Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Todd Drexler
W2WF: Central Michigan
September 28, 2017 | Football, #ForBoston Files
A battered Eagles team comes home undaunted by the next challenge
It's hard to believe how fast football season flies. Though the season still feels relatively young, one-third of the schedule is over. The early calendar excitement is now a longer grind. There's enough data to understand where this Boston College team excels while understanding the opportunities for improvement.
Saturday's game against Central Michigan is just as important as any single game on the schedule. The Chippewas aren't a power conference opponent, but they won the Mid-American Conference West Division two years ago. Having been to bowl games each of the past three seasons, they come to BC looking for a potential third win to bolster their ongoing success.
"Central Michigan is coming in here with a good football team," Addazio said. "I've known head coach John Bonamego for an awful long time, going all the way back to the early days I started coaching. He's a heck of a football coach. He's had a great career. He's done a great job at Central Michigan. He's made a name for himself in the NFL in special teams, and you can see his handprints all over that program. So, a lot of respect for them."
Though a two-game losing streak paves the trip to Chestnut Hill, Central Michigan opened the season with dramatic victories. In its opener, it saw Rhode Island push the limits into triple overtime before earning a 30-27 victory. The next week, the Chippewas traveled to Kansas, where they scored 45 points en route to an 18-point victory over the Power Five-affiliated Jayhawks.
Though CMU isn't from a glamorous power league, it represents a good football team in a solid league. A BC win on Saturday becomes a tangible sign of progress, a springboard into the rest of the schedule. It's a clear opportunity, returning home to Alumni Stadium, for BC's talent to show what it absorbed while facing No. 2 Clemson on the road.
"Whether in our conference or out of conference in the MAC, we're playing very good football teams," Addazio said. "They come to play. You've got to come out, you've got to have a great week of practice and you got to come into that football game to go earn everything. That's the mentality. I think our kids fully understand that. We have a ton of football left and we got to take them one week at a time. Just continue to improve the areas that we need to improve in and adjust to the areas that we need to adjust in based on personnel changes."
Here's what to watch for as the Eagles prepare for Saturday:
*****
Weekly Storylines
Riddle me this, riddle me that.
Four games into the season, the tone of questions about BC are shifting. Former questions about who would fill what role are now focusing on how the team continues its march towards a season-long storyline of "next level execution."
"We had a lot of moving parts (on offensive line), but we've lost some of those moving parts right now," head coach Steve Addazio said. "Elijah Johnson has been gone all year. Jon Baker is gone for the year. Shane Leonard is not cleared to play. So, your moving parts are starting to shrink right now in terms of some of those things. I thought our offensive line played pretty well in that game down at Clemson. That's two weeks against two real formidable opponents. I thought they've improved."
Competitively, the offense is, in many ways, comparable to opponents. The Eagles have 74 first downs evenly spaced between rushing and passing (36 and 34). Tempo is very present for a unit averaging 21.4 seconds per play, and yardage is taking a very clear step forward. After averaging under 300 yards per game last year, the Eagles are 30 yards ahead per game in the first four weeks.
"We're growing this team, this quarterback and this team, amongst playing the elite of college football," Addazio said on the ACC media teleconference this week. "I feel like we know what we see. Over the course of four weeks, (Anthony Brown) had to handle a lot. He had to open up on the road at night. The next week he had to operate with a center that never played a college football game or never played center before. The next week he had to play Notre Dame in that environment in our place. Then he had to go on the road and play Clemson down there. I'd say he's had a pretty good indoctrination in college football."
Conversely, the Eagles still struggle to consistently score points. BC scored 23 points against Northern Illinois and 20 against Notre Dame, but it only scored 17 points combined against Wake Forest and Clemson. Part of that is a credit to the elite defenses it faced. Moving forward, the Eagles need to digest and apply experiential lessons to develop methods for hitting plays with greater regularity.
