Jordan Hopgood scored two touchdowns, while Tyrone Pronty (below) caught three balls for 92 yards and a TD. Bottom left, BG defenders converge on a Michigan ball carrier. Photos by Nate Thompson.
ANN ARBOR — Dave Clawson wasn’t hired to just make sure his team shows up for games.Clawson was hired because he knows that winning on the field is important, along with academics and having his athletes behave in a proper manner.
Still the most visible aspect of all Clawson’s responsibilities is wins and losses, and when Bowling Green doesn’t perform at an acceptable level, he can be brutally honest.
That was the case Saturday afternoon after the Falcons were ripped apart by Michigan, 65-21 before an announced crowd of 109,933 fans at Michigan Stadium. The Wolverines are now 4-0 and BG falls to 1-3.
“I’m very disappointed that we did not present ourselves better,” Clawson said. “I think we’re a better football team than we showed today.
“I don’t just think that’s a game we should lose by 44 points.”
Bowling Green’s main problem was extremely ineffective tackling. It didn’t matter which one of Michigan’s three quarterbacks were in the game, or which running back carried the ball, or which receiver was running with a completed pass, the Falcons gave up too many big plays the entire afternoon.
The Wolverines piled up 721 total yards, ripping off big gains on 10 different possessions. Michigan had four scoring drives of 80 yards or longer.
\“It reared its ugly head again,” Clawson said about Bowling Green’s inability to wrap up the ball carrier and bring them down. “Today we just had guys dropping their shoulder and ducking their head and looking like they are tackling JV football players.
“You cannot tackle Division I football players by dropping your head and throwing a shoulder,” Clawson added. “You need to see what you hit. You need to wrap up. You need to grab cloth. Going in there trying to strip the ball, that’s the second or third guy, not the first.”
Senior linebacker Eugene ‘Champ’ Fells had an up close look at Michigan’s skilled players Saturday.
“Most of all we’ve just got to tackle, which was a big emphasis and we didn’t come through on that,” Fells said. “You never know what’s going through a player’s head. When you are trying to go so hard and trying to play with unbelievable effort, sometimes you lose technique.”
The game started as a Michigan run away as the Wolverines scored three touchdowns and piled up 293 yards in the first quarter.
The Falcons came back in the second quarter, taking advantage of a Michigan fumble to score on Jordan Hopgood’s 1-yard run on fourth down from the Wildcat formation with 8:53 left in the half.
Bowling Green’s defense then got its only stop of the game, holding Michigan on a fourth-and-5 from the Falcons’ 29-yard line.
On the first play from scrimmage after the stop, Tyrone Pronty showed his athleticism for the second straight week, turning a short pass from Aaron Pankratz into a 71-yard touchdown. Pronty survived running into one of his own offensive lineman to turn in the big play.With the PAT, the Falcons trailed 21-14 with 5:07 left in the half.
Michigan then had its second-longest scoring drive of the afternoon, going 69 yards in 10 plays while taking 4:25 off the clock. Michael Shaw’s 2-yard run and the PAT kick put the Wolverines up 28-14 at the half.“Maybe if we tackle better, it’s 14-14 at the half and we start (the second half) with the ball,” Clawson said.
Michigan put the game away in the third quarter, getting a safety as a bad snap on an attempted BG punt went out of the end zone. After BG’s free kick, Michigan took advantage of the short field to make it 37-14 and the rout was on. Less than two minute later, UM scored again to make it 44-14.
BG’s final touchdown came with 2:28 left in the third quarter when Hopgood again scored on a fourth-down 1-yard on a direct snap.
“When we scored on those goal-line plays, we were a little bit lucky,” Clawson said. “It was because of a great, individual effort in the backfield. It’s not because we had people blocked up front or we created a push at the line of scrimmage.”
The Wolverines scored three more times in the fourth quarter to put the game away.
“You can’t win a college football game playing the way we did today,” Fells said. “My message would be, let’s go out and practice every day like it’s the game. Let’s go out with focus and unbelievable effort every day in order to get ready to play a college football game.”
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