BG-OU

[Falconfreak90]

Falcons open as at 10.5 dog for Saturday. During the Louisville game, the announcers said BG is one of the least experienced teams in the country this year, with only 7 total starters back from 2024...Offense, defense and ST. We rank #130 in returning experience. I knew we lost a ton from last year but that is unreal. 2-2 non conf is fine with me. lol

The real season starts Saturday at noon.

GO FALCONS

[jpfalcon09]

Falcons open as at 10.5 dog for Saturday. During the Louisville game, the announcers said BG is one of the least experienced teams in the country this year, with only 7 total starters back from 2024...Offense, defense and ST. We rank #130 in returning experience. 2-2 non conf is fine with me.

The real season starts Saturday at noon.

GO FALCONS

Obvious two biggest concerns for this game are Parker Navarro and the BG offense being able to gel and finish drives. I'll have a deeper dive later today after coach's weekly press conference.

[mbenecke]

Falcons open as at 10.5 dog for Saturday. During the Louisville game, the announcers said BG is one of the least experienced teams in the country this year, with only 7 total starters back from 2024...Offense, defense and ST. We rank #130 in returning experience. 2-2 non conf is fine with me.

The real season starts Saturday at noon.

GO FALCONS

Obvious two biggest concerns for this game are Parker Navarro and the BG offense being able to gel and finish drives. I'll have a deeper dive later today after coach's weekly press conference.

I'm more concerned about what 33 is going to post after the game.

[Falconfreak90]

Falcons open as at 10.5 dog for Saturday. During the Louisville game, the announcers said BG is one of the least experienced teams in the country this year, with only 7 total starters back from 2024...Offense, defense and ST. We rank #130 in returning experience. 2-2 non conf is fine with me.

The real season starts Saturday at noon.

GO FALCONS

Obvious two biggest concerns for this game are Parker Navarro and the BG offense being able to gel and finish drives. I'll have a deeper dive later today after coach's weekly press conference.

For sure Jeremy. We will need to run the ball and keep that O off the field. Our young secondary has had some growing pains. Look forward to your preview, bro.

[jpfalcon09]

Falcons travel to Athens, OH for the conference opener. Game kicks off at noon on 9/27 and will be broadcast on CBSSN. BG opened +10.5, and have not defeated the Bobcats since 2021 which was a 21-10 victory in the final game of the season. The Bobcats have won the last two, 38-14 in 2022 and 38-7 in 2023, and seven of the past eight overall. Needless to say Ohio has been a boogeyman of sorts for BG and thus this serves as the second most important MAC game of the 2025 slate, behind Toledo of course. As 33 will likely remind us, Ohio is the defending MAC champion.

Ohio on Offense
Parker Navarro surprisingly returned to Athens this year following the departure of head coach Tim Albin to Charlotte. Many thought after a 1,000 yard rushing campaign at QB, he may have been onto bigger and better things. Navarro has picked up right where he left off in 2024 with a QBR of 73.7 (150.9 rating), completing 65.7% of his passes for 870 yards, 6 TDs and 3 INTs. Including sacks, he has carried the ball 41 times for 255 yards and 1 TD. He is complimented by returning RB Sieh (Sam) Bangura who returns to Ohio after a year at Minnesota where he barely saw the field. Bangura has carried the ball 66 times for 299 yards and 4 TDs, adding five receptions for 26 yards in the receiving game. Chase Hendricks has been Navarro's favorite target in the passing game as he leads the MAC with 28 receptions, and leads all of FBS with 456 yards, adding in three TDs. Last week against Gardner-Webb, Ohio put up 52 points and 608 yards of total offense.

Ohio on Defense
Been an up and down season so far for the Bobcats on defense. They had respectable sub-400 yard efforts vs. Rutgers (399) and West Virginia (250) in their first two contests. The Buckeyes in Week 3 put up 572 (to be expected), and surprisingly the Bulldogs racked up 480 yards this past weekend. Bobcats are featured by LB Michael Molnar with 31 total tackles, 3 TFLs and 1.5 sacks. CB Michael Mack leads the MAC with two interceptions. Notably behind Molnar, the next three leading tacklers are members of the secondary which suggests teams are having success getting to that layer of the defense. Admittedly by their players and coaches, they've been plagued by slow starts on this side of the ball for most of the season and have given up 34 or more points in three of those contests.

Intangibles
Ohio is without much argument the best team in the MAC so far this year. They played Rutgers extremely tough in the opener, picked up a nice win at home against a down West Virginia squad, and hung around for a half down in Columbus. Barring injury, Navarro is the early favorite for the MAC OPOY and they've been a difficult team to beat at Peden Stadium (19-1 since 2022, only loss to Miami in 2023). BG will need to be able to both move and control the ball on offense while focusing on stopping the run and forcing Ohio into 3rd and long situations.

In the wake of Dorian Pringle's injury, Gideon Lampron has moved to MLB while R-Fr. Caden Marshall has moved to first string at Will.

Advanced stats look by CFB Graphs:

[BGSU33]

Falcons open as at 10.5 dog for Saturday. During the Louisville game, the announcers said BG is one of the least experienced teams in the country this year, with only 7 total starters back from 2024...Offense, defense and ST. We rank #130 in returning experience. 2-2 non conf is fine with me.

The real season starts Saturday at noon.

GO FALCONS

Obvious two biggest concerns for this game are Parker Navarro and the BG offense being able to gel and finish drives. I'll have a deeper dive later today after coach's weekly press conference.

I'm more concerned about what 33 is going to post after the game.

AFTER the game??? Hell, I can tell you BEFORE the game what's going to happen. Ohio is going to beat BG for the 8th time in the last 9 meetings. Period. Bet it. Book it. End of story. The Bobcats have OWNED the Falcons for that last decade and the games haven't even remotely close. Look at some of these downright massacres:

2023 OU 38, BG 7
2022 OU 38, BG 14
2020 OU 52, BG 10
2019 OU 66, BG 24
2018 OU 49, BG 14
2017 OU 48, BG 30
2016 OU 30, BG 24

Simply put, Ohio's program has skyrocketed past BG in the last decade. Look at the conference standings from 2016 to 2025. It's not even a worthy discussion. OU has been to the MAC Championship 3 times and won a title during that span, while BG has made zero appearances. Ohio has won 6 straight bowl games since 2017, BG has zero bowl wins in that span. What's more, those 6 straight bowl wins for Ohio since just 2017 are more bowl victories than BG has in its entie history! OU has coaching changes and portal defections and keeps rolling along, BG has coaching changes and portal defection and uses it as an excuse for its shortcomings. Ohio wants to beat Miami but focuses on the MAC, BG wants to win the MAC but focuses on Toledo. Ohio is a top-tier MAC program, BG is a middle-of-the-pack MAC program. Ohio reloads, BG rebuilds.

The last guy at BG who truly understood how to make BG the best program in the MAC was Dave Clawson (that's not a knock on Eddie George - he will soon learn this on Saturday). Clawson literally said back then in order to start winning the MAC, BG had to beat Ohio. His words, not mine. He saw and knew they were the model of consistency in the MAC even then - well before they won the title last year, which was over a decade removed from his comment - and they're still the model now. Ask yourself this question: It is any wonder that when BG actually beat OU three consecutive seasons from 2013-2015 that BG went to Detroit all three times and won 2 titles in the process (ask Dino Babers how it felt to be handed that good of a MAC program for 2 of those years!)? The proof was in the pudding. Clawson knew it, and proved it. Ohio has been utilizing dual-threat QB's that can run and throw for years, their pass and run games are both very good so you can't focus on trying to take one away because they do both well. They also play very good defense in MAC play. And they're nearly unbeatable at home. This is why they've been arguably the top MAC program over the last two decades and why they will beat BG again on Saturday. FCS Gardner-Webb racked up 35 points and nearly 500 yards last week at Ohio, and BG will be hard pressed to match half of those points or yards this Saturday. In the end, it'll be another BG loss in a long string of them since that last MAC Title team from a decade ago, and the hopes of getting to Detroit will be washed away starting with this game as BG will be staying home again this year and Ohio will be going back to Detroit yet again this season. I'll be partly happy, because I'll be counting my winnings because I know how this is going to unfold and I may as well profit from it. And then many on here will hurl insults after the fact because, well, the truth hurts. I literally just laid out what's going to happen again on Saturday with everything above, and it's going to keep on happening for years to come until someone steps in like Clawson did and makes it stop. Until then, you can rest assured, BG won't win another MAC Championship again until it can first beat Ohio. And that's not happening Saturday.

