Faith, Character, Toughness, Passion

College football is all about cultural continuity. Coaches are hired to install foundations on which future teams are built. Older players develop collective identities that in turn become foundations for recruiting and developing younger players. Eventually, it becomes the bedrock for the entire program, and it becomes the easiest recognizable piece of discussion when opponents discuss and prepare for a game.

Steve Addazio loves to reinforce that point because the Boston College program is now entirely built in his desired image. His fingerprints are on the program's entire identity, an enhancement of what he believes a Boston College football team should look like.

"I think those classes (before this year) set the foundation for the culture," Addazio said during Tuesday's Media Day. "There's an expectation of what it is to be a BC man. That's what we like to talk about - a BC man. We recruited BC men. We want to develop BC men. A 'BC man', for us, is faith, character, toughness and passion. That's how we define that. That's the culture of our program. The older guys established that for the younger guys."

That foundation is why the 2019 Eagles enter the season after cementing a reputation as a brutally difficult football team. Opponents are forced to recognize that BC is a team built by intelligence and preparation. There's a rugged synergy to its game built by an offense and defense feeding off one another. It's a unique chemistry capable of creating a collective havoc.

Individual talent is developed within the concept of the entire unit, and that flows up into the higher purpose of team play. BC always seems to test physical limits of its opponents on both sides of the ball, but it's always by design. If one piece falls out of sync, the entire team pushes it back in line. Every point and every yard has to be earned on both sides of the ball.

It's something last year's graduates helped build as the first class fully recruited by Addazio. It fought through the well-publicized struggles of its first year, but departed having elevated both the ceiling and the floor for internal expectations. It redefined what it meant to play for BC, something that's now a core tenant within the football team.

"Last year's class did an unbelievable job of really, really pushing that rock over the top," Addazio said. "Every class had a role, but last year pushed it over the top. This year's class wears that like a badge of honor, and that trickles down. So the freshmen that are coming in are coming into that environment completely, whereas last year's seniors weren't necessarily where you want it to be when they were freshman. They were a part of bringing that over the top."

The success is well-mentioned. The team returned to the national rankings and had its push to the national spotlight. A record number of players went to the NFL Combine, and the professional ranks are now flush with Eagles. The players helped build the culture and left BC after tasting a little bit of that success, but they left behind the infrastructure on which the next crop are hoping to build to the next level.

"We were the third most explosive team in the conference last year," Addazio said. "That was a direct result of athleticism - speed and athleticism on offense. On defense, we have three guys from our back end currently in NFL camps, and we had five or six over the last five years. We have more than one home run hitter in the backfield. We have receivers that have dynamic speed, that can run by a secondary and be able to hit a home run. We have a quarterback that would be considered extremely athletic by any standard in Power Five football. We have tight ends that are unbelievably versatile."

An Addazio team is always going to be a power running team that can control the clock, play aggressive defense and tilt field position through special teams. Within that structure, BC is becoming more diversified because positions and players are teaching the little things to create more explosive plays. It tears down individual position silos and instead capitalizes on the intelligence of the Eagle players - and coaches.

"Working at BC and being on the coaching side, I've learned so much about football, run-game wise," receivers coach Rich Gunnell said. "The passing game is very similar, even from when I played in Kansas City (in the NFL). It's similar to a Charlie Weis offense or a Todd Haley offense. It's just called different things. Run-game wise, though, it's very intricate and detailed, and I've truly learned a lot."

It can be something innocuous that doesn't show up in the highlight reel, but makes the team more difficult to crack. It's also not always straightforward because the surface is still simple. Instead, it spills over from one position group into the next to continue blending the depth of the aforementioned synergy.

"The game hasn't changed that much," defensive tackles coach Antoine Smith said. "The tempo of the game changed, but schematically, zone pressure is zone pressure. Man pressure is man pressure. A 3-4 defense or 4-3 defense still has the same basic fundamentals and basic technique across the board. But from a complexity standpoint, we are doing different things that require our guys to have football intelligence. We need them to be sound at what they're doing in terms of their technique and fundamentals."

The Eagles remain a wild card because that style and mentality always makes them an under-the-radar team. The centerpiece recruits are complemented by the perfect pieces to create a team. If one player succeeds, it's because everything else went correctly. No one player is bigger than the team, and the team is the sum of talented players all working together.

That's the Boston College football culture, and it's something that's constantly fostered. The Eagles can now use the culture as a crutch instead of worrying about building it. They can use it as a piece of their development instead of using the players to develop the culture. It's what makes teams wary of playing Boston College on Saturday because, quite simply, they know exactly what's going to be coming at them every year.

"The continuity in the program has really helped us in recruiting," Addazio said. "(It) speaks to the fact that with continuity, you can continue to recruit well, and you can continue to build your program. When you don't have that, there's gaps in your recruiting.

"So the beautiful story here is that we've been able to keep recruiting and developing," he continued. "While we're doing that, be able to bring BC men here and represent the university in first class fashion. That goes back to the question about this senior class, moving that forward to the younger guys. We're not compromising (the standard of a BC man)."

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