Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Photo: Mike Gridley
W2WF: Louisville
October 11, 2018 | Football, #ForBoston Files
Can BC regain its winning ways by returning home against Louisville?
Every football game has its own sense of urgency. A full week of practice and preparation goes into a single game lasting 60 minutes. It makes every game feel like a must-win, in turn providing the highest of highs and lowest of lows with every victory and defeat.
Football season passed the halfway point this week, and Saturday's game between Boston College and Louisville marks the beginning of the downslope for 2018. It's a process that will eventually weed out bowl eligibility, and others will begin taking steps to secure elite levels of positioning. It makes each win feel more important, but it also makes each loss feel tougher.
"The challenge is to stay together as a team and be positive and continue to work to get better in practice," Louisville head coach Bobby Petrino said. "Our players have done that. We've got some good leadership on the team. We've had some good attitudes."
The Cardinals come to Chestnut Hill nursing a 2-4 record, the exact record BC carried when it went to Kentucky last year. They're a lot younger with athletes who are trying to refine raw talent. It's led to growing pains on both sides of the ball, and they enter with one of the worst scoring offenses and defenses in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
To Steve Addazio and the Eagles, though, it's something that needs to be overlooked. Louisville's struggles can turn on a dime, and it could harness the talent that's been developing over the past two games. So the challenge is real for BC to achieve consistency after last week's loss to NC State.
"We were in the process of trying to maintain our consistency with a new normal (against NC State)," Addazio said. "It's one thing when you miss a player. I think it's another thing when you miss a marquee player. I think that's going to change your approach a little bit. But I thought our kids competed hard throughout the game and found a way to come back and put ourselves in position (to win)."
Here's what to expect as the teams take the field on Saturday:
*****
Weekly Storylines
Numbers tell stories but can also mean nothing.
Georgia Tech smoked the Louisville defense to the tune of 542 rushing yards, scoring three times in the first quarter en route to a 66-31 rout of the Cardinals. Quarterback TaQuan Marshall executed the triple option to perfection, gaining 175 yards and two scores on his own. He only completed one pass but also only attempted two since the Yellow Jackets, quite honestly, didn't need it.
Unfortunately for BC, though, the film from that game is pretty much useless because of Georgia Tech's style of offense.
"Georgia Tech runs a lot of yards on everybody," Steve Addazio said. "That's really a unique scheme. It's hard to defend. It has a way of getting going on you, and they got going (against Louisville). I've been on both ends of that thing in my career at different stops. So I don't know that we really take a ton away from that."
Instead, BC needs to look at other defensive performances earlier in the season to establish how it can attack in the rushing game. Every other opponent except for Florida State ran for 150 or more yards against the Cardinals, and they all did so without leading rushers gaining 100 yards with the exception of Indiana State.
So look to BC to continue diversifying its running game, even if AJ Dillon can't go on Saturday. The Eagles enter the game with the fifth-best rushing attack in the conference, though Georgia Tech is one of the teams ahead of them. They average over 222 yards per game, and the defense, with the Georgia Tech game factored in, is allowing 231 yards to opponents.
"They have a really strong, physical running game," Bobby Petrino said. "Multiple tight end sets that they utilize, they do it with a fast tempo. To have that type of running game and that type of personnel groups on the field and go fast, I think that's the biggest challenge for us. You have to get lined up, you have to recognize it, and then have the ability to play fast and physical."
Execute, execute, execute
Nearly everyone can cleanly break down last week's game into two distinct halves because of how stark BC's performance contrasted. First half misses became second half big plays, and while it is encouraging to watch the Eagles rally against a nationally-ranked opponent, it's also frustrating because the game turned into a blown opportunity.
"We had some wide-open receivers in the first half," Steve Addazio said. "We didn't hit a couple and then we dropped a couple. In the style that we're playing in right now, it gets you off the field, so third down is critical. Then you don't get first downs and you don't reload another set of three or four."
AJ Dillon's absence accounted for a little piece of that, but it boils down to execution in the game calls. A well-executed offense would have let the defense breathe, which mean the defense might have done better on third downs, which in turn would have given the offense more chances.
