Boston College Football 2015: Does the QB Situation Change the Season?

Boston College enters the Northern Illinois game on Saturday down their starting QB and smarting from an overall poor performance on the offensive side of the ball.  With Darius Wade out for the season with a broken ankle and Coach Steve Addazio now weighing his options between redshirt freshman Troy Flutie and true frosh Jeff Smith, Eagle nation has been weighing in with their preferences.

Based on the way Addazio used them both in the Florida State game last Friday, Smith appears to be the bigger running threat and Flutie more the passer.  Flutie, like Wade, has had the benefit of being in the system for a year, while Smith just stepped onto campus last month.  The case can be made for either to take the reigns..but let me ask, in the context of the 2015 season, does this change anything?

Darius Wade won the starting job.  He had the benefit of taking minimal meaningful snaps in games last year as well as getting second team reps behind Tyler Murphy, but his actual body of work consisted of the Maine game and handing off for a quarter against Howard and then the ineffectual effort against the Noles.

He brought some level of experience therefore, but many people thought Smith and to a lesser extent Flutie and Elijah Robinson at least pushed him in the pre-season.  To say he had made his mark and was head and shoulders above the others, I think is being overly dramatic about it.  We will enter the 2016 season still not knowing what we have in Wade.

Which brings us back to 2015 and what do we have?  We have two QBs (perhaps three if Robinson is moved back), none of them having any tangible experience and none of which appear to be significantly ahead of the others.  Flutie has the advantage of the extra year and Smith and Robinson (who was on campus for spring) are behind in their acclamation to the system.

To me, it doesn't appear that things have changed that much..we started with an unknown and several other unknowns behind him and now we just have one "less" unknown.

That's not to say that Wade wouldn't progress and have a good year, nor that the coaching staff picked him for any reason either than he was the best choice, but how much would Wade impact the 2015 season?

The issues with the inexperience in the offensive line and the receivers still exist and we know that BC needs to lean on it's salty defense and get improved play from the running backs, in particular, Jon Hilliman.

Will it be a repeat of the FSU game on Saturday afternoon offensively, perhaps, but I will make the case that the 2015 season as a whole, hasn't changed much if at all.  Whatever your expectations were, should mostly still be in play and if not, you have to ask yourself how many of those expectations were based on the play of an untested sophomore quarterback as opposed to the program as a whole.