tape was, predictably, not pretty, as BG counted a full two dozen plays in which something went awry.
“And honestly there were even more than that,” Falcons tight end Austin Dorris said. “It’s tough to see, but it’s good to see because we know that we can do it. We can put ourselves in the position to score; it’s just finishing at this point.”
Bowling Green (1-2) currently ranks 114th or worse nationally in red zone offense, completion percentage, yards per completion, and scoring offense.
But in last week’s case the Falcons’ issues were not for lack of opportunity. Bowling Green scored only seven points from four trips inside the Louisiana Tech 10-yard line.
“It doesn’t matter if you run the triple option, pro style, fast tempo, spread — it all comes down to execution,” Bowling Green coach Scot Loeffler said. “There was beyond ample opportunity for us to be successful, and we had 24 just blatant missed opportunities.
“I’ve never been a part of a game in a long time where there was so much meat on the bone out there, and it was just poor execution.”
But asked if he considered putting backup quarterback Grant Loy into the game earlier last week, Loeffler said, “Not yet, no.”
Wade threw three touchdown passes in his BG debut, a 46-3 win against FCS Morgan State. Since then he has completed 26-for-57 passes (45.6 percent) for 250 yards with 0 touchdowns and an interception returned for a touchdown.
Loeffler said Bowling Green has not given Wade much help and Dorris said Wade receiving blame for the loss was “nonsense.” Both said the defeat was on everyone and that there will be no pointing fingers.
“We saw the film, and you can’t hide in the film,” Dorris said. “We all fell through at certain aspects, and it was a collective team loss.”
With Bowling Green set to meet MAC East rival Kent State (1-2) this week, Loeffler said multiple times Monday that the Louisiana Tech game served as a “wakeup call” for the Falcons. After retooling its offseason and strength program, Loeffler said the Falcons are still learning the value of their midweek practices.
“It needs to be full speed every single rep,” Loeffler said. “You can’t golf-cart through period five [in practice] and expect to win in the fourth quarter of game week.”
“The exciting part is that with pain normally comes correction, and with correction comes success. As bad as that performance was, you were able to finally show how critical your work week is.”
First Published September 16, 2019, 9:49 p.m.
