Boston College Athletics
Silva Named ACC Player of the Week
October 17, 2005 | Football
Oct. 17, 2005
Boston College free safety Jamie Silva received ACC Player of the Week honors after he had 11 total tackles, including nine solo stops, in the Eagles' 35-30 win over Wake Forest on Saturday. The sophomore from East Providence, R.I., also had one-half of a tackle for loss for one yard and led the team in tackles for the second consecutive week. Against Virginia, Silva registered a career-best 14 solo tackles.
The Eagles have a week off to rest and recuperate before heading to Blacksburg to take on third-ranked Virginia Tech a week from Thursday. "The important thing is for us to get healthy," Coach Tom O'Brien says. "We have some guys who had to sit out the last game and we need to get them back out on the practice field. I think the biggest focus for us right now as a coaching staff is to spend some time recruiting, and we will spend a lot of time looking at what we've done the first seven games and what we need to do the last four as a whole before we start looking at Virginia Tech. For the football team, the number one goal is to get healthy and get back out on the football field."
O'Brien was pleased with his team's come-from-behind victory over Wake Forest on a rain-soaked afternoon in Alumni Stadium. "It was tough for us to win the football game, but it was typical of a Wake-BC game," he said. "The team that led the first 15 minutes didn't win the football game. I give a lot of credit to our team, they hung in there. We turned the ball over five times, we dropped a lot of passes, we made a lot of mistakes in different areas of the football game, but when it came down to being able to make plays at the end, we were able to do it. That's what won it for us."
Down 30-21 with 3:36 remaining in the game, O'Brien sent backup quarterback Matt Ryan into the game. Ryan responded by completing 7-of-9 passes for 134 yards and two touchdowns - all within a span of two minutes and 18 seconds.
"As I said Saturday after the game, he was the only dry guy on the field,"O'Brien said. "When you look at it, he looks like he was playing at a different speed than anyone else. I think both teams had close to 80 plays on offense and defense. A lot of guys were in on a lot of plays, and you get tired and wet and sore. Matt came in fresh, and we had been rotating our wide receivers the entire game, so we had some guys there who were fresh. They made some big plays."
The Eagles, 6-1 and ranked 13th in this week's AP poll and 11th in the CNN/USA Today poll, became bowl eligible for a record seventh consecutive season with Saturday's game.
"I think it's significant," O'Brien said. "We want to go to a bowl game. That's one of the goals of this football team. We have four games left, and we have to work hard. Now, perhaps, we have a chance to win this conference, to get into the championship game. Every time we play a conference team, you have a chance to move up in bowl priority, so that's important to us."
