Ohio faces one of the best offenses in college football at Bowling Green on Wednesday.
Being a football coach means, among other things, never admitting there’s anything special about your next opponent.
The Bobcats' first-year defensive backs coach Anthony Perkins plays the part well, pulling back a bit when asked about what kind of ambush may be awaiting Ohio in Bowling Green Wednesday night.
All Perkins would concede is that Ohio would have its "hands full" with Falcons' quarterback Matt Johnson.
“I am a football coach, and every week is the Super Bowl,” Perkins said. “We’re definitely gonna be challenged this week. I think as a competitor, you wanna compete against the best at what they do. With the quarterback they have, and the receivers they have, we have a great challenge ahead of us that we’re excited for.”
Perkins, a 2011 Colorado graduate, is no stranger to playing up-tempo, high-octane offenses. Perkins saw enough of offenses such as Oregon and Southern California in his 37 games as a cornerback in the PAC-12 to understand the strain of playing against a fast-paced, pass-happy system.
As a coach, though, he doesn’t have the same experience. He spent the past two seasons at FCS Indiana State and has limited experience in no-huddle preparation at Ohio.
Not that it is much of an indictment though. 11-year head coach Frank Solich was blunt in his press conference last Friday in saying of Bowling Green’s offense, “I can’t recall seeing a conference team put up those kinds of numbers.”
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And the numbers speak for themselves. Johnson ranks among the nation’s leaders in yards per game (1st, 415.1), touchdowns (2nd, 29), completions (4th, 242) and total QBR (7th, 83.6). Receiver Roger Lewis’ 1,122 yards rank second in the country. As a unit, Bowling Green gains the fourth-most yards per game in the country (595), and scores the eighth-most points per game (43.9).
“The hardest thing to prepare for is the tempo they run,” redshirt senior cornerback Ian Wells said. “They’re running 90, 100 plays a game, and they run it so fast that they try to catch people off-guard. They live off big, explosive plays, and making plays down the field. They have a lot of athletes, and we’ve got athletes too, so we feel like we can match up with them.”
The important thing isn’t just Ohio has athletes in its secondary, but that those athletes will actually be on the field. The secondary is one of the only places on defense that has gone relatively unscathed, in terms of injuries, through the first eight games of the season.
Seniors Brett Layton, Wells and Nathan Carpenter have all been crucial in keeping the Bobcaats' pass defense intact.
“Those guys have played a lot of games, and that experience is irreplaceable,” Perkins said. “To be able to lean on those guys who have been around and who know how things are done here has been huge in helping me out, and it’s been huge in helping our younger guys out.”
If Ohio wants to stay alive in the Mid-American Conference East division, it will need every ounce of experience it can get from its secondary in holding Bowling Green’s offense at bay.
After ten days of rest following back-to-back losses, a win at Bowling Green would be significant in swinging momentum back in Ohio’s way as it enters its season’s final month. A big loss, however, could wipe out all that work put in during the bye week to erase the memory of those two losses. For those reasons, Wednesday’s game is a crucial one.
Some might even call it the Super Bowl.
aw987712@ohio.edu
@_tonywolfe_
