Boston College Athletics
Bye Bye, Bye Week: It's Onto Louisville
November 25, 2020 | Football, #ForBoston Files
Eagles are back at work preparing for Louisville...again.
Jeff Hafley planned on giving his staff some extra time off. A COVID-19 outbreak at Miami forced the ACC to shuffle games around its remaining weekends, and the fallout moved Boston College's game against Louisville into the middle of December. It inadvertently handed the Eagles a two-week double bye, but it offered the coaching staff an opportunity to spend time with family before preparations began for Virginia. Hafley wanted his lieutenants fully primed for the season's final charge, and the extra off week was almost a midseason vacation.
It just didn't work out as planned. Subsequent positive test results at Wake Forest pushed the game back onto this weekend, and in the span of a week, the game moved from Friday to mid-December to Saturday. Hafley kept the same introspective attitude and focused his coordinators and assistants on their team, but he just miscalculated the dates when the final result moved the game back by one day.
"It caught us a little bit because I was going to give (the staff) a little extra time off," he said. "Then we heard we might be playing Friday again, so we switched gears and had the staff in one night to do some work. The next day, we found out we weren't playing until Saturday. So I messed that up and could have given the guys more time off, but it is what it is. I'm happy to have had some time off, and we're happy to be playing another game."
So now the Eagles are in preparation mode once again. They will charge into Senior Day with two games left in the season and start their final stretch with a slowly-appearing goal appearing in the distance. A nine-week marathon still gave the team a bye week, and now the Louisville game appears with an opportunity to clinch a winning season in Hafley's inaugural campaign.
"It was good to get the players off their feet," Hafley said. "We got rest and recovery. We got some good work with the young guys, and we did a little bit of practice on Thursday and Friday. We took Saturday to give the players some more rest, and we did some light Sunday stuff. We took Monday off, and here we are (on Tuesday) practicing again. The guys are fresh and feel great, and we're fortunate to be playing another game."
Louisville isn't an opponent simply sent to Massachusetts for a coronation, though. The Cardinals dominated Syracuse last week with a 30-0 victory, and their 3-6 record isn't indicative of their prior performances. They beat Florida State, 48-16, and opened the season with a two-touchdown win over Western Kentucky, and they held Notre Dame to less than two touchdowns in a 12-7 defeat. It came two weeks after a one-touchdown loss to Virginia Tech and approximately one month after a three-point loss to Pittsburgh.
Malik Cunningham threw for 350 yards in that loss to the Hokies and completed more than 65 percent of his passes. It was his second consecutive game hitting at least 60 percent of his throws and was part of a larger, four-game stretch. He additionally hit for three touchdowns against Virginia Tech one week before he ran for 197 yards and two scores against Virginia.
"That quarterback is a dynamic athlete," Hafley said. "He's completed 63 percent of his passes, but he's a threat to run. They are a wide zone and outside zone team, and they run a lot of boots off of (motion), which for (Cunningham), if it's not there, he's going to take off. You're going to need some speed to catch him.:
Cunningham is a lethal weapon quarterback and can engineer plays in Scott Satterfield's offense, which is why his 11 interceptions are so peculiar. He threw six picks in his last three games, a bookend to the five turnovers he committed in his first three games. He's tough to defend, especially with his ultra-fast options at receiver, but a top-rated defense can battle him for four quarters.
"As a general view, if you have a top-rated pass defense, and I was around the No. 1 pass defense in the country (in the NFL), it's 'rush plus coverage,'" Hafley said. "Everything ties together. I used to joke with the DBs in the room, and I had three Pro Bowlers at the time, that the defensive line makes (their) job easy. If you can rush guys and get guys into coverage, if you don't give (the quarterback) a lot of time to throw the ball and play tight coverage, that's about as good of a combination as you can get."
"In terms of 'rush and coverage,' in pass defense, we want to work together as much as we can," defensive lineman Brandon Barlow said. "The (defensive line) can't see what's happening on the back end, but we know what's happening based on the call and the coverage that we're in. We want to really make sure that we get to the quarterback if we're in man coverage, and we want to have vision on him at all times. We don't want him to hang back and throw all day. That's where we come in and help coverage out. We have to work together in that aspect. (Defensive backs) need to cover long enough for us to get there, and we have to rush hard enough to avoid deep shots."
Stopping a quarterback is something the BC defense did with regularity at the start of the season before running into both DJ Uiagalelei and Ian Book in two of its last three games. It entered the Clemson game ranked inside the top 40 in both scoring defense and passing yards allowed, but performances by the No. 1 and No. 2-ranked teams pushed the Eagles outside the top 50. Both of those two games contrasted against Syracuse and the less than 250 yards mustered by the Orange.
"We want to set a tone early and attack with our physicality," Barlow said. "We want to lead with effort and set the tone with 11 hats finishing on the ball. It's a great look for our defense, and as an offense, that can wear you down. That comes down to effort every day in practice so it can translate into the game."
"If we're going to play man in this game, we have to have great eye discipline," Hafley said. "If we're all in man (coverage) and they run a jet sweep, the only guy that should have his eyes on that jet sweep is the guy covering it. The problem is that other guys start to see it moving and take their eyes off their man, and someone runs free. If we play zone, things change, and we have to move from one man to another pretty quickly. You can't let that jet motion fool you, and it can't take you off your job. The jet stuff and the action (Cunningham) has off of it ties in really well. You have to be really disciplined."