"They talk a lot about the front end (of Clemson's defense), but the back end is loaded with NFL players," Addazio said. "There's not a great margin for error in that back end. They can run. They're physical run support players, but they can run in the back end in coverage. We had an opportunity where we caught them in a breakdown in man coverage, and we weren't able to get the ball to Tom Sweeney who was wide open. So, we had a few opportunities there. Those are things that with a little bit more experience, those are going to happen.
"Those are great learning experiences for us because against those kinds of teams, you have a very finite amount of opportunities," he said. "You got to connect on those, and we weren't able to take advantage of enough of them. Some of them we did, but not enough."
CMU represents that kind of opportunity. The Chippewas rank No. 109 in passing defense and No. 92 in rushing defense, meaning there will be chances for the taking, but it's important to note the numbers are likely skewed by both Syracuse and Kansas. The Orange gained nearly 600 yards, while Kansas earned 470 yards against this defense.
CMU plays very well in situational football scenarios. It has nine interceptions on the year, good enough for more than two per game, second best in the nation. Its third down defense sits around 30%, placing them among the 35 best in the nation.
'Backer in the saddle
Central Michigan's offense racked up 590 yards against Kansas, averaging over eight yards per play. Quarterback Shane Morris was dominant in that game, completing 28 passes for 467 yards and five touchdowns. Receivers Mark Chapman and Corey Willis each had eight receptions for 168 and 140 yards, respectively, with Chapman catching three touchdowns.
The Chippewas controlled time of possession, absolutely burning the Jayhawks on the road. It's a clear indication of the MAC's ability to pile up statistics against power conference teams, and it should be enough to give pause to the BC defense.
"They've got some real talent at quarterback, at running back, at tight end, at wide receiver," Steve Addazio said. "They have good players. That MAC conference is a really good football conference, and (defensively) they've got some really good players (too). I really like their linebacker, Malik Fountain; and Josh Cox, their DB. They have some talent on their team and have had a couple big wins."
Central Michigan is a change from the dual-threat offenses seen in the first four weeks. It ranks No. 22 in the nation in passing offense by averaging over 300 yards per game. Passing spot sets a rushing game averaging 147.8 yards per game and ranked No. 84 nationally. With over 122 minutes of game clock possession, the Chippewas have the capability to keep a defense on the field for long drives.
That taxes a BC depth chart taxed by its lack of in-game experience. The exhaustion within the unit took its toll late against Clemson as the Eagles lost Max Richardson to an indefinite injury. Richardson joined Connor Strachan, who was ruled out for the season this week, as key losses to the linebacking corps.
"At the very, very end in the last five minutes of the game, we let up a punt return and then ran out of gas a little bit," Addazio told the media this week. "We got pretty depleted. We took a lot of injuries in the game, and we took a lot of injuries going into the game. So, we were depleted by the time we got to the last five, three minutes (against Clemson)."
Coaches can only patchwork so much when injuries happen during a game. In the week following, it becomes a quick body of work to get replacements game ready and integrated seamlessly into the scheme. For BC, focus this week is on the development of three main cogs, including John Lamot, a redshirt freshman who saw snaps against Clemson.
"John (Lamot) did a good job," Addazio said. "Here's another guy that's never really played in that role before. Having to do that against that team in that environment, he did some really good things. There's a learning curve, and he'll continue to grow there."
How the linebackers move forward relies on the coaching staff's entire defensive scheme. They receive assistance reading and attacking the line of scrimmage by collaborating with the defensive line. A talented secondary interchanges in coverage and run tackling. That needs to continue as Lamot works into the scheme and the coaches work to develop players like Isaiah McDuffie and Davon Jones.
"John will continue to grow and get better," Addazio said. "He's going to be a really good football player. What we have to do is work on our depth, of course. We're getting very, very thin. We're well aware of that. So, we need another great week this week to bring Davon along and continue to bring Isaiah McDuffie. We're very excited about both of those guys. Those guys have real good talent. It's just a matter of getting them adjusted to the system."