"We've got to do a better job on third down on offense," Addazio said. "We were 0-for-7 in the first half of that game, and on defense, we were poor on third down. I think on both sides, we get off the field, we stay on the field, and it's a completely different ballgame, 100 percent."
Louisville enters this game as an opportunistic challenge in those situations. The Cardinals are second-worst in third down defense, which means the Eagles should face a susceptible unit. By the same token, Louisville's offense is No. 68, which means it can succeed in the same situations. It's a good challenge, but it's not one that appears, statistically at least, overwhelming.
"The preparation is a lot about individual technique and fundamentals and tackling," Bobby Petrino said. "Then putting together as a team and running full speed to the ball and recognizing the difference between run and pass. They do a great job with their play action game."
Don't Assume Anything.
Statistics provide a guideline for predictions right up until the actual game kicks off. After that, it's virtually impossible to predict if and how everything will come together for a football team. So despite Boston College having advantages in most head-to-head categories, this isn't a walkthrough game for a guaranteed victory.
Louisville's depth chart prominently features seven players who are playing either their redshirt sophomore, sophomore or freshman season on offense, with another nine on defense. These are young, developing players experiencing growing pains, but recruiting experts had Louisville in the top 30 in each of the last two seasons.
"I know watching the tape that Louisville had got some very, very talented players on their team," Steve Addazio said. "That has not changed. They didn't just evaporate. They are there and they are talented. They've got some young guys and they are working to get that right. I'm sure they will because they are talented and they have good coaches."
BC was still a young, inexperienced team through the first half of last season, and the growing pains became evident when injuries impacted key positions. It's part of the reason the Eagles struggled so mightily a few years back. That same core, built over the past couple of seasons in recruiting and development, is the same roster that entered BC into the national rankings for the first time in a decade earlier this season.
"We are trying to continue to play different guys, for a lot of reasons, one of which is guys are gassed (during long drives)," Addazio said. "They are on the field too long, and they are gassed. So trying to play Lukas (Denis) at corner a little bit, getting Mike (Palmer) going at safety, playing John (Lamot) a little bit at linebacker gives guys some blow. You need to do that if you come off a 16-play drive. You are going to be fatigued.
"Thank God," he said. "We have a little depth there that we make a couple of those moves. We are going to continue. Exactly what the combinations will be, I don't really know that yet. Some things look good. Some things didn't look as good. We are just going to march forward."
*****
They Said It
"It's easier to get back to (playing against multiple formations) than to transition to that (Georgia Tech) option." -Bobby Petrino
"A lot of slow people." -Louisville wide receiver Tutu Atwell on what he sees on the Boston College defense
"I don't think we change things up week-to-week. We're trying to be as balanced as a team as we can. It's complementary football at the end of the day." -BC wide receiver/running back Ben Glines
"This week's the most important week of the season. It's the next game." -BC linebacker Connor Strachan
"From that game on, last year's Louisville game, we developed a lot of momentum as an offensive line." -BC offensive lineman Sam Schmal
"We found our groove in that second half and became pretty darn productive in that second half." -Steve Addazio
*****
Meteorology 101
Autumn in Massachusetts sure is a pretty time of year, but everyone knows there's that one rainstorm in October that lasts for three days and picks every dead leaf off the tree. All the wet ones then sit on the lawn and the driveway, which means blowers fire up and lawn bags swell with volume.
Guess what? We hit that rainstorm. It started pouring on Thursday, and it's likely going to continue in some capacity through the rest of the week into Saturday. The best chance for precipitation on Saturday is in the morning, so it will likely die down before the game really gets kicked up.
That means the wind will come in with it. Get ready for raw weather. That 80 degree Wednesday? It's gone and won't be seen until the spring. Or Christmas, based on how the last two years went.
New England weather. If you don't like it, seriously just wait a day.
*****
Scoreboard Watching
The conference gets a little bit quieter on the national scale this week, but there's a number of good football games still readily available, all of which are intra-divisional games. The BC-Wake Forest game is the only Atlantic Division matchup on Saturday, and it kicks off the early slate of games along with Duke-Georgia Tech.
