Previously: Bowling Green Offense 

Wednesday we covered Bowling Green's offense, today we take a look at their defense. Last season this unit was among the very worst in college football, ranking 125th in SP+. In their first two games, the team allowed 34 points and 389 yards to Liberty and 15 points and 325 yards to Eastern Illinois. Not good, but nothing catastrophic yet. Now they get a chance to take on Michigan. 

The Film: Much like the offense, we only have one option here. Eastern Illinois is not suitable to use as an FCS team and finding game footage of that would be even harder. So we're going with Liberty, which is a bit of a bummer because the Flames' offense is very different than what Michigan runs, so learning much of anything from this game is... hard. Not as hard as last week's largely meaningless review of Bryant/UNLV footage, but still pretty tough to use. 

Personnel: Click for big. 

Bowling Green has really rotated their defensive line this season, with only stand-up EDGE Demetrius Hardamon approaching solid starter status. Hardamon is a pass-rushing specialist who had seven sacks in a limited role this season and has now gotten a larger one this season, though he still is lifted plenty. Opposite him in a three-point stance is nominally one-time Gopher Ail Saad, but plenty of other EDGEs have gotten in the mix at both spots. Cashius Howell is a lean 235 and much more comparable to the 240 Hardamon, while 270 Chace Davis and 260 Jordan Porter are better fits to rotate in for Saad. Hardamon was clearly the unit's best pass-rusher, the rest were mostly indistinguishable from the others. 

Defensive tackle is just as much of a rotation station. Returning starter Anthony Hawkins is their 285 "nose" and a decent player, while last year's 300 lb. backup DT Dontrez Brown starts next to him. They are clearly used more than their reserves, but those backups get a lot of play. Evan Branch-Haynes and Billie Roberts are both in the 290-300 range and are bigger replacements for Hawkins at nose, while I should shout out one-time Michigan commit Davonte Miles, who is deep down the depth chart at tackle. Doesn't feel like Michigan made the wrong call in letting Miles go given his status on this team. 

The linebacker position has two true starters who play nearly every down, returning starter Darren Anders at MLB and new starter George Sipp Jr. at WLB. Anders was the player Seth highlighted in his HTTV preview of Bowling Green, but I thought Anders had a disappointing game against Liberty, where his ability to move in space was noticeably lacking. Sipp had a choppy showing but made more plays that stood out in a positive manner. Anders and Sipp will be out there for the full game, but may be joined by a third ILB in 230 lb. Charles Rosser at SAM, if the cornerback-shaped nickel/HSP leaves the field. Rosser only had 17 snaps against Liberty but I could see him out there often against Michigan's heavier packages. 

The secondary rolled over lots of returning talent from last season. Returning starter Jordan Oladokun was a solid player at corner in 2022 and had another commendable showing in the game I charted. The expectation entering the season was for Deshawn Jones Jr. to start at the other corner spot, since only five Falcons played more snaps than him in 2022, but so far this season he's been buried on the depth chart, just three snaps against Liberty and twelve against EIU. Instead, sophomore Jalen Huskey has stepped up to (presumably) pull a Wally Pipp on Jones. Huskey was a strong performer last season for the Falcons considering he was a true freshman, so that he made a never step forward to supplant a returning starter perhaps isn't stunning. Huskey looked fine against Liberty. 

The safety position includes their nickel/HSP, which is really just a DB. Davon Ferguson is 5'10"/185, so good luck arguing he's anything remotely LB-like. He can drop into coverage or rush the QB as a blitzer and did both against Liberty. SS Trent Simms is back for a third-year as a starter and was pretty nondescript, while new FS starter Darius Lorfils was pretty rough and earns a cyan. As a whole, the secondary had very little rotation, a sharp contrast to the DL. If a different DB does come on, Sean Day or Shamoun Duncan-Niusulu are the most likely candidates. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Another defense to analyze]

Base set: Bowling Green was running a pretty boring 4-2-5 with that fifth player being their nickel-ish HSP Davon Ferguson: 

If the opponent goes with a more bunch formation featuring multiple TEs, they'll bring on their SLB Charles Rosser and go with a 4-3: 

Really not all that different, and very standard for CFB these days. 

Pressure: I charted Bowling Green rushing more than four players on 31% snaps, a number that ramped up as the game went along and BGSU started to realize that Liberty was rushing the football as often as they were. Whether that is translatable to Michigan, I'm not sure. They rushed fewer than four on just 1.5% of snaps, or one total play I charted. There was no reason to drop eight into coverage against a team that was nearly 70% run in this game. 

Man or zone coverage: BGSU bounced between man and zone as they tried to deal with Liberty's spread offense, falling more into the man/Cover 1 box, but flashing plenty of other coverages as well. Like with the pressure metric, there was less need to play zone when Liberty was running the football as much as they were, so I'm unsure of whether their defensive approach to coverage was opponent-dependent. FWIW, Seth's data box in HTTV had Bowling green more on the zone end of the scale coming into the year. 

Dangerman: We're going with MLB Darren Anders as the Dangerman, even though I didn't think this one against Liberty was his best game. Anders is a fifth year player and a four-year starter, 1st team All-MAC back in 2021 and a player who had interest from P5 teams should he have opted to transfer back in the offseason. He's got proficiency in every phase of the game, run defense, blitzing, and coverage. I felt in this game that Anders had too much of a tendency to get caught on the wrong side of a play, sealed off from the action, but there were still some moments. Here's a nice run stuff: 

And another quick tackle: 

I'll leave you with a highlight reel of Anders, since our decision to star him and leave him as the Dangerman was in large part related to what he's done over his three preceding seasons as a starter for the Falcon defense: 

Quality MAC linebacker who could play up in the FBS.

