Boston College Athletics
To Beat Clemson, BC Must Become Giant Killers
October 28, 2020 | Football, #ForBoston Files
There's good, there's great, there's elite, and then there's Clemson.
Dabo Swinney didn't know much about Boston College when Clemson fired Tommy Bowden in 2008.
To be fair, he didn't really need to know anything about the Eagles up until that point. The closest he ever came to BC was the 1993 Sugar Bowl against Miami, when his Alabama Crimson Tide upset the supposedly-unbeatable Hurricanes to win the national championships. The Hurricanes won the Big East that season, which is to say they won their four games in the league's soft opening.Â
Miami didn't even play BC that year, so there wasn't a connection for Swinney, who left Alabama to coach Clemson wide receivers in 2003. He was a southern guy, and there was no need to ever cross paths with a New England-based team.Â
That all changed, though, in 2005, when Boston College joined the ACC. Three years and three BC victories later, the full-blown rivalry reached a new height for Swinney when Clemson fired Bowden. The Tigers installed him as their interim head coach, and on November 1, 2008, he coached his first game, a 27-21 win…
...over Boston College.
"I didn't know a lot about BC growing up in Alabama and spending most of my life there," Swinney said. "I knew Doug Flutie and all that, but until they came into the league, it was a pretty unique tradition. For me, BC is always going to be a special game because it was my first-ever win."
More than 135 wins later, Dabo Swinney is the undisputed king of college football. He's a legend whose national championship rings rub Howard's Rock, and his powerhouse program is routinely ranked as the nation's best team. This week, the ACC answer to Alabama and Ohio State is still No. 1 as it prepares to host a threatening and upstart Boston College team aiming for its first win in Death Valley since the head coach ascended to his orange and purple throne.
"They have great players," BC head coach Jeff Hafley said. "They're really well coached. (Offensive coordinator Tony Elliott) does a good job schematically with what he has, (and) it's more than just the players. I think he's a really good coach. They have the ability to run the football, run the quarterback, throw the ball down the field, their RPO game, their screen game. They have it all, and they're actually really good at everything."
There's no shirking just how good Clemson has been over the past decade. It hasn't lost a regular season game in over three years and hasn't lost multiple regular season games since 2014. It hasn't been unranked since it beat Georgia State near the end of that season.
The Tigers are a preposterous 122-5 under Swinney when leading after the third quarter and haven't blown a fourth quarter lead since 2016. They have only lost eight games under Swinney that they led at halftime, and their 40 wins under Swinney in October are more than the total wins of seven programs who have played every year during the 2010s. Those 40 October wins are virtually double that of Kansas' entire wins total over the past decade.
Clemson owns the most wins since 2015 and holds a 75-5 overall record. They stand alone with Alabama as the only teams with more than 106 wins since 2011, and both are approaching 120. The Tigers own the nation's longest active streak of 12-win seasons, and they're only two years away from matching Penn's unbreakable streak from 1892-1898, even though the Quakers did hold their first nine opponents without a point in that first season.
Yet this Clemson team is somehow more impressive than the other iterations. It's older and more seasoned, and the Tigers have the feel of an NFL-ready roster playing within the ACC. Prospects dot the entire depth chart, although none shine brighter than Trevor Lawrence, the presumptive No. 1 overall selection in next year's draft.
"The offensive line is solid, and obviously the quarterback (is Trevor Lawrence)," Hafley said. "I think the biggest thing I've seen from (Lawrence) is that I think he's greatly improved from last year. The way he plays in the pocket, I think it's better. He sits there. He reads things. He goes back late and sees things late and makes throws. He's got such a live body. He's a twitched-up big guy who can move and throw. He's a really good player. I have a lot of respect for him coming back and improving, and it says a lot about him."
Lawrence is already on a torrid pace to start 2020 and is a front runner for this year's Heisman Trophy after missing out last season to Joe Burrow. He's thrown 17 touchdowns to just two interceptions and is just under 2,000 yards, and his next win will tie him with Rodney Williams, Tajh Boyd and Deshaun Watson for the all-time program record. He holds the best stats of any Clemson quarterback through six games, and he went 12 games without throwing a pick before the Georgia Tech game two weeks ago.
