2017 BC Football Camp Insider: The Quarterbacks

Few positions on a football field carry the weight of a quarterback. The heartbeat of an offensive unit, they need to be mentally prepared to make split second decisions in tight, precise windows. They also need to be physically mature, combining speed, strength, agility and conditioning. With only one player at the position at any time, the quarterback is maybe the most critical person on the gridiron.

When Steve Addazio accepted Boston College's head coaching position, he set about rebuilding the quarterback position. Patching over the position as much as possible with one-year solutions, he's spent four years recruiting the type of player that he believed could run his offense with a particular mindset. Entering his fifth year, he now believes he's done just that.

"A quarterback drives the football team," Addazio said. "The intangible stuff is so important at that position - how you carry yourself, how do your teammates feel you carry yourself. Can you say the hard things? Can you push them on the field? When you have the right guy, that's happening."

The Eagles enter the season with a deep group of signal callers at various stages of their development. While they lack in-game experience, Addazio's quarterback room is built from players who either have learned or are learning to play within a hybrid offense. It's built from the fundamentals of a pro style offense but capable of switching into a tempo, spread mindset.

"You take the approach that a lot of these tempo teams are (taking)," offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler said. "You have the ability to go super fast. You have the ability to slow it down. We were trying to make ourselves unique in terms of having the ability to have multiple groupings, multiple formations on the field."

Entering 2017, Boston College features two quarterbacks capable of taking snaps with the first team offense. Darius Wade has the most experience within the Eagle system as a redshirt junior, while Anthony Brown, a redshirt freshman, only came to BC last year. Neither has much in-game experience, with Wade starting the first three games of 2015 before suffering a season-ending injury. But each bring something different and unique to the Eagle offense.

"You start with Darius and Anthony," Addazio said. "They both can throw the ball. They're accurate. They have good arm strength. They're athletic. All of our guys are athletic, can throw the ball right now and are pretty accurate. I think knowledge of what we're doing, mastery of what we're doing (as an offense) is probably where the separations occur."

Last season, Wade saw snaps in seven games, playing mostly against Wagner and Syracuse. Against the Seahawks, he went 3-for-4 for 33 yards, completing a 14 yard pass in a 42-10 victory. In October, he went 3-for-6 against the Orange, completing a 12-yard pass as part of 19 passing yards. In 2015, he went 14-25 in his first career start, throwing a touchdown in a 24-3 win over Maine. He had 85 all-purpose yards against Florida State two weeks later before the injury robbed him of the rest of his sophomore season.

Brown, meanwhile, was a three-star recruit, a dual-threat quarterback becoming more prevalent across college football. In high school, recruiting scouting reports referred to him as tall enough to have a pocket presence but agile enough to make plays on the run. Mentally tough, his creativity and vision on the run make him a unique type of player. Uniqueness is something a coach looks for when building his vision for the future of a program.

But it's not about just having two quarterbacks. Because the position requires intricate depth of knowledge and precise decision-making, it takes the whole unit to teach and develop each other, even as players are just starting out in their collegiate careers. It creates lineage and continuity.

Behind Wade and Brown, John Fadule is the type of player helping create that continuity. In 2015, injuries ravaged the depth chart, forcing the walk-on, then a true freshman, into a starting role. He played in three games and, using sheer determination and intelligence, found himself in a position to help the offense as much as possible. He threw for 257 yards against NC State, completing over 60% of his passes. It came between weeks where he rushed for 53 and 64 yards against Virginia Tech and Notre Dame, respectively.

"John Fadule has great mastery of what we're doing," Addazio said. "He's a very bright guy, on top of it, as obviously are Anthony and Darius."

Fadule bridges between the top of the depth chart and the players further down the line. The Eagles recruited local prospect EJ Perry, who threw for more than 3,100 yards and nearly 50 touchdowns during his senior year of high school. Perry had 15 touchdowns in his final two games, three by rushing. He won nearly every major accolade as Massachusetts' Division I Player Of The Year and an All-Scholastic as he tied the state record for single-season touchdown passes.

With Perry comes lineage and a knowledge of the game. His father was his high school coach, while his uncle, now the head coach at Bryant University, is a former Ivy League Player of the Year who broke nearly every passing record in league history. As he develops further into his career, he can draw on experiences in a life growing up in the game.

"EJ is a fantastic athlete," Addazio said. "He has measurables. He can throw the ball. He's very competitive. He's just absorbing it all right now trying to get it all down. He got here mid-semester (last spring), and it gave him a little advantage."

While the position remains young in terms of game experience, this room has the varying types of playmakers capable of running this offense. For Steve Addazio, that's what he set out when he looked to "rebuild the room." For a program that boasted a lineage from Doug Flutie to Glenn Foley to the Hasselbeck brothers to Brian St. Pierre to Matt Ryan, that's something that bodes well for both the present and the future.

"When you compete for championships, you don't often see that happen without one of those kind of marquee guys that has that uniqueness to him," Addazio said. "I happen to have been around two in my career. I've seen more, but I've actually been around and coached two. They're special, and when you have a special guy, it makes all the difference in the world to y

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2017 BC Football Camp Insider: The Quarterbacks

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John Fadule

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