Weekly Kickoff: We’re Not Learning Much About Boston College Football

Saturday’s match-up between Boston College and Holy Cross was an exciting football game for all of the wrong reasons. BC didn’t look particularly spectacular at any point of the contest, scoring a couple of nice touchdowns but otherwise moving the ball just ok against an FCS defense. Meanwhile, Holy Cross mounted a comeback after falling behind by double-digits. The Crusaders rallied in the 4th quarter to put themselves down by just 3 points with possession of the ball in good field position. If it wasn’t for a game-choking fumble from their QB Sluka, we could easily have been talking today about Boston College’s first ever loss to an FCS program.

The Crusaders were in that position largely because of some costly penalties committed by Boston College. An unsportsmanlike conduct by BC QB Thomas Castellanos helped to stall a promising drive, while another one gave HC an extra 15 yards on their final drive of the game after the punt. And that’s just to name a couple of instances. BC could not get out of its own way with the penalties once again, a trademark of this program for the past few years. Luckily, Vinny Depalma was there to save the day at the end and made it all moot.

Different from last week, though, was the struggling defense. The Eagles performed alright against NIU in their opener, but they really started to look weak against Holy Cross this week. HC was running all over the field, picking up 264 total rushing yards and rarely facing third down because of their efficient running game. If that’s how the defense is going to let Sluka run all day, then just imagine how FSU QB Jordan Travis is going to look this upcoming weekend. Not a pretty thought.

And while the offense did look better in week 2 than they did in week 1, it’s hard to know how much of that was due to the opponent and how much of it was due to internal progress. There were fewer drops and seemingly less miscommunication, which is a good sign, but still too many setbacks to believe that they can do damage against most ACC defenses.

I do want to make note of Jeff Hafley’s press conference, which had a remarkably different tone than usual. He was angry and he was fired up. Not something we see a lot from him and hopefully an attitude that the team will respond to. But, for right now, it’s just words. He’s said all the right things before, but the team needs to actually execute before we can start believing in them again.

All in all, I don’t think we learned much. A lot of the issues we saw on Saturday are the same ones I could’ve told you about a week ago. With the #3 Florida State Seminoles coming up to Alumni Stadium next, I don’t think we’ll learn much by this time next week either.