This Football Season Was A Disaster. So, Now What?

At the start of this season, SB Nation's college football team-by-team preview said that BC football's rapid improvement in years 1 and 2 earned Steve Addazio a rebuilding year in 2015. Most of us, myself included, didn't want to hear it, and foresaw a path to 7 or 8 wins this season despite the roster's limitations.

Obviously, that hasn't happened. This season hasn't just been a trying rebuilding year, it's been an unmitigated disaster, with the offense dropping to historic lows. Barring an upset win over Notre Dame (which, let's be real, is probably not going to happen) and another W over Syracuse to end the season, it's hard to imagine leaving this season with anything resembling a good feeling. There hasn't at least been progress or improvement to cling to. It's been a barren couple of months.

So, now what?

The countdown to the 2016 football season has pretty much been on ever since BC flubbed the finish to the Wake game, when it became abundantly clear that postseason football was not in the cards for the Eagles this year. What can BC do to make sure 2016 is a huge step up from 2015? Here's a look at some of the options.

Fire everyone!

The "fire everyone" rhetoric from a vocal minority when BC seemed to be staring at a season in the realm of 5-7 or 6-6 looked pretty silly, but now that things have completely collapsed, there's a lot more validity to this opinion. Obviously, Vince Lombardi would only be able to do so much with this collection of talent, but the offense has been historically terrible, and a number of in-game blunders in winnable games have prevented this season from at least having something to grasp on to. Based on the way things have deteriorated this season, there are serious questions about the direction of the program.

Obviously, "fire everyone" is not going to happen, for two key reasons. First, obviously, is financial, but second is that the BC program can't really afford any more instability right now. You could make a convincing argument that this season is 9 years of coaching instability collapsing on the program. Unlike Spaz, Addazio wasn't hired because he happened to be around when the seat opened up. He was hired because the AD believed in his vision for the program - a vision that was laid out as a 5-year plan from the beginning. Barring another complete disaster next year, I don't think BC has any real choice other than to see out the building process and assess where things stand.

Hire A New Offensive Coordinator

A month ago, we posed the question as to whether BC should fire offensive coordinator Todd Fitch in-season. BC is clearly not going to make an in-season move at this point. But to me, there should be no question that BC has to move on in the offseason.

BC brought back the same fleet of running backs that helped power an excellent rushing offense last year. In years 1 and 2 of the Steve Addazio regime, with offensive coordinator Ryan Day at the helm of the attack, BC had two of its highest-scoring seasons in recent history, in spite of being severely limited in terms of depth at the WR position.

You can't necessarily blame Todd Fitch for the fact that BC's only quarterback that had any semblance of experience went down in week 3, or for the parade of injuries to RBs that have hampered the rushing attack. However, at some point Fitch does need to have responsibility for how awful the attack has been. It's now BC's worst in decades, even worse than Gary Tranquill's output under Spaz. Fitch never managed to find a plan that maximized his team's strengths and minimized the role of its weaknesses, and ultimately that's what coaching needs to do.

Hope Experience And Health Come To The Rescue

As has been repeated ad nauseum, BC's roster is loaded with freshmen and sophomores. BC has also been victimized by a string of injuries at key positions. So can BC just hope everyone returns a year wiser and healthier, hand the reigns to a healthy and more experienced Darius Wade or Jeff Smith, and hope offensive results improve?

There's something to be said for this, but I'm not sure I trust this plan without a new offensive coordinator in place (see above). Darius Wade never really got a chance to show what he can do, but I don't think anyone's necessarily expecting an all-ACC performance out of him if he's the starter next year. And Jeff Smith obviously is severely limited in terms of his passing ability; the fact that a walk on in John Fadule came in and showed more touch and arm than either he or Troy Flutie in the same limited offense certainly was not a good sign.

Just by virtue of gaining experience, BC should be better next year, but just "better" isn't enough at this point; BC will need to be a lot better to be a winning team.

Anthony Brown To The Rescue?

Anthony Brown is a 3-star QB prospect, but one of those players who the recruiting agencies probably would have bumped to a 4* if he committed to Virginia Tech or Northwestern, two of the many schools that expressed interest in his services. A duel threat QB with speed and a solid arm, could Brown be the QB to fulfill the vision of an option offense that also has the ability to open up opposing defenses with consistent short and intermediate passing? It would be a game-changer if so, but it's risky to put too much hope in to a true freshman QB (see: 2015). That said, Brown is enrolling early this spring and will have a spring and summer with the team to learn the offense.

What do you think? What's BC's best path to improvement in 2016?