Doege excels in 1st taste of BG-UT rivalry

Bowling Green's Jarret Doege throws a pass against Toledo. The true freshman completed 17-of-30 passes for 270 yards and four TDs in the Falcons loss to the Rockets.

The Blade/Kurt Steiss
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BOWLING GREEN – Jarret Doege said the offensive coaches of the Bowling Green State University football do not design plays that begin with him dropping a snap.

“I just take my eye off the ball,” he said with a sheepish grin. “I just have to look the ball in …

Bowling Green's Jarret Doege throws a pass against Toledo. The true freshman completed 17-of-30 passes for 270 yards and four TDs in the Falcons loss to the Rockets.

“I kind of know what I want to do with the ball, so I take my eye off of it instead of looking the ball in.”

It did not seem to matter if the true freshman caught the ball cleanly or mishandled a snap in the Falcons 66-37 loss to Toledo at Doyt Perry Stadium Wednesday. Twice Doege fumbled a snap: One resulted in a 29-yard catch by fellow freshman Andrew Clair, and the other turned into a 27-yard touchdown pass to Scottie Miller.

“It’s hard [not to panic],” Doege admitted. “In my head, I’m thinking, ‘Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.’

“But no one got to me, so I got the ball off.”

The true freshman completed 17-of-30 passes in the contest for 270 yards and four touchdowns. But coach Mike Jinks said he hoped Doege would “drop” the habit of mishandling snaps.

“I’d rather he’d catch those snaps instead of dropping them – even throwing touchdowns,” Jinks said. “But he’s poised, and our kids see it. And they rally around it.”

Doege had to throw the ball well because the Falcons finished with just 80 rushing yards; that total was affected by four sacks that set BG back 34 yards.

“I wish we could have run the ball better,” Doege said. “But we wanted to throw the ball on them, and we did. 

“We wanted to be a little more balanced. But they put a lot of guys in the box; when they put that many guys in the box, you throw the ball.”

Bowling Green's Teo Redding (9), left, gets a pat on the helmet from teammate Jarret Doege after a Bowling Green touchdown.

The freshman threw two TD passes to Teo Redding, who finished with three catches for 78 yards. The second scoring strike came on a fine leaping catch by Redding in the end zone.

“All you have to do is throw the ball up and give him a chance, and he’ll get the ball for you,” Doege said of Redding. “He’s probably the best I’ve ever seen at judging the ball, then going up and making a play on it.

“He jumps super-high, and when you give him a chance he’ll make the play.”

Doege, a Lubbock, Texas native, said he enjoyed his first taste of the BG-UT rivalry.

“We had a little bit of a crowd and when we got our first score you could tell how loud it was,” Doege said. “When I got here, I didn’t know who the big rival was.

“But I learned that Toledo was a big rival, and it showed.”

One of the few mistakes Doege made came on his final throw of the night. He threw a pass that Toledo’s Sam Womack intercepted at BG’s 38, setting up the Rockets’ final touchdown of the night.

After that play, senior lineman Ryan Hunter consoled Doege as the pair walked off the field.

“He saw me with my head down, and he told me to keep my head up and that I did a good job,” Doege said. “Ryan is a senior and one of our best lineman, and I’ve become pretty good friends with him.

“It was good to hear that from him, to know after I threw an interception that he had my back.”

HOME WOES: The loss to Toledo means Bowling Green finished with an 0-5 record at Doyt Perry Stadium this season.

It marks just the third time in program history that the Falcons were winless at home: The other two seasons came in 1919, the first year of the program, when BG was 0-3, and the following year, when the Falcons were 1-4 with a win at Kent State.

“One of the things we talked about as a coaching staff [before the season] is taking care of our home schedule,” Jinks said. “If we took care of our home schedule, we would be exactly where we needed to be.

“And instead we did the exact opposite.”

Contact John Wagner at jwagner@theblade.com, 419-724-6481, or on Twitter @jwagnerblade.