Yet Swinney and Clemson understand what will face them when Boston College arrives in South Carolina. They know the Eagles are more than what critics and analysts call them, and they have been dragged by BC in prior games. In 2017, a one-score game went deep into the fourth quarter before key injuries enabled the Tigers to break open the scoring. The next year, Michael Walker's punt return threw a shiver across Alumni Stadium in the November cold before another injury cost the Eagles their starting quarterback.
In each of the last three years, BC struggled to consistently score points and exited each game with one single, solitary touchdown. That's not indicative of the battle on the gridiron, according to Swinney, and it's why there's still a real apprehension in seeing an improved, new style of offense in maroon and gold.
"The biggest thing that's different (from) years past is that they're throwing the ball all over the field," Swinney said. "It's not just dropbacks. It's play actions, boots, post wheels, and screens. There's a lot of different things to get playmakers the balls. They use bunch sets with 11 and 12 personnel. (Phil Jurkovec) is athletic and crafty, and he extends and can make throws. He's a really good football player. The team believes in him. It's going to be a challenge for us defensively in sorting things out."
Boston College is a clear underdog, but Swinney knows the challenge in facing a hungry, upstart, unknown team. He knows Jeff Hafley well enough to know how the Eagles are buying into his system. He knows he's not going to see Ohio State on Saturday because he's going to see Hafley's BC Eagles.Â
That's enough to spook the Clemson head coach enough to keep his head turned straight. He's won over 130 games and nine consecutive O'Rourke-McFadden Trophy games. A BC player has only worn the leather helmet once, in 2010. For a coach who earned his first win against the Eagles, he's seen them change over multiple times, and he's never missed a beat. That doesn't mean now is the time to miss another opportunity.
"BC's going to be a tough team," Swinney said. "Jeff's done an awesome job. He put a good staff together and immediately created belief in these guys. These guys are playing hard and confident. They easily could be 5-1 right now...They've done a great job of figuring out what their strengths and weaknesses are, and playing to those strengths. This will be a tough, tough challenge for the Tigers this week."
To be fair, he didn't really need to know anything about the Eagles up until that point. The closest he ever came to BC was the 1993 Sugar Bowl against Miami, when his Alabama Crimson Tide upset the supposedly-unbeatable Hurricanes to win the national championships. The Hurricanes won the Big East that season, which is to say they won their four games in the league's soft opening.Â
Miami didn't even play BC that year, so there wasn't a connection for Swinney, who left Alabama to coach Clemson wide receivers in 2003. He was a southern guy, and there was no need to ever cross paths with a New England-based team.Â
That all changed, though, in 2005, when Boston College joined the ACC. Three years and three BC victories later, the full-blown rivalry reached a new height for Swinney when Clemson fired Bowden. The Tigers installed him as their interim head coach, and on November 1, 2008, he coached his first game, a 27-21 win…
...over Boston College.
"I didn't know a lot about BC growing up in Alabama and spending most of my life there," Swinney said. "I knew Doug Flutie and all that, but until they came into the league, it was a pretty unique tradition. For me, BC is always going to be a special game because it was my first-ever win."
More than 135 wins later, Dabo Swinney is the undisputed king of college football. He's a legend whose national championship rings rub Howard's Rock, and his powerhouse program is routinely ranked as the nation's best team. This week, the ACC answer to Alabama and Ohio State is still No. 1 as it prepares to host a threatening and upstart Boston College team aiming for its first win in Death Valley since the head coach ascended to his orange and purple throne.
"They have great players," BC head coach Jeff Hafley said. "They're really well coached. (Offensive coordinator Tony Elliott) does a good job schematically with what he has, (and) it's more than just the players. I think he's a really good coach. They have the ability to run the football, run the quarterback, throw the ball down the field, their RPO game, their screen game. They have it all, and they're actually really good at everything."