That leads to Pittsburgh-Notre Dame at 2:30 from South Bend. Pittsburgh infamously knocked off Miami last year in the season's last week, likely costing the ACC a second team in the College Football Playoff. This year, the Panthers head to the No. 5 Fighting Irish, who have, by all accounts, regained the mystique and aura that haunted teams 30 years ago.
Two games are at night, with No. 16 Miami heading to Virginia and Virginia Tech heading to North Carolina. The Hurricanes are the Eagles' next opponent in two weeks.
As for the national picture, No. 2 Georgia heads to No. 13 LSU for an absolute slobber knocker, and No. 7 Washington heads to No. 17 Oregon. I might be the only one who fears for the Huskies there since I always feel like weird things happen in the Pacific Northwest.
The night slate will feature No. 15 Wisconsin at No. 12 Michigan in a huge Big Ten matchup, and the night owl brigade will enjoy No. 19 Colorado at Southern California. That last game kicks off at 10:30 p.m. here in Boston.
*****
Pregame Quote & Prediction
Be a yardstick of quality. -Steve Jobs
Boston College is 4-2, and all indications are that the team continues to trend its overall performance in the right direction. But it's still disappointing, if only because the Eagles are expected to be one of the elite teams in the nation. They achieved that mantle temporarily, but the two losses robbed a little bit of the shine from the dominating wins and overall performances.
This game represents a chance to start grabbing the proverbial brass ring again. It would move the Eagles back above .500 in conference play, and it would send them into a needed bye week with positive mojo before Miami.
Louisville knows what's in front of its team. BC bludgeoned the defense last year with AJ Dillon, and the offense remains a fear factor for the Cardinal defense, even with the running back's unknown status. It will come prepared, and the game film from last year is something that likely was on replay in the Cardinal defensive position groupings.
BC will need to regroup its offense and execute consistently. The plays it missed last week against NC State need to be hit this week. The team proved last week that it can hit plays within its own skill and without Dillon. If he returns to the lineup, the offense can complement him instead of rely on him as a crutch. If he doesn't return, there's enough skill to take another step forward and become, for the fifth time this season, "1-0 for the week."
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Football season passed the halfway point this week, and Saturday's game between Boston College and Louisville marks the beginning of the downslope for 2018. It's a process that will eventually weed out bowl eligibility, and others will begin taking steps to secure elite levels of positioning. It makes each win feel more important, but it also makes each loss feel tougher.
"The challenge is to stay together as a team and be positive and continue to work to get better in practice," Louisville head coach Bobby Petrino said. "Our players have done that. We've got some good leadership on the team. We've had some good attitudes."
The Cardinals come to Chestnut Hill nursing a 2-4 record, the exact record BC carried when it went to Kentucky last year. They're a lot younger with athletes who are trying to refine raw talent. It's led to growing pains on both sides of the ball, and they enter with one of the worst scoring offenses and defenses in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
To Steve Addazio and the Eagles, though, it's something that needs to be overlooked. Louisville's struggles can turn on a dime, and it could harness the talent that's been developing over the past two games. So the challenge is real for BC to achieve consistency after last week's loss to NC State.
"We were in the process of trying to maintain our consistency with a new normal (against NC State)," Addazio said. "It's one thing when you miss a player. I think it's another thing when you miss a marquee player. I think that's going to change your approach a little bit. But I thought our kids competed hard throughout the game and found a way to come back and put ourselves in position (to win)."
Here's what to expect as the teams take the field on Saturday:
*****
Weekly Storylines
Numbers tell stories but can also mean nothing.
Georgia Tech smoked the Louisville defense to the tune of 542 rushing yards, scoring three times in the first quarter en route to a 66-31 rout of the Cardinals. Quarterback TaQuan Marshall executed the triple option to perfection, gaining 175 yards and two scores on his own. He only completed one pass but also only attempted two since the Yellow Jackets, quite honestly, didn't need it.
Unfortunately for BC, though, the film from that game is pretty much useless because of Georgia Tech's style of offense.
