Notre Dame defeats Boston College Football, 44-0, in the Biggest Holy War Beatdown Since 1992

On Saturday afternoon, the Boston College Eagles traveled to South Bend to face the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in their penultimate game of the regular season. BC QB Phil Jurkovec, who transferred from Notre Dame in 2020 and has been the Eagles’ primary starter since then, was not able to come back from injury and face his former school. Emmett Morehead led the way for Boston College instead, but couldn’t manage much of anything as the Fighting Irish rolled to a 44-0 win.

This was the biggest win for Notre Dame over Boston College since their 1992 match-up that ended 52-7 in favor of the Irish, and their 9th-straight victory over the Eagles. It was also the worst loss in Jeff Hafley’s tenure as Boston College head coach, surpassing a 41-10 loss to Wake Forest in the final week of 2021.

The first half started about as poorly as it could’ve for BC. The first play from scrimmage was a 51-yard rush from Notre Dame’s Logan Diggs, for a drive eventually resulting in a FG. BC’s Morehead then almost immediately threw an INT deep in his own territory, allowing ND to score a quick TD and go up 10-0 just a few minutes into the contest. The Fighting Irish didn’t let up after that, scoring another 27 unanswered points in the first half to end up at an eventual halftime score of 37-0. 2 INTs and 2 fumbles from Morehead in the first half severely hampered Boston College’s ability to put up anything on the scoreboard, and the defense could hardly do anything right themselves.

That halftime score was too deep of a hole to even consider climbing out of. As the snow started pouring down in South Bend in the second half, Notre Dame maintained their lead easily throughout the contest and not much scoring happened on either side.

Takeaways

The Boston College defense once again came out of the gate unable to stop the opposing offense. This has been a bad trend for the Eagles this season, often letting teams run up the score early and requiring the offense to mount a comeback for the remainder of the contest. Sometimes it works out (like against NC State), but too often it creates an inescapable hole. It’s a huge aspect of this team that needs to be improved for next season.

Emmett Morehead’s mistakes cost the Eagles multiple times. From INTs to fumbles, BC’s offense couldn’t string more than a few plays together before the ball ended up in the hands of the opponent. This kind of performance is to be expected when you play a freshman at QB, so there’s not necessarily much to criticize here. Eagles fans just have to hope that this becomes valuable experience and it gets cleaned up by the time Morehead is likely the starter for BC next season.

Otherwise, what’s there to say? Boston College just got completely outclassed in every facet of the game. The Eagles have now been officially eliminated from bowl game contention and just have Syracuse left on their schedule to finish off this terrible season.