The power of positivity
Every game is must-win. No previous game or future date is more important than the single game at hand. It sounds cliché, but the focus is always preparing for the task at hand. Though Clemson sits in the rearview and Virginia Tech on the horizon, nothing is more important than Central Michigan.
After three straight losses, a win in this game would be tangible evidence of the next step forward. Before the season, Steve Addazio talked candidly about BC's talent levels. The talent's development became a theme through the first four weeks, even as the Eagles lost three games. For Addazio, there's been definite improvements through the obstacles thrown before this year's roster.
"I think we have the development right now of a really good football team," Steve Addazio said. "We've got to go out and that's got to manifest and show, both offensively and defensively. We're speaking about offense, and we'd like to go out here and move the ball effectively and be able to have more and more explosive plays."
BC's first four opponents are now a combined 8-1, with the one loss coming when the Eagles defeated Northern Illinois. Clemson has the inside track to a third straight College Football Playoff appearance, and Notre Dame is in a national poll for the second time this year after beating Michigan State last week. Wake Forest is earning national votes thanks to their undefeated start. NIU beat Nebraska in their last game and have another golden opportunity this week at a nationally-ranked San Diego State.
"We got to go out here and play at the highest level that we're going to play against," Addazio said. "We got to come out on fire. I anticipate we will. There's a great attitude on our team in our locker room. Our players sense and understand that every week we get kind of hit sometimes with unpredictable things like injuries and things that are pretty severe to us. What we do is digest that. We go to work. We develop it. Whatever errors we had we fix."
*****
Meteorology 101
Every year, there's always that one game where sitting in the stands gets a little bit soggy. The way the forecast is shaping up, Saturday is looking like that day is finally coming. The early prediction calls for a better-than-average chance of showers coming through the Boston area right in time for kickoff.
I'm mostly okay with the rain, though. Temperatures are predicted to only reach the high-50s, with overnight lows dipping down into the low-40s. That's a far cry from the Notre Dame game two weeks ago, when the heat and humidity created a sweltering atmosphere.
I have no idea why, but I've always enjoyed rain games. To me, layering for warmth under a poncho is the easy part. The moisture always seemed to make players a little crazier, and the on-field atmosphere is always a little bit of a wildcard. It becomes a little more chaotic; though I'm sure coaches don't love the challenge, I've always welcomed it as an opportunity to prove heartiness.
*****
Scoreboard Watching
Virginia Tech, ranked No. 12 in both the USA Today Coaches and Associated Press Polls, hosts No. 2 Clemson this week in the national game of the week. It's an absolute titan matchup between two undefeated teams and could very well be a preview of the ACC Championship Game later this year. Next week, the Hokies visit the Eagles for a nationally-televised night game on ESPN2.
It's part of a monster week in the ACC. Nearly everyone is in divisional matchups, starting Friday night when Miami visits Duke at 7 PM. The next day, North Carolina visits Georgia Tech at noon to cap a day that will likely shake up the Coastal Division.
In the Atlantic Division, Florida State heads to Wake Forest in a critical game for both teams. The Demon Deacons are 4-0, but they draw an 0-2 Seminole team on the verge of being totally unranked. After dropping out of the AP Poll, FSU is ranked No. 25 in the Coaches Poll.
NC State, coming off its vanquishing of the Seminoles last week, hosts Syracuse at 12:20 PM in Raleigh to round out Atlantic Division play.
In other action, Louisville plays Murray State. BC's last remaining non-conference opponent, Connecticut, heads to Dallas for a 4 PM start against Southern Methodist.
*****
Prediction Time/Pregame Quote
It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up.
-Vince Lombardi
The 2017 season is asking how much more Boston College has in it. The Eagles got beaten up by the injury bug, but they still have their pride. Losing key players only forces them to tinker with their personnel groupings, retooling to find new people to cycle in. That they found players is the result of a depth seemingly tested every week.
By maintaining the concepts of a collaborative team, the Eagles push through injuries and work towards success. They're still ready to compete and represent Boston College, evidenced by the way they took Notre Dame and Clemson into the second half of tight games.