Overview

A lot like UNLV last week, I honestly don't have a ton to say about this Bowling Green defense in part because of the other team they were playing. Liberty as a team is obviously not nearly as good as Michigan, but also they were running a very different sort of offense. They had 49 rush attempts to 20 passing attempts in this game, and it's not a game they were winning decisively. The Flames won by 10 but it was a competitive game for much of it, showing how much Liberty wanted to run the ball. Their scheme also didn't really reflect Michigan's running a lot of option plays, with QB run (be it designed, option, or scrambling) as a huge piece of the offense. QB Kaidon Salter kept the ball 19 times in this game(!), the most carries of anyone on the team. 

It was tough for me to get a feel for which players were much stronger than the others and a lot of them had a mix of good and bad moments. As a result, we stayed pretty conservative on the diagram, going with one cyan and one star, but otherwise holding off. Like UNLV last week, that is not a sign that I think this defense can stay on the field with Michigan. In all likelihood, they definitely cannot.

Instead of trying to make broad overarching statements, I'm just going to go through each layer of the defense as I show clips from the rushing defense and pass defense, talking about players and trends that stood out. Let's start with run defense, since that was the main event in the Liberty game. As a whole, I thought the defensive tackles were a mixed bag, definitely vulnerable to being tossed aside by double teams but also some strong moments. Anthony Hawkins and Dontrez Brown both flashed solid get-off. Here's Brown swimming into the backfield for a run stuff: 

At the same time, that ability to get upfield and into the backfield bit them when it took them away from the play and Liberty attacked where they weren't. Unfortunately, we do have to show a DT getting hit with a double: 

That's Hawkins getting blown back (Cashius Howell whiffing on the tackle), and it leads us into our point about the linebackers. Anders was okay, but still had his moments being out of position, and the same could be said for Joseph Sipp Jr.. Too often Liberty was able to rip off 5-10 yard chunk runs because the LBs were not where they were supposed to be. On this one Anders is blitzing and Sipp is the only one who has a shot to stop this before it gets to the safeties once the DTs are shoved around: 

And another: 

Maybe Bowling Green will ramp up their run blitzes even more, but I definitely feel what Liberty showed when they were between the tackles is repeatable. The good moments from the DTs probably aren't translating against Michigan and the bad moments and vulnerability to doubles will still be there, while if Michigan does enough to mess with the LBs, they should be able to earn chunk plays with ease.  

As we transition talking about the pass rush, we should talk about Demetrius Hardamon, who is going to be the biggest test for Michigan's tackles. The stand-up EDGE, Hardamon doesn't do all that much dropping into coverage, it just optimizes his ability to rush the passer. Tackling and actually finishing sacks was an issue for him against Liberty, but he did finish one big time sack: 

PFF had him down for three pressures on 16 pass-rush snaps, which feels about right. He was pretty good. No one else was consistently threatening in the pass-rush game, but there were some moments from those tackles. This from Hawkins was very good: 

The other EDGEs weren't as notable rushing the QB, but played bigger roles setting the edge against the run or shuffling into space to defend the option. 

Moving on to the secondary, I'll start with their nominal HSP Davon Ferguson, who is really just a nickel who blitzes a lot. You saw him in the previous clip with a good rush and he showed up in the run game even on plays where he wasn't told to tee off: 

Here's one more blitz from Ferguson: 

At the corner position, I saw a lot more of Jalen Huskey than Jordan Oladokun, but both looked solid. Oladokun was the better one in my eyes, targeted less (always a good sign) and both times he was targeted he was in good position whether the throw was on point or not. Example: 

Huskey was slightly higher graded overall by PFF but worse in coverage, but the point is that both players were in the top four highest graded Falcons for the game. Their corners are pretty good for a Group of Five team. Does that matter against Michigan? Probably not, but it is something they do well relative to similar teams of their caliber. 

If you're looking for a weak spot in coverage to target, it's S Darius Lorfils, our lone cyan this week. Lorfils was the one pretty consistently on the hook for completions in this game, being targeted six times in coverage and somehow allowing all six to be completed(!!?!?!). He was only marginally better against EIU, 3/4 per PFF's data, which brings him to just one incompletion forced this season in 10 attempts. Bad! Here's one example: 

And another: 

Bowling Green's defense isn't good enough that you have to scheme to get matchups, but pretty much anyone that Lorfils is asked to cover from his safety position is someone I'd have an eye on if I'm JJ McCarthy tomorrow. 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

Like UNLV, really not all that much. Michigan should be a lot better than this team and the game should be over before it starts. It again depends on how BGSU decides to defend Michigan, and also if Michigan is still experimenting with Outside Zone or what their plan really is in this game, but based on what I saw in this game, the Wolverines should be able to have success running the ball between the tackles. Maybe there will be more resistance in the passing game from the opposing corners than there's been so far this season, but there's also a safety who isn't covering anyone, whether in man coverage or in zone. That should be able to keep Michigan's offense in rhythm. If anything, the storyline I'm most interested in watching is Hardamon the EDGE against Michigan's tackles. I'm grasping for straws here on a defense that likely isn't good after watching them in a game where I didn't learn all that much. I'm ready to face a B1G opponent next week.