After falling back below .500 overall, the Bobcats have little time to turn their season around.
Ohio is in a position it isn’t too familiar with.
The past two seasons the Bobcats have finished October with no more than two losses before collapsing at the end of the season. This year Ohio is already trying to keep its head above water with three games remaining.
Following Saturday’s 42-21 loss to Western Michigan, the Bobcats (4-5, 2-3 MAC) will enter November with a losing record for the first time since 2008, when they finished the year 4-8. Ohio is now two games behind MAC East leader Bowling Green and has the same conference record as Miami and Massachusetts, which are each 2-7 overall.
For Ohio to achieve its goal of playing for a MAC Championship, it needs to win all three remaining games, Akron would have to lose at least one of its remaining four and Bowling Green would have to lose at least three of its remaining four.
It will take a turn of events now not only for Ohio to make it back to Detroit for the first time since 2011, but also to finish with a winning record and become bowl eligible.
“It is frustrating,” redshirt senior wide receiver Chase Cochran said. “I think you have to look at yourself — in terms of the offense — in the mirror and you have to ask yourself: ‘if we know what’s going on, we know what the problem is, then why aren’t we correcting it?’”
The Bobcats’ offense has struggled keeping up with opponents and consistently scoring, as well as establishing drives.
Ohio struck first Saturday on a three-yard rushing touchdown by junior Daz Patterson, but Western Michigan scored four straight touchdowns led by the nation’s fifth-best rusher Jarvion Franklin, who finished with 156 yards and three touchdowns. There isn’t much optimism surrounding a Bobcats team that was outgained 530-372 in total offensive yards.
With a transition to mid-week games for the final three games, the five-loss Bobcats will not play again until Nov. 5 and believe they have mental toughness to come back from three losses in the past four games.
“We just need to regather ourselves, regroup,” coach Frank Solich said. “I would like to think that they’ll be a group that gathers back up again, and after a short break gets ready to go to work and finish off the season in the way we want to finish off the season.”
Redshirt junior quarterback Derrius Vick could move back into the starting role for the final three weeks after entering Saturday’s game to replace JD Sprague, who left in the second quarter with an injury. After Sprague replaced a struggling Vick throughout the beginning of the season, a month later the roles were reversed.
Vick hadn’t played since suffering a knee injury during week four, but completed almost 60 percent of his passes, while throwing for 246 yards and a touchdown. Sprague completed two of his five attempts for 38 yards.
Vick also connected with Chase Cochran for a 66-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter.
However, the job won’t necessarily be Vick’s to lose, as he also threw an interception and was sacked six times.
Solich thought Vick played well given the situation he was put in, after he hadn’t seen play in a month and wasn’t completely expecting to come into the game for a long duration. Vick thinks he could have been better.
“I think at the beginning I was a little rusty on some throws,” Vick said. “That comes with not playing for a while; that’s on me and I have to be prepared for that.”
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