Michigan Football: 3 takeaways from a quirky win over Bowling Green
By Nick Popio
Ugly wins count and that’s the way it was at times during the 14th night game in Michigan Stadium history since 2011.
Bowling Green was unfazed from the first play of the night. They threw a controversial deep ball down the field and the refs confirmed the call.
Nothing came out of it and Michigan football got the rock for their initial touch of the contest and went four plays all on the ground to score six. Blake Corum scored and got the momentum rolling with a 54-yard scamper on the first offensive snap.
Then J.J. McCarthy made some very uncharacteristic mistakes. He threw an interception in the endzone and a second one not to far afterward. The Falcons got a pair of field goals before McCarthy found Roman Wilson for the sixth hookup of the year. Scott Loeffler’s bunch kept it much too close for comfort following the first 30 minutes.
It didn’t take long to open up the margin in the third with Kris Jenkins taking away a screen pass and returning it to the one-yard line. Corum hit paydirt on the next play from scrimmage. Jaylen Harrell’s pressure off the edge caused another turnover on the ensuing series. Moments later Sherrone Moore went for the kill with a flea flicker that Cornelius Johnson snagged out of the air.
McCarthy passed it away to Bowling Green one more time at the end of the third quarter on what should have been a clear throwaway. Michigan football gears up for Big Ten play now and can’t afford to execute like they did for parts of Saturday night.
Greg Schiano and Rutgers won’t be as accommodating and dating back to 2020, when he returned to Piscataway, have been within a touchdown or less, besides the second half of the 2022 meeting.
Here are the three takeaways.