Weekly Kickoff: Boston College Football is Unprepared Every Single Week

We are four weeks into the 2023 college football season, and the Boston College team is already falling apart. Despite their noble effort in a close game against #3 Florida State in week 3, BC came out against Louisville for their first road game of the year and put up a stinker. The Cardinals took a 28-0 lead halfway through the second quarter and extended it to a 42-12 lead by halftime. The real “insult to injury” moment was when Louisville took a fake knee with about 30 seconds left in the half, allowing them to set up another touchdown after already leading by 21. The game was never really competitive and Boston College’s defense had absolutely no answer for what Louisville was doing.

This game just adds to the terrible trend we’ve seen all year: whatever head coach Jeff Hafley says will be the emphasis next week, usually the opposite happens.

Coming into the season, Hafley emphasized that Morehead was BC’s QB1, took him to ACC media day, and gave him most of the first team reps in fall camp. But just three drives into game 1, Thomas Castellanos was subbed in at QB and Morehead never seriously saw the field again. It left the team unprepared for TC’s mobile style of play and his unusual snap cadence that has been leading to a lot of false start penalties. Despite emphasizing Morehead’s importance to the offense, the coaching staff left the team unprepared for what would actually happen.

In week 2, Boston College had an uncomfortably close game with FCS rival Holy Cross that featured a lot of BC penalties and an unsteady defense. Hafley came into that postgame press conference fired up, explaining that he was not satisfied with his team’s performance and specifically emphasized penalties as something they needed to clean up. So what do the Eagles do in week 3? They set a program record in penalties against Florida State. The coaching staff, despite the specific emphasis on discipline, left the team completely unprepared.

And now in week 4, the emphasis was all about keeping their energy up and building momentum. Despite the FSU loss, Hafley felt good about some of the things his team was able to do and told us during the week that his team was excited about moving forward and improving their season. So what do the Eagles do in week 4? They come out as flat as ever, giving up 42 points in the first half, looking as unprepared and unenergized as they’ve ever been. Once again, the exact opposite of what the coaches emphasized leading up to the game.

I could keep going by talking about the blown coverages or the dropped passes or the nonexistent pass rush. It’s fairly obvious to see at this point that team walks into each contest ill-prepared for their opponent, and all Jeff Hafley can do to explain is say, “I was wrong.”