There's no shirking just how good Clemson has been over the past decade. It hasn't lost a regular season game in over three years and hasn't lost multiple regular season games since 2014. It hasn't been unranked since it beat Georgia State near the end of that season.
The Tigers are a preposterous 122-5 under Swinney when leading after the third quarter and haven't blown a fourth quarter lead since 2016. They have only lost eight games under Swinney that they led at halftime, and their 40 wins under Swinney in October are more than the total wins of seven programs who have played every year during the 2010s. Those 40 October wins are virtually double that of Kansas' entire wins total over the past decade.
Clemson owns the most wins since 2015 and holds a 75-5 overall record. They stand alone with Alabama as the only teams with more than 106 wins since 2011, and both are approaching 120. The Tigers own the nation's longest active streak of 12-win seasons, and they're only two years away from matching Penn's unbreakable streak from 1892-1898, even though the Quakers did hold their first nine opponents without a point in that first season.
Yet this Clemson team is somehow more impressive than the other iterations. It's older and more seasoned, and the Tigers have the feel of an NFL-ready roster playing within the ACC. Prospects dot the entire depth chart, although none shine brighter than Trevor Lawrence, the presumptive No. 1 overall selection in next year's draft.
"The offensive line is solid, and obviously the quarterback (is Trevor Lawrence)," Hafley said. "I think the biggest thing I've seen from (Lawrence) is that I think he's greatly improved from last year. The way he plays in the pocket, I think it's better. He sits there. He reads things. He goes back late and sees things late and makes throws. He's got such a live body. He's a twitched-up big guy who can move and throw. He's a really good player. I have a lot of respect for him coming back and improving, and it says a lot about him."
Lawrence is already on a torrid pace to start 2020 and is a front runner for this year's Heisman Trophy after missing out last season to Joe Burrow. He's thrown 17 touchdowns to just two interceptions and is just under 2,000 yards, and his next win will tie him with Rodney Williams, Tajh Boyd and Deshaun Watson for the all-time program record. He holds the best stats of any Clemson quarterback through six games, and he went 12 games without throwing a pick before the Georgia Tech game two weeks ago.
Yet Swinney and Clemson understand what will face them when Boston College arrives in South Carolina. They know the Eagles are more than what critics and analysts call them, and they have been dragged by BC in prior games. In 2017, a one-score game went deep into the fourth quarter before key injuries enabled the Tigers to break open the scoring. The next year, Michael Walker's punt return threw a shiver across Alumni Stadium in the November cold before another injury cost the Eagles their starting quarterback.
In each of the last three years, BC struggled to consistently score points and exited each game with one single, solitary touchdown. That's not indicative of the battle on the gridiron, according to Swinney, and it's why there's still a real apprehension in seeing an improved, new style of offense in maroon and gold.
"The biggest thing that's different (from) years past is that they're throwing the ball all over the field," Swinney said. "It's not just dropbacks. It's play actions, boots, post wheels, and screens. There's a lot of different things to get playmakers the balls. They use bunch sets with 11 and 12 personnel. (Phil Jurkovec) is athletic and crafty, and he extends and can make throws. He's a really good football player. The team believes in him. It's going to be a challenge for us defensively in sorting things out."
Boston College is a clear underdog, but Swinney knows the challenge in facing a hungry, upstart, unknown team. He knows Jeff Hafley well enough to know how the Eagles are buying into his system. He knows he's not going to see Ohio State on Saturday because he's going to see Hafley's BC Eagles.Â
That's enough to spook the Clemson head coach enough to keep his head turned straight. He's won over 130 games and nine consecutive O'Rourke-McFadden Trophy games. A BC player has only worn the leather helmet once, in 2010. For a coach who earned his first win against the Eagles, he's seen them change over multiple times, and he's never missed a beat. That doesn't mean now is the time to miss another opportunity.
"BC's going to be a tough team," Swinney said. "Jeff's done an awesome job. He put a good staff together and immediately created belief in these guys. These guys are playing hard and confident. They easily could be 5-1 right now...They've done a great job of figuring out what their strengths and weaknesses are, and playing to those strengths. This will be a tough, tough challenge for the Tigers this week."
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