Boston College 76 Howard 0: Cheers And Jeers

This was a tough game to watch. Never in my life have I see one team so completely overmatched than what happened yesterday at Alumni Stadium. All aspects of the ball were dominated by Boston College, and the Howard Bison should have never been on the same field as the Eagles. But, doing our due diligence, let's look at the X's and O's from yesterday's game:

CHEERS!

The Defense: Dear lord did Howard's offense look overmatched yesterday. Every play, it was the same thing over and over again. Howard insisted on trying to run, the front seven ended up blasting past the Howard offensive line, and the Bison would go nowhere. It really wasn't fair. Name a defensive front seven player, they got into the game, and they all made plays. In the end BC ended up having the most dominating defensive showing in the past 20 years as they allowed a total of 11 yards.

Tyler Rouse: This kid has put together two solid games against FCS squads. Five touchdowns now for the junior. Did a nice job yesterday. Wonder what his role will be when BC opens their FBS slate next week, he has certainly earned playing time.

St. Anselm's: The holder of the record for most points allowed to Boston College, the 1943 St. A's team can breathe a sigh of relief as they still hold the record of 78 points allowed.

Kicking: With the absolute barrage of points BC put up on the board, it was refreshing to see them not miss one extra point attempt. All three kickers got out there (Mike Knoll, Alex Howell, Colton Lichtenberg) and all three hit on every XP attempt. Given the law of averages from last year you would expected BC to miss at least one, but they didn't. Hurray!

Harrison Jackson: It didn't matter at the time because BC was up by a lot, but not only did Jackson return to the game for the first time since a bad injury derailed him, but he made a fantastic catch. He streaked down the field on the play and made a nice leaping grab, and somehow got a foot inbounds. Great to see him back, and excited to see what he will be able to give the Eagles.

Jeff Smith: He is going to be something special. Now I am not calling for Darius Wade's job to be in jeopardy, but Steve Addazio needs to figure out a way to use Smith. He's fast, he's shifty, and he's hard to tackle, and would give BC a different dynamic on offense, something Tyler Murphy gave BC last year, especially out of the option. Just going to throw this out there: Steve Addazio has run a multiple quarterback offense before when he had Chris Leak and Tim Tebow; would using Smith in certain situations make sense? He could really keep defenses off guard, and force opponents to game plan for two totally different QB's, which would be huge for BC. Again, this is no knock on Wade, just contemplating the best way to effectively use the weapons available on offense.

No Injuries/No Cheap Shots: One of the biggest keys of the game was escaping without an injury, and from everything I saw no Eagles went down in the game. Not only that, but Addazio basically kept Mehdi Abdesmad and Bobby Swigert on the sidelines, allowing them to basically have a week off to continue to heal. Also thank you Howard Bison, know it must have been to see your team get absolutely dismantled, but appreciated that no one got frustrated and took a cheap shot at a BC player. Thank you.

JEERS

Scheduling This Game In The 1st Place: Not going to beat a dead horse, but please, let's never do this again.

Attendance: No surprise, but it was atrocious. BC announced 26k, but I was in the stadium, there was no way there was anywhere near that number. I left the game at halftime, when it was 62-0; I had had enough, wondering how many brave souls stuck around the second half to watch a half of football that was basically a TIVO with fast forward hit 2x.

Still No Idea What Darius Wade Can Do: Was hoping that we would get to get more in game observations on what Darius Wade can and can't do. We didn't really get that opportunity yesterday. By the time he got on the field, he had a huge lead, and every drive he was on he didn't get much a chance to throw the ball, or run much of an offense. Really tough to see how he can throw the ball and run an offense when he didn't have the chance to do it. It'll be interesting on Friday, when he is thrown into the fire against FSU.

Any sort of competitive football: Not to pour it on Howard, but that was rough to watch. They couldn't do anything, even basic against BC. They couldn't tackle, they couldn't punt, they threw horrible passes, it was just bad football all around. Tough for BC to take their foot off the gas when the Bison literally couldn't stop even the most basic of plays. Don Brown admitted he threw a vanilla defense against the Bison, and still they couldn't figure out BC. BC just ran simple runs and passes, and the Bison couldn't stop them. Bad, bad, bad.

This game was like taking NCAA Football '14, turning difficulty to Freshman and taking the Crimson Tide and facing FCS East. I have literally no idea how anyone can take anything away from this week, something even head coach Steve Addazio admitted to after the game. There is no way anyone can look at the past two weeks and say "Oh BC matches up well with FSU here, but not there." We are completely in the dark, the real BC will show up on Friday night

Now let's never speak of this game again.