"Georgia Tech runs a lot of yards on everybody," Steve Addazio said. "That's really a unique scheme. It's hard to defend. It has a way of getting going on you, and they got going (against Louisville). I've been on both ends of that thing in my career at different stops. So I don't know that we really take a ton away from that."
Instead, BC needs to look at other defensive performances earlier in the season to establish how it can attack in the rushing game. Every other opponent except for Florida State ran for 150 or more yards against the Cardinals, and they all did so without leading rushers gaining 100 yards with the exception of Indiana State.
So look to BC to continue diversifying its running game, even if AJ Dillon can't go on Saturday. The Eagles enter the game with the fifth-best rushing attack in the conference, though Georgia Tech is one of the teams ahead of them. They average over 222 yards per game, and the defense, with the Georgia Tech game factored in, is allowing 231 yards to opponents.
"They have a really strong, physical running game," Bobby Petrino said. "Multiple tight end sets that they utilize, they do it with a fast tempo. To have that type of running game and that type of personnel groups on the field and go fast, I think that's the biggest challenge for us. You have to get lined up, you have to recognize it, and then have the ability to play fast and physical."
Execute, execute, execute
Nearly everyone can cleanly break down last week's game into two distinct halves because of how stark BC's performance contrasted. First half misses became second half big plays, and while it is encouraging to watch the Eagles rally against a nationally-ranked opponent, it's also frustrating because the game turned into a blown opportunity.
"We had some wide-open receivers in the first half," Steve Addazio said. "We didn't hit a couple and then we dropped a couple. In the style that we're playing in right now, it gets you off the field, so third down is critical. Then you don't get first downs and you don't reload another set of three or four."
AJ Dillon's absence accounted for a little piece of that, but it boils down to execution in the game calls. A well-executed offense would have let the defense breathe, which mean the defense might have done better on third downs, which in turn would have given the offense more chances.
"We've got to do a better job on third down on offense," Addazio said. "We were 0-for-7 in the first half of that game, and on defense, we were poor on third down. I think on both sides, we get off the field, we stay on the field, and it's a completely different ballgame, 100 percent."
Louisville enters this game as an opportunistic challenge in those situations. The Cardinals are second-worst in third down defense, which means the Eagles should face a susceptible unit. By the same token, Louisville's offense is No. 68, which means it can succeed in the same situations. It's a good challenge, but it's not one that appears, statistically at least, overwhelming.
"The preparation is a lot about individual technique and fundamentals and tackling," Bobby Petrino said. "Then putting together as a team and running full speed to the ball and recognizing the difference between run and pass. They do a great job with their play action game."
Don't Assume Anything.
Statistics provide a guideline for predictions right up until the actual game kicks off. After that, it's virtually impossible to predict if and how everything will come together for a football team. So despite Boston College having advantages in most head-to-head categories, this isn't a walkthrough game for a guaranteed victory.
Louisville's depth chart prominently features seven players who are playing either their redshirt sophomore, sophomore or freshman season on offense, with another nine on defense. These are young, developing players experiencing growing pains, but recruiting experts had Louisville in the top 30 in each of the last two seasons.
"I know watching the tape that Louisville had got some very, very talented players on their team," Steve Addazio said. "That has not changed. They didn't just evaporate. They are there and they are talented. They've got some young guys and they are working to get that right. I'm sure they will because they are talented and they have good coaches."
BC was still a young, inexperienced team through the first half of last season, and the growing pains became evident when injuries impacted key positions. It's part of the reason the Eagles struggled so mightily a few years back. That same core, built over the past couple of seasons in recruiting and development, is the same roster that entered BC into the national rankings for the first time in a decade earlier this season.
"We are trying to continue to play different guys, for a lot of reasons, one of which is guys are gassed (during long drives)," Addazio said. "They are on the field too long, and they are gassed. So trying to play Lukas (Denis) at corner a little bit, getting Mike (Palmer) going at safety, playing John (Lamot) a little bit at linebacker gives guys some blow. You need to do that if you come off a 16-play drive. You are going to be fatigued.
