UConn defeats Boston College, 13-3, for the Huskies’ first ever win over the Eagles

On Saturday afternoon, Boston College football traveled down to East Hartford, CT to take on the UConn Huskies in a battle of New England FBS programs. BC came into the game sporting their worst start since 2012, and UConn arrived with their best start to a season since 2017. It was a perfect storm for UConn to pull off their first ever win over Boston College by a score of 13-3. Before today, BC had been 12-0-2 against UConn since 1908.

The game started out hot for UConn. Their first drive resulted in a quick TD thanks to a 62-yard TD pass from Zion Turner to Justin Joly. That was quickly followed up by BC getting stuffed on a 4th down sneak, resulting in a Huskies FG to make it 10-0 only a few minutes into the first quarter. Boston College QB Phil Jurkovec threw an INT on 3rd & 20 the next drive, setting up UConn well once again, but nothing got going and they missed their FG to extend the lead even further. From there the offenses mostly stalled and struggled to put up points. Boston College managed a couple drives into the redzone, but they ended with just a FG and an interception, and UConn got almost no progress. So it became 10-3 Huskies at the half.

The 2nd half continued to be more of the same of the terrible offenses, highlighted by a crazy amount of false start penalties committed by UConn that prevented any sort of gains. Around the midpoint of the 3rd quarter, Emmett Morehead came in for BC QB Phil Jurkovec after an injury on the field, but the throws from the back-up were looking even worse than Jurkovec’s poor play. After Zay Flowers dropped a wide open pass down the sideline that could’ve gone for a TD, it was over for BC. A fumble on the next drive by BC led to a UConn FG and they cruised the rest of the way to a 13-3 victory.

Takeaways

HOLY **** THAT WAS BAD. Just an atrocious product being put on the field by Boston College. Jeff Hafley as head coach clearly is not performing up to the expected standard. I said this much on Twitter:

Particularly, Jurkovec looked very bad. What happened to the player he was in 2020? Did the hand injury really change him that much? He still mostly looks like himself running the ball and avoiding pressure when possible, but his throwing ability and decision-making has fallen off of a cliff. Multiple costly INTs and stalled drives because he couldn’t get the ball to the open receiver. It may be time to think about permanently benching Jurk and playing Morehead, mostly just to prepare for next season. Morehead arguably looked worse than Jurkovec in his playing time, but some more snaps would do him good because there was some potential there. Jurk is a lost cause at this point.

The defense was a mess in the opening minutes. Hafley and the defensive staff did not have Boston College ready to start this game. Luckily UConn is a lousy team (that loves to get false start penalties) and BC shored it up within about 10 minutes. But most teams in the ACC will take advantage of poor openings like that when they play lesser schools such as Boston College.

The remainder of the problems are what you’ve been seeing the rest of BC’s season. Struggling to establish the run, ineffective pass blocking, and questionable play-calling just to name a few. After the Louisville game, I was hopeful that the team was on the right track to fixing a lot of these issues, but there hasn’t been much more obvious progress since then. This team seems to have peaked, and any more wins by the end of the year seem unlikely. If they can’t win against UConn, I don’t see any reason why they would win against anyone left on their schedule.

The question on everybody’s tongue after this game? How long does Jeff Hafley have at BC? Answer what you think below: