Trust The Process: Addazio Can Identify Good Assistants

Yesterday, Boston College football was rocked when long time position coach Al Washington announced that he would be leaving the Heights to head to Cincinnati. Many, myself included, first went to blaming the head coach because hey it’s pretty easy to blame Steve Addazio for literally everything. But, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, let’s pump the brakes on this narrative for a moment.

Al Washington is from that area, maybe there is a family/personal reason why he chose to go closer to home. Can you blame him for that? He, and the college haven’t come out and said that directly, but there is some logic to that. There also may be a dozen other reasons why Al is leaving Boston College, and you know what? Many of them don’t have to do with Steve Addazio or the direction of the program. It’s easy to slide right back into that narrative, but just keep in mind those other non-Daz factors that may have caused this decision.

Even with the beloved Washington leaving the Heights, I have to say I kind of trust that Addazio will make the right moves. He now has a pretty solid history of hiring good coordinators that have come to Boston College and made their mark. From Anthony Campanile to Ben Albert, there have been some good hires made by Addazio both on the field and recruiting. Even this year, Paul Pasqualoni for the most part was widely panned as a hire, and he turned around and helped build one of the best defensive lines in the country along with picking up calling duties when Jim Reid got sick.

Boston College has some factors that will make it attractive to some younger coaches as well. I like to look at it this way. True, he has had a few misses, the Fitch hiring did not work, and we have no idea why Ben Albert left to go to Duke. But Ryan Day was able to parlay his experience at Boston College into an NFL career, and now has moved on to Ohio State. Don Brown was able to move up to a premier defensive coordinator position in the country. Heck even Kevin Lempa was able to move up from a position coach to a defensive coordinator because of his time at Boston College. That is at least three coaches in four years that have been able to parlay their time at Boston College into bigger things. And in the world of nomadic assistant coaches, that is going to be seen as a benefit to coming to BC.

There are a million things to get pissed at Addazio for. His game calling, clock management, recruiting, his personality, but I feel there is one thing he has done reasonably well, which is find good assistant coaches and help them continue to build on their careers. We can all grieve that Al Washington is gone, but this may be one of those few instances where trusting Steve Addazio seems the wise move.