UCLA Football Preview: Bowling Green's Loeffler Brings Big Time Experience to Falcons
UCLA Football Preview: Bowling Green's Loeffler Brings Big Time Experience to Falcons
While Loeffler has a lot of experience under his belt, the same cannot be said of his team's specialists.
It’s always fun to preview UCLA’s non-conference opponents. That’s because it means writing about a team that the Bruins don’t always play. It should make the first three weeks of the season particularly interesting this year because UCLA will be hosting three teams at the Rose Bowl whom they haven’t ever played before.
First up for the Bruins this season are the Falcons of Bowling Green State University, who play in the Mid-American Conference aka the MAC. While most people may think of Kentucky when hearing the name “Bowling Green,” BGSU is actually located in Bowling Green, Ohio, not Bowling Green, Kentucky.
The Falcons are led by fourth-year head coach Scot Loeffler who became a head coach for the first time when he was hired by Bowling Green. Loeffler has a long, established history as an offensive coach. In fact, his track record includes working with many quarterbacks who went on the significant NFL careers. That list includes Tom Brady, Chad Henne, Drew Henson, John Navarre and Brian Griese at Michigan as well as Tim Tebow at Florida.
Loeffler’s stops include Michigan, Florida, Temple, Auburn, Virginia Tech and Boston College. He has worked for some legendary coaches including Lloyd Carr, Urban Meyer, Gene Chizik, and Frank Beamer. At Temple and, again, at Boston College, he worked with former UCLA offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Justin Frey.
While he won his first game as a head coach against Morgan State, Loeffler hasn’t had it easy at Bowling Green. The Falcons won just three games in his first year and followed that by going winless in five games in 2020. Last season, Bowling Green improved to 4-8 including a signature road win against Minnesota.
While Loeffler has a pair of coaches in Greg Nosal and Max Warner serving as co-offensive coordinators, it seems apparent that Loeffler is in charge of the Falcons’ offense given his background on that side of the ball.
Eric Lewis is the team’s defensive coordinator. He came to Bowling Green as the team’s secondary coach with Loeffler from Boston College before being promoted to defensive coordinator last season.
The bottom line here is that, Loeffler’s Michigan roots not withstanding, Chip Kelly and the UCLA staff should run circles around these guys.
Let’s look at the Bowling Green special teams.
Special Teams
When it comes to special teams, the Falcons might want to just omit the word “Bowling” in their name. That’s because the two guys who will kick the ball for them this Saturday are clearly very green.
Senior Mason Lawler has attempted just two field goal attempts in his first four years with the program, and he only made one of the two. So, it’s almost impossible to ascertain how good or how bad Lawler will be when the teams take the field on Saturday. The bulk of Lawler’s experience has come on kickoffs and punts. Last season, he averaged 57.9 yards per kickoff without a single touchback. That could lead to some good field position for the Bruin offense.
When it comes to punting, Lawler only has five attempts and one of them was blocked. His 33-yard punting average was poor enough that the Falcons have brought in an Australian freshman named Sami Sir. Like most Australian punters, Sir appears to be older than the rest of the team, but neither Bowling Green’s website nor a basic Google search seem to indicate just how old Sir is.
Sophomore Jhaylin Embry looks to be the Falcons’ primary punt returner, but he doesn’t look to be all that dangerous. His longest career punt return is all of 17 yards. In fact, he isn’t much of a threat to find the end zone at all. In two seasons, the receiver from Jacksonville, Florida has found the end zone just once and that came on a rushing play.
Bowling Green fares better when it comes to returning kickoffs, which is good for them because the line for Saturday’s game favors the Bruins by 24.5 points, and that would seem to indicate that UCLA will be kicking off more often to the Falcons. That’s where Ta’ron Keith comes in. The sophomore running back from DeLand, Florida returned 23 kickoffs for 500 yards last season. His longest went for 76 yards. So, he appears to be a bigger threat than Embry.
The Falcons’ number two kickoff and punt returner is senior cornerback Davon Ferguson. Ferguson really shouldn’t pose much of a threat in the return game at all unless the Bruin special teams suffer a complete breakdown.
Of course, that could happen at any time, but it shouldn’t happen at home against a school which plays in the MAC.
Go Bruins!!!
Thanks again for supporting The Mighty Bruin. Your paid subscriptions make this site possible. Questions, comments, story ideas, angry missives and more can be sent to to @TheMightyBruin on Twitter.