Accepting Defeat, BC Ready To Improve, Move Forward
October 18, 2021 | Football, #ForBoston Files
The NC State game felt closer before the score got out of hand in the second half.
Losing isn't supposed to feel good, but Saturday night's result against NC State struck a painful nerve on Boston College's Jeff Hafley. He knew his Eagles could compete with their nationally-ranked opponent, but the second half unraveled the scoreboard after a fit of self-inflicted wounds. The game ended with a lopsided score against BC, and watching the film hurt Hafley as much as it did during the initial experience.
There is no consolation prize for losing, but the silver lining at least forced the team to acknowledge that it could, in fact, compete with teams of a certain caliber. It maybe didn't matter to the standings whether the game was decided by one point or 30 points, but to the locker room, it served as a second refocusing after the team lost consecutive games for the first time in Hafley's short regime.Â
"I don't think the score was indicative of [the result]," he said. "Clearly they beat us, and they beat us good, but that should have been a one possession game going into the fourth. Because of that, I'm disappointed. We'll do better, and we'll get better, but there's no reason for anybody to panic or start thinking [about] some crazy things. Our guys are going to fight, and we're going to get them better. I'm looking forward to getting out there to practice."
The mistakes were plays that Hafley knew his team could execute, and many of them were successful over the previous five weeks. In some instances, the execution was fine, but the defense made the right play at the right time. In others, fluke errors transformed freakish, previously-unseen fallacies into a horrible reality, and Hafley personally absorbed the blame as an inflection point for future weeks.
The big errors were obvious, particularly in the third quarter when punter Grant Carlson slipped a snap before quarterback Dennis Grosel threw an interception four plays later, but Hafley found other errors in the film. He sought to educate the team of those mistakes instead of beating them into the ground, knowing fully well how the full-bodied experience could set future improvements as the team steamrolled onto its next game.
"I thought we could execute at a higher level in the first half," he said. "There were a lot of yards out there, and some guys were open. We dropped some balls, and we need to make those plays. We drove down the field [in the second quarter], had some huge runs, and we're ready to go up 14-7, and the ball hits [Trae Barry]. Trae's going to be an NFL tight end, and he'll come down with that ball, but their kid makes a nice play. I know deep down, he believes he should have made that play, but he didn't. So [then] we decided to go for a field goal, and we missed it. So 14-7 didn't happen, [and then] 10-7 doesn't happen. They go down and kick a field goal, and it's 10-7 [at halftime]."
Hafley didn't call out Barry's incomplete pass as the reason why BC lost the game, and neither Carlson's fumble nor Grosel's pick was a single reason for the Wolfpack's blowout win. It concerned the coach more how the sum of all parts led to a big mistake, and how inches in either direction change the complexion of an otherwise-even split.
The first quarter, in particular, was an exceptional display for the Eagles, who outgained NC State by nearly a 2:1 margin. BC ran almost double the number of the Wolfpack's plays and had 51 yards on the ground while 40 of NC State's 66 plays came on a single pass by Devin Leary to Devin Carter. Zonovan Knight and Ricky Person both failed to gain any sledding on the ground, and Patrick Garwo's 46 yards kept the clock moving while Grosel went 7-for-11 and a touchdown.
The execution was far from flawless, but it kept BC churning towards halftime behind its offensive line. Alec Sinkfield ran six times for 47 yards in the second quarter as a change-of-pace back from Garwo, and though the Wolfpack started to even out the statistical output, BC was proving it still belonged on the same field from an overall standpoint.
It wasn't an obvious mark prior to the third quarter, especially since 30 minutes remained on the game clock, but the Eagles admittedly had sprung a sizable leak. Nothing they did plugged it together in the manner they needed, and the third quarter broke the proverbial, hypothetical levee with authority when the mistakes became bigger turnovers.Â
"We came out in the second half and they stopped us, and we stopped them," Hafley said. "But then we dropped the punt. Grant just dropped it, and I know he feels terrible about it. It happened. It's football. He drops it, and they score. So now it's 17-7, we get the football, and we're out about the 45-50 yard line, and we have a wide open [receiver] and miss it. We know we can execute it. He was wide open, and that [would have gotten] the game to 17-14 with the crowd back into it, and that didn't happen."
Those missed connections occur weekly in every football game, but they all fell particularly hard on BC in light of the final score because the Eagles realize their execution is nominally better against every opponent. An assignment or motion can't be perfect on every play, but minimizing those errors are a direct path to victory. When that doesn't happen, it's about correcting the machine in order to avoid a similar fate in the next game.
That's something Hafley and the Eagles are acutely aware of doing after fighting through some growing pains at various intervals over the past season-plus. BC vastly improved after the Texas State win last year and nearly knocked a nationally-ranked North Carolina team from its perch seven days later. The week after that loss, the Eagles learned how to win another tight game when they beat Pittsburgh in overtime.