That pride will shine through and ultimately be a cause for victories. At some point, hard work pays off. When that happens, victory will become the byproduct and help this team start turning the corner into the success it both expects and hopes to achieve.
Â
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Saturday's game against Central Michigan is just as important as any single game on the schedule. The Chippewas aren't a power conference opponent, but they won the Mid-American Conference West Division two years ago. Having been to bowl games each of the past three seasons, they come to BC looking for a potential third win to bolster their ongoing success.
"Central Michigan is coming in here with a good football team," Addazio said. "I've known head coach John Bonamego for an awful long time, going all the way back to the early days I started coaching. He's a heck of a football coach. He's had a great career. He's done a great job at Central Michigan. He's made a name for himself in the NFL in special teams, and you can see his handprints all over that program. So, a lot of respect for them."
Though a two-game losing streak paves the trip to Chestnut Hill, Central Michigan opened the season with dramatic victories. In its opener, it saw Rhode Island push the limits into triple overtime before earning a 30-27 victory. The next week, the Chippewas traveled to Kansas, where they scored 45 points en route to an 18-point victory over the Power Five-affiliated Jayhawks.
Though CMU isn't from a glamorous power league, it represents a good football team in a solid league. A BC win on Saturday becomes a tangible sign of progress, a springboard into the rest of the schedule. It's a clear opportunity, returning home to Alumni Stadium, for BC's talent to show what it absorbed while facing No. 2 Clemson on the road.
"Whether in our conference or out of conference in the MAC, we're playing very good football teams," Addazio said. "They come to play. You've got to come out, you've got to have a great week of practice and you got to come into that football game to go earn everything. That's the mentality. I think our kids fully understand that. We have a ton of football left and we got to take them one week at a time. Just continue to improve the areas that we need to improve in and adjust to the areas that we need to adjust in based on personnel changes."
Here's what to watch for as the Eagles prepare for Saturday:
*****
Weekly Storylines
Riddle me this, riddle me that.
Four games into the season, the tone of questions about BC are shifting. Former questions about who would fill what role are now focusing on how the team continues its march towards a season-long storyline of "next level execution."
"We had a lot of moving parts (on offensive line), but we've lost some of those moving parts right now," head coach Steve Addazio said. "Elijah Johnson has been gone all year. Jon Baker is gone for the year. Shane Leonard is not cleared to play. So, your moving parts are starting to shrink right now in terms of some of those things. I thought our offensive line played pretty well in that game down at Clemson. That's two weeks against two real formidable opponents. I thought they've improved."
Competitively, the offense is, in many ways, comparable to opponents. The Eagles have 74 first downs evenly spaced between rushing and passing (36 and 34). Tempo is very present for a unit averaging 21.4 seconds per play, and yardage is taking a very clear step forward. After averaging under 300 yards per game last year, the Eagles are 30 yards ahead per game in the first four weeks.
"We're growing this team, this quarterback and this team, amongst playing the elite of college football," Addazio said on the ACC media teleconference this week. "I feel like we know what we see. Over the course of four weeks, (Anthony Brown) had to handle a lot. He had to open up on the road at night. The next week he had to operate with a center that never played a college football game or never played center before. The next week he had to play Notre Dame in that environment in our place. Then he had to go on the road and play Clemson down there. I'd say he's had a pretty good indoctrination in college football."
Conversely, the Eagles still struggle to consistently score points. BC scored 23 points against Northern Illinois and 20 against Notre Dame, but it only scored 17 points combined against Wake Forest and Clemson. Part of that is a credit to the elite defenses it faced. Moving forward, the Eagles need to digest and apply experiential lessons to develop methods for hitting plays with greater regularity.
"They talk a lot about the front end (of Clemson's defense), but the back end is loaded with NFL players," Addazio said. "There's not a great margin for error in that back end. They can run. They're physical run support players, but they can run in the back end in coverage. We had an opportunity where we caught them in a breakdown in man coverage, and we weren't able to get the ball to Tom Sweeney who was wide open. So, we had a few opportunities there. Those are things that with a little bit more experience, those are going to happen.