[mbenecke]

I’m not reading all that, man. Sorry.

[Flipper]

Me neither...

[jpfalcon09]

Professing to be the best team in the crotch conference of the FBS is definitely a flex.

[kdog27]

.

[kdog27]

And then many on here will hurl insults after the fact because, well, the truth hurts.

Or own that you created the culture here for yourself. I can say there was a time when your posts were respected. You have always been a little over dramatic and sky is falling but at least you brought substance with information on campuses, stadiums etc, with a bit of OU envy now and again. Now you are 99.33% OU envy. You’ve turned into one of the worst trolls this forum has had which I guess is an accomplishment since it’s been in existence close to 25 years. Cheers

[jpfalcon09]

And then many on here will hurl insults after the fact because, well, the truth hurts.

Or own that you created the culture here for yourself. I can say there was a time when your posts were respected. You have always been a little over dramatic and sky is falling but at least you brought substance with information on campuses, stadiums etc, with a bit of OU envy now and again. Now you are 99.33% OU envy. You’ve turned into one of the worst trolls this forum has had which I guess is an accomplishment since it’s been in existence close to 25 years. Cheers

The incessant trolling from multiple posters has led to engagement slowly dying off here, coupled with it being a dinosaur medium for discourse.

[footballguy51]

I'm looking forward to the game on Saturday. I probably won't get to watch it since it's currently listed for CBS Sports, but I'm still looking forward to it. Our defense hasn't looked terrible outside of Louisville, so I think we an hang with Ohio by slowing their offense. Our offense will be the big question mark. Will we get the push up front to run the ball and have a balanced offense, or will our line struggle and make us one-dimensional? If we can have both run and pass, then I think this game is very winnable. If our line struggles to get movement, then I'm 97% sure we're walking out of Peden with the L. I don't trust Pyne to win games. He seems like a game manager, but you can't put it on him to win the thing. I mean, there has to be a reason he's been to 27 schools in his playing career, and it isn't because everybody desperately wants him to be their starter.

If anybody is going to the game, I hope you enjoy the halftime show. It sounds like BGSU is making the trip, so you'll have the giant FMB and the Marching 110 for the same show. That cannot be beat.

[BillyLP]

Also looking forward to watching this game just to see where BG stands among the MAC. My guess is that OU will pull this one out because Parker Navarro is probably the POTY in the MAC and I don't think we have an offensive identity yet, but I wouldn't be surprised at any result. I'm not expecting a team with a coach that just started in the spring with about 1/2 (or less) of the returning snaps of Ohio to come in and dominate the MAC, but I do think we can be in the top third. This is a good test to get out of the way for the team.

[fanatic13]

I wonder if 33 made those posts on the ohio forum in 2015 when we won four straight with a 38 point win or in 2006 when we won our fifth straight.

Agree with most here though this game will come down to style control. There's no way we win a shootout, we need long sustained drives and make the game ugly when we're on defense similar to Liberty.

Like Eddie, Brian Smith is also making his mac debut so it will be a test if he can sustain someone else's success. Their team looked good out of conference but the same has been said about Toledo/Candle before coming up short come conference play