Boston College Fall Practice Report: Day Five And Media Day Roundup

BC held their annual Media Day on Friday. While BC's Media Day isn't exactly the most popular Media Day in college football, I was happy to see the media step up their coverage of the event. Here's a position by position roundup of the storylines, Tweets, and other potentially useful information that came out of Friday's Media Day and practice. We'll have more thoughts on the Eagles first scrimmage tomorrow.

Herzlich

The biggest story line coming out of Media Day was Herzlich's stress fracture in his right foot that has sidelined him at camp. Albright sat down with The BC Blog and offered up a candid opinion on Herzlich's situation:

"I just don’t want Mark to do too much," Albright said with a tinge of fear. "I don’t want him to feel like he has to be like he was his junior year when he was Defensive Player of the Year. I don’t want him to feel like he has to do it all. I want him to just be a member of this defensive corps until he feels comfortable getting back into the swing of things."

Can't say I disagree with Albright here. I know the expectations are building and that a lot of fans are going to the Weber State game just to see #94 run out of the tunnel and onto the Alumni Stadium turf. But I'd rather see Herzlich get back to 100% and not have to play through pain. Plus, I think the Eagles defense will be fine without Herzlich in the first two games. If Herzlich's role is limited in BC's first two games, that would give him almost a full month for his foot to heal before BC's ACC opener against Virginia Tech on September 25.

Quarterback

The maturation of Dave Shinskie's game was a big focal point during Media Day:

"I was more of a baseball player last year," Shinskie said. "Over the summer I worked hard with the receivers and the line and I'm feeling more comfortable this year. I want to cut down on interceptions, have better reads and just work on my check balance a little bit more. It comes with learning the playbook."

Both Shinskie and Marscovetra had respectable stat lines from the Eagles' first scrimmage, and the QB situation heading into fall camp seems much better than it did a year ago.

Running Back

The big question mark heading into fall camp was who would help carry some of the workload for Montel Harris. While it seems like redshirt freshman Sterlin Phifer has the inside track on getting the job, he's being pushed by true freshmen Tahj Kimble and Andre Williams.

Offensive Line

Conroy profiled Nathan Richman in his latest Herald feature. Richman focused on his transition from left guard to center:

"Mentally it’s a lot more difficult. I have to come up and set the O-line up, and they base their calls off my calls. That’s a lot more pressure, and I have to do a lot more thinking in a short amount of time when I get up to the line.

Physically it’s not that much different than guard, so that hasn’t been that tough of an adjustment. At first, snapping (the ball) was hard for me because I hadn’t done it before, but now I don’t even think about it anymore at this point. It’s real routine."

With Richman replacing Matt Tennant at center, and with Castonzo, Lapham, Claiborne and Cleary, I think this will be one of the best BC lines in quite a few years. Rivals seems to agree with me, ranking the Eagles line the eighth best in the country in their preseason unit rankings.

As part of Media Day, ESPN Boston's Justin Rice sat down with Anthony Castonzo.

Defensive Line

Spaz, for one, is excited to have Kaleb Ramsey back:

"We're excited to have Kaleb back," Spaziani said. "He's a good football player and he ended the spring a really good football player. He had some personal issues that have been resolved and now he's back on the team. We're excited about it, he's excited about it and we're anxious to get him back on schedule practicing."

Not sure we'll ever really know the full story behind Ramsey's absence from the team, but like Spaz, we're glad he's returned to camp for the Eagles. Here's what Scafe had to say about Ramsey and his impact on the line:

"His experience is definitely helping out the line." Scafe said of Ramsey. "We have experience on the ends, but we didn’t have much experience (at tackle) to mentor the younger kids. But Conor (O’Neal) has stepped up and having Kaleb here is really going to help."

Warren Lent attended Media Day and had similar things to say about O'Neal and the other defensive tackles.

Kaleb Ramsey is back, Damik Scafe is working his way back. Quinn, ONeal and Murray are making big splashes in practice

With Scafe and Ramsey back, Eagles fans have to feel 100 times better about the defensive tackle situation than they did a week ago.