"Those are great learning experiences for us because against those kinds of teams, you have a very finite amount of opportunities," he said. "You got to connect on those, and we weren't able to take advantage of enough of them. Some of them we did, but not enough."
CMU represents that kind of opportunity. The Chippewas rank No. 109 in passing defense and No. 92 in rushing defense, meaning there will be chances for the taking, but it's important to note the numbers are likely skewed by both Syracuse and Kansas. The Orange gained nearly 600 yards, while Kansas earned 470 yards against this defense.
CMU plays very well in situational football scenarios. It has nine interceptions on the year, good enough for more than two per game, second best in the nation. Its third down defense sits around 30%, placing them among the 35 best in the nation.
'Backer in the saddle
Central Michigan's offense racked up 590 yards against Kansas, averaging over eight yards per play. Quarterback Shane Morris was dominant in that game, completing 28 passes for 467 yards and five touchdowns. Receivers Mark Chapman and Corey Willis each had eight receptions for 168 and 140 yards, respectively, with Chapman catching three touchdowns.
The Chippewas controlled time of possession, absolutely burning the Jayhawks on the road. It's a clear indication of the MAC's ability to pile up statistics against power conference teams, and it should be enough to give pause to the BC defense.
"They've got some real talent at quarterback, at running back, at tight end, at wide receiver," Steve Addazio said. "They have good players. That MAC conference is a really good football conference, and (defensively) they've got some really good players (too). I really like their linebacker, Malik Fountain; and Josh Cox, their DB. They have some talent on their team and have had a couple big wins."
Central Michigan is a change from the dual-threat offenses seen in the first four weeks. It ranks No. 22 in the nation in passing offense by averaging over 300 yards per game. Passing spot sets a rushing game averaging 147.8 yards per game and ranked No. 84 nationally. With over 122 minutes of game clock possession, the Chippewas have the capability to keep a defense on the field for long drives.
That taxes a BC depth chart taxed by its lack of in-game experience. The exhaustion within the unit took its toll late against Clemson as the Eagles lost Max Richardson to an indefinite injury. Richardson joined Connor Strachan, who was ruled out for the season this week, as key losses to the linebacking corps.
"At the very, very end in the last five minutes of the game, we let up a punt return and then ran out of gas a little bit," Addazio told the media this week. "We got pretty depleted. We took a lot of injuries in the game, and we took a lot of injuries going into the game. So, we were depleted by the time we got to the last five, three minutes (against Clemson)."
Coaches can only patchwork so much when injuries happen during a game. In the week following, it becomes a quick body of work to get replacements game ready and integrated seamlessly into the scheme. For BC, focus this week is on the development of three main cogs, including John Lamot, a redshirt freshman who saw snaps against Clemson.
"John (Lamot) did a good job," Addazio said. "Here's another guy that's never really played in that role before. Having to do that against that team in that environment, he did some really good things. There's a learning curve, and he'll continue to grow there."
How the linebackers move forward relies on the coaching staff's entire defensive scheme. They receive assistance reading and attacking the line of scrimmage by collaborating with the defensive line. A talented secondary interchanges in coverage and run tackling. That needs to continue as Lamot works into the scheme and the coaches work to develop players like Isaiah McDuffie and Davon Jones.
"John will continue to grow and get better," Addazio said. "He's going to be a really good football player. What we have to do is work on our depth, of course. We're getting very, very thin. We're well aware of that. So, we need another great week this week to bring Davon along and continue to bring Isaiah McDuffie. We're very excited about both of those guys. Those guys have real good talent. It's just a matter of getting them adjusted to the system."
The power of positivity
Every game is must-win. No previous game or future date is more important than the single game at hand. It sounds cliché, but the focus is always preparing for the task at hand. Though Clemson sits in the rearview and Virginia Tech on the horizon, nothing is more important than Central Michigan.
