Despite uncertainty at the quarterback position, the offense was in a better place than the defense as
Bowling Green entered summer training camp.
But head coach Scot Loeffler may have been to on something a few months prior at the start of spring
practice.
“We want to be a balanced team that keeps people off balanced. And at the end of the day I will always
believe this and this will never change; your offense is developing your defense,” he said.
This may have been the case in BG’s first summer scrimmage in front of season-ticket holders at Doyt L.
Perry stadium on Saturday.
The offense sputtered with a handful of turnovers and an occasional lack of urgency.
“Just like I said at the beginning, I said to the kids today, whoever won the turnover battle was going
to win. Offensively, that was the worst that we’ve been,” Loeffler said. “It was ridiculous and if we
turn the ball over like that, we won’t win one game.
“They’ve done a great job up until this point of taking care of the ball, but today was gross.”
But there is a positive to Saturday’s outcome.
“On defense, it was a heck of a job. If we do that on defense, we’re going to win a lot of games,”
Loeffler added.
The defense got to the quarterbacks, albeit without contact, moved sideline to sideline and forced
turnovers in the middle of the field and along the edge.
The scrimmage wasn’t a throw-away practice for the offense, though.
Bryson Denley got the edge and took a run the length of the field for a touchdown. Jordan Wayne-Prather
came down with a 50-50 ball in the corner of the end zone, and Quintin Morris used great balance and
coordination to make a pair of spectacular catches along the sideline.
“There were some big plays, and that’s what’s bad,” Loeffler said. “There were times where we ran the
ball decent, there were times that we made some big plays, but whenever you turn over the football, you
have no shot.”
Now with full pads on and both sides of the ball split in live-game action, the offense knows where it’s
at.
“We’ve seen a lot of improvement compared to where we started at. We got to see our starting point, you
have to start somewhere, but the good thing is we still have weeks of training camp left to get better,”
junior running back Andrew Clair said.
“We still have a lot of little details that we have to get that’s going to take part in becoming bigger
and better. If you worry about the little things, perfect the details, everything that’s bigger is going
to unfold.”
URBAN LEGEND
The scrimmage started more than hour behind schedule, but for good reason.
Urban Meyer, a former BGSU head coach and most recently the head coach at Ohio State, returned to campus
to speak to the Falcons before their first scrimmage.
His message is already sticking in the locker room.
“We are at a point where we can’t be satisfied. We have to keep getting better and better,” Clair said.
“Like coach Meyer said today in his speech. Love and ownership is going to get us everywhere we want to
go. So my love and my ownership for everything that I do is going to be able to spread and be contagious
to the team.
“And then we can keep growing.”
Coaches and staff have also expressed appreciation on Twitter in regard Meyer’s message.