Boston College and Louisville will kick off at 4 p.m. on Saturday, November 28 from Alumni Stadium. The game can be seen on ACC Network and online via the ESPN online platform for viewers with access to the network through their television provider.
It just didn't work out as planned. Subsequent positive test results at Wake Forest pushed the game back onto this weekend, and in the span of a week, the game moved from Friday to mid-December to Saturday. Hafley kept the same introspective attitude and focused his coordinators and assistants on their team, but he just miscalculated the dates when the final result moved the game back by one day.
"It caught us a little bit because I was going to give (the staff) a little extra time off," he said. "Then we heard we might be playing Friday again, so we switched gears and had the staff in one night to do some work. The next day, we found out we weren't playing until Saturday. So I messed that up and could have given the guys more time off, but it is what it is. I'm happy to have had some time off, and we're happy to be playing another game."
So now the Eagles are in preparation mode once again. They will charge into Senior Day with two games left in the season and start their final stretch with a slowly-appearing goal appearing in the distance. A nine-week marathon still gave the team a bye week, and now the Louisville game appears with an opportunity to clinch a winning season in Hafley's inaugural campaign.
"It was good to get the players off their feet," Hafley said. "We got rest and recovery. We got some good work with the young guys, and we did a little bit of practice on Thursday and Friday. We took Saturday to give the players some more rest, and we did some light Sunday stuff. We took Monday off, and here we are (on Tuesday) practicing again. The guys are fresh and feel great, and we're fortunate to be playing another game."
Louisville isn't an opponent simply sent to Massachusetts for a coronation, though. The Cardinals dominated Syracuse last week with a 30-0 victory, and their 3-6 record isn't indicative of their prior performances. They beat Florida State, 48-16, and opened the season with a two-touchdown win over Western Kentucky, and they held Notre Dame to less than two touchdowns in a 12-7 defeat. It came two weeks after a one-touchdown loss to Virginia Tech and approximately one month after a three-point loss to Pittsburgh.
Malik Cunningham threw for 350 yards in that loss to the Hokies and completed more than 65 percent of his passes. It was his second consecutive game hitting at least 60 percent of his throws and was part of a larger, four-game stretch. He additionally hit for three touchdowns against Virginia Tech one week before he ran for 197 yards and two scores against Virginia.
"That quarterback is a dynamic athlete," Hafley said. "He's completed 63 percent of his passes, but he's a threat to run. They are a wide zone and outside zone team, and they run a lot of boots off of (motion), which for (Cunningham), if it's not there, he's going to take off. You're going to need some speed to catch him.:
Cunningham is a lethal weapon quarterback and can engineer plays in Scott Satterfield's offense, which is why his 11 interceptions are so peculiar. He threw six picks in his last three games, a bookend to the five turnovers he committed in his first three games. He's tough to defend, especially with his ultra-fast options at receiver, but a top-rated defense can battle him for four quarters.
"As a general view, if you have a top-rated pass defense, and I was around the No. 1 pass defense in the country (in the NFL), it's 'rush plus coverage,'" Hafley said. "Everything ties together. I used to joke with the DBs in the room, and I had three Pro Bowlers at the time, that the defensive line makes (their) job easy. If you can rush guys and get guys into coverage, if you don't give (the quarterback) a lot of time to throw the ball and play tight coverage, that's about as good of a combination as you can get."
"In terms of 'rush and coverage,' in pass defense, we want to work together as much as we can," defensive lineman Brandon Barlow said. "The (defensive line) can't see what's happening on the back end, but we know what's happening based on the call and the coverage that we're in. We want to really make sure that we get to the quarterback if we're in man coverage, and we want to have vision on him at all times. We don't want him to hang back and throw all day. That's where we come in and help coverage out. We have to work together in that aspect. (Defensive backs) need to cover long enough for us to get there, and we have to rush hard enough to avoid deep shots."
Stopping a quarterback is something the BC defense did with regularity at the start of the season before running into both DJ Uiagalelei and Ian Book in two of its last three games. It entered the Clemson game ranked inside the top 40 in both scoring defense and passing yards allowed, but performances by the No. 1 and No. 2-ranked teams pushed the Eagles outside the top 50. Both of those two games contrasted against Syracuse and the less than 250 yards mustered by the Orange.
"We want to set a tone early and attack with our physicality," Barlow said. "We want to lead with effort and set the tone with 11 hats finishing on the ball. It's a great look for our defense, and as an offense, that can wear you down. That comes down to effort every day in practice so it can translate into the game."
"If we're going to play man in this game, we have to have great eye discipline," Hafley said. "If we're all in man (coverage) and they run a jet sweep, the only guy that should have his eyes on that jet sweep is the guy covering it. The problem is that other guys start to see it moving and take their eyes off their man, and someone runs free. If we play zone, things change, and we have to move from one man to another pretty quickly. You can't let that jet motion fool you, and it can't take you off your job. The jet stuff and the action (Cunningham) has off of it ties in really well. You have to be really disciplined."
Boston College and Louisville will kick off at 4 p.m. on Saturday, November 28 from Alumni Stadium. The game can be seen on ACC Network and online via the ESPN online platform for viewers with access to the network through their television provider.
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