After three straight losses, a win in this game would be tangible evidence of the next step forward. Before the season, Steve Addazio talked candidly about BC's talent levels. The talent's development became a theme through the first four weeks, even as the Eagles lost three games. For Addazio, there's been definite improvements through the obstacles thrown before this year's roster.
"I think we have the development right now of a really good football team," Steve Addazio said. "We've got to go out and that's got to manifest and show, both offensively and defensively. We're speaking about offense, and we'd like to go out here and move the ball effectively and be able to have more and more explosive plays."
BC's first four opponents are now a combined 8-1, with the one loss coming when the Eagles defeated Northern Illinois. Clemson has the inside track to a third straight College Football Playoff appearance, and Notre Dame is in a national poll for the second time this year after beating Michigan State last week. Wake Forest is earning national votes thanks to their undefeated start. NIU beat Nebraska in their last game and have another golden opportunity this week at a nationally-ranked San Diego State.
"We got to go out here and play at the highest level that we're going to play against," Addazio said. "We got to come out on fire. I anticipate we will. There's a great attitude on our team in our locker room. Our players sense and understand that every week we get kind of hit sometimes with unpredictable things like injuries and things that are pretty severe to us. What we do is digest that. We go to work. We develop it. Whatever errors we had we fix."
*****
Meteorology 101
Every year, there's always that one game where sitting in the stands gets a little bit soggy. The way the forecast is shaping up, Saturday is looking like that day is finally coming. The early prediction calls for a better-than-average chance of showers coming through the Boston area right in time for kickoff.
I'm mostly okay with the rain, though. Temperatures are predicted to only reach the high-50s, with overnight lows dipping down into the low-40s. That's a far cry from the Notre Dame game two weeks ago, when the heat and humidity created a sweltering atmosphere.
I have no idea why, but I've always enjoyed rain games. To me, layering for warmth under a poncho is the easy part. The moisture always seemed to make players a little crazier, and the on-field atmosphere is always a little bit of a wildcard. It becomes a little more chaotic; though I'm sure coaches don't love the challenge, I've always welcomed it as an opportunity to prove heartiness.
*****
Scoreboard Watching
Virginia Tech, ranked No. 12 in both the USA Today Coaches and Associated Press Polls, hosts No. 2 Clemson this week in the national game of the week. It's an absolute titan matchup between two undefeated teams and could very well be a preview of the ACC Championship Game later this year. Next week, the Hokies visit the Eagles for a nationally-televised night game on ESPN2.
It's part of a monster week in the ACC. Nearly everyone is in divisional matchups, starting Friday night when Miami visits Duke at 7 PM. The next day, North Carolina visits Georgia Tech at noon to cap a day that will likely shake up the Coastal Division.
In the Atlantic Division, Florida State heads to Wake Forest in a critical game for both teams. The Demon Deacons are 4-0, but they draw an 0-2 Seminole team on the verge of being totally unranked. After dropping out of the AP Poll, FSU is ranked No. 25 in the Coaches Poll.
NC State, coming off its vanquishing of the Seminoles last week, hosts Syracuse at 12:20 PM in Raleigh to round out Atlantic Division play.
In other action, Louisville plays Murray State. BC's last remaining non-conference opponent, Connecticut, heads to Dallas for a 4 PM start against Southern Methodist.
*****
Prediction Time/Pregame Quote
It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up.
-Vince Lombardi
The 2017 season is asking how much more Boston College has in it. The Eagles got beaten up by the injury bug, but they still have their pride. Losing key players only forces them to tinker with their personnel groupings, retooling to find new people to cycle in. That they found players is the result of a depth seemingly tested every week.
By maintaining the concepts of a collaborative team, the Eagles push through injuries and work towards success. They're still ready to compete and represent Boston College, evidenced by the way they took Notre Dame and Clemson into the second half of tight games.
That pride will shine through and ultimately be a cause for victories. At some point, hard work pays off. When that happens, victory will become the byproduct and help this team start turning the corner into the success it both expects and hopes to achieve.
Â
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