"Thank God," he said. "We have a little depth there that we make a couple of those moves. We are going to continue. Exactly what the combinations will be, I don't really know that yet. Some things look good. Some things didn't look as good. We are just going to march forward."
*****
They Said It
"It's easier to get back to (playing against multiple formations) than to transition to that (Georgia Tech) option." -Bobby Petrino
"A lot of slow people." -Louisville wide receiver Tutu Atwell on what he sees on the Boston College defense
"I don't think we change things up week-to-week. We're trying to be as balanced as a team as we can. It's complementary football at the end of the day." -BC wide receiver/running back Ben Glines
"This week's the most important week of the season. It's the next game." -BC linebacker Connor Strachan
"From that game on, last year's Louisville game, we developed a lot of momentum as an offensive line." -BC offensive lineman Sam Schmal
"We found our groove in that second half and became pretty darn productive in that second half." -Steve Addazio
*****
Meteorology 101
Autumn in Massachusetts sure is a pretty time of year, but everyone knows there's that one rainstorm in October that lasts for three days and picks every dead leaf off the tree. All the wet ones then sit on the lawn and the driveway, which means blowers fire up and lawn bags swell with volume.
Guess what? We hit that rainstorm. It started pouring on Thursday, and it's likely going to continue in some capacity through the rest of the week into Saturday. The best chance for precipitation on Saturday is in the morning, so it will likely die down before the game really gets kicked up.
That means the wind will come in with it. Get ready for raw weather. That 80 degree Wednesday? It's gone and won't be seen until the spring. Or Christmas, based on how the last two years went.
New England weather. If you don't like it, seriously just wait a day.
*****
Scoreboard Watching
The conference gets a little bit quieter on the national scale this week, but there's a number of good football games still readily available, all of which are intra-divisional games. The BC-Wake Forest game is the only Atlantic Division matchup on Saturday, and it kicks off the early slate of games along with Duke-Georgia Tech.
That leads to Pittsburgh-Notre Dame at 2:30 from South Bend. Pittsburgh infamously knocked off Miami last year in the season's last week, likely costing the ACC a second team in the College Football Playoff. This year, the Panthers head to the No. 5 Fighting Irish, who have, by all accounts, regained the mystique and aura that haunted teams 30 years ago.
Two games are at night, with No. 16 Miami heading to Virginia and Virginia Tech heading to North Carolina. The Hurricanes are the Eagles' next opponent in two weeks.
As for the national picture, No. 2 Georgia heads to No. 13 LSU for an absolute slobber knocker, and No. 7 Washington heads to No. 17 Oregon. I might be the only one who fears for the Huskies there since I always feel like weird things happen in the Pacific Northwest.
The night slate will feature No. 15 Wisconsin at No. 12 Michigan in a huge Big Ten matchup, and the night owl brigade will enjoy No. 19 Colorado at Southern California. That last game kicks off at 10:30 p.m. here in Boston.
*****
Pregame Quote & Prediction
Be a yardstick of quality. -Steve Jobs
Boston College is 4-2, and all indications are that the team continues to trend its overall performance in the right direction. But it's still disappointing, if only because the Eagles are expected to be one of the elite teams in the nation. They achieved that mantle temporarily, but the two losses robbed a little bit of the shine from the dominating wins and overall performances.
This game represents a chance to start grabbing the proverbial brass ring again. It would move the Eagles back above .500 in conference play, and it would send them into a needed bye week with positive mojo before Miami.
Louisville knows what's in front of its team. BC bludgeoned the defense last year with AJ Dillon, and the offense remains a fear factor for the Cardinal defense, even with the running back's unknown status. It will come prepared, and the game film from last year is something that likely was on replay in the Cardinal defensive position groupings.
BC will need to regroup its offense and execute consistently. The plays it missed last week against NC State need to be hit this week. The team proved last week that it can hit plays within its own skill and without Dillon. If he returns to the lineup, the offense can complement him instead of rely on him as a crutch. If he doesn't return, there's enough skill to take another step forward and become, for the fifth time this season, "1-0 for the week."
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Players Mentioned
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