The Virginia Tech blowout followed, but the next week saw BC blow Georgia Tech out of the water with a 48-27 win. The momentum gathered from that turnaround carried the Eagles into Death Valley for a date with the No. 1 Clemson Tigers, and a classic letdown game occurred in between Clemson and Notre Dame with a squeaker win over Syracuse in the silenced Carrier Dome. Each week, individualized chapters arose against opponents, but stringing those games together offered trends of how BC stamped out those embers both offensively and defensively.
No team wants to learn those lessons through consecutive losses, but after playing solidly against Clemson, BC fumbled an opportunity against NC State. It happens in football, but what happens this week against Louisville will go a long way to removing any sour taste or negative tone. What happened this week is widely accepted, but the goal now is to move on, learn and improve in order to reverse course against Louisville.
"They'll be in a good spot," Hafley said. "I showed them, just like I do after a win, the plays that were there that we need to make. I talked about the things I need to do a better job as a coach. That's the truth.
"I wanted to turn on the film and see the fight that they had to finish the game," he said. "Regardless of what was going on, we have a bunch of young guys out there, and I wanted to make sure they knew they finished [strong]. That was my message."
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There is no consolation prize for losing, but the silver lining at least forced the team to acknowledge that it could, in fact, compete with teams of a certain caliber. It maybe didn't matter to the standings whether the game was decided by one point or 30 points, but to the locker room, it served as a second refocusing after the team lost consecutive games for the first time in Hafley's short regime.Â
"I don't think the score was indicative of [the result]," he said. "Clearly they beat us, and they beat us good, but that should have been a one possession game going into the fourth. Because of that, I'm disappointed. We'll do better, and we'll get better, but there's no reason for anybody to panic or start thinking [about] some crazy things. Our guys are going to fight, and we're going to get them better. I'm looking forward to getting out there to practice."
The mistakes were plays that Hafley knew his team could execute, and many of them were successful over the previous five weeks. In some instances, the execution was fine, but the defense made the right play at the right time. In others, fluke errors transformed freakish, previously-unseen fallacies into a horrible reality, and Hafley personally absorbed the blame as an inflection point for future weeks.
The big errors were obvious, particularly in the third quarter when punter Grant Carlson slipped a snap before quarterback Dennis Grosel threw an interception four plays later, but Hafley found other errors in the film. He sought to educate the team of those mistakes instead of beating them into the ground, knowing fully well how the full-bodied experience could set future improvements as the team steamrolled onto its next game.
"I thought we could execute at a higher level in the first half," he said. "There were a lot of yards out there, and some guys were open. We dropped some balls, and we need to make those plays. We drove down the field [in the second quarter], had some huge runs, and we're ready to go up 14-7, and the ball hits [Trae Barry]. Trae's going to be an NFL tight end, and he'll come down with that ball, but their kid makes a nice play. I know deep down, he believes he should have made that play, but he didn't. So [then] we decided to go for a field goal, and we missed it. So 14-7 didn't happen, [and then] 10-7 doesn't happen. They go down and kick a field goal, and it's 10-7 [at halftime]."
Hafley didn't call out Barry's incomplete pass as the reason why BC lost the game, and neither Carlson's fumble nor Grosel's pick was a single reason for the Wolfpack's blowout win. It concerned the coach more how the sum of all parts led to a big mistake, and how inches in either direction change the complexion of an otherwise-even split.
The first quarter, in particular, was an exceptional display for the Eagles, who outgained NC State by nearly a 2:1 margin. BC ran almost double the number of the Wolfpack's plays and had 51 yards on the ground while 40 of NC State's 66 plays came on a single pass by Devin Leary to Devin Carter. Zonovan Knight and Ricky Person both failed to gain any sledding on the ground, and Patrick Garwo's 46 yards kept the clock moving while Grosel went 7-for-11 and a touchdown.
The execution was far from flawless, but it kept BC churning towards halftime behind its offensive line. Alec Sinkfield ran six times for 47 yards in the second quarter as a change-of-pace back from Garwo, and though the Wolfpack started to even out the statistical output, BC was proving it still belonged on the same field from an overall standpoint.
It wasn't an obvious mark prior to the third quarter, especially since 30 minutes remained on the game clock, but the Eagles admittedly had sprung a sizable leak. Nothing they did plugged it together in the manner they needed, and the third quarter broke the proverbial, hypothetical levee with authority when the mistakes became bigger turnovers.Â
"We came out in the second half and they stopped us, and we stopped them," Hafley said. "But then we dropped the punt. Grant just dropped it, and I know he feels terrible about it. It happened. It's football. He drops it, and they score. So now it's 17-7, we get the football, and we're out about the 45-50 yard line, and we have a wide open [receiver] and miss it. We know we can execute it. He was wide open, and that [would have gotten] the game to 17-14 with the crowd back into it, and that didn't happen."
Those missed connections occur weekly in every football game, but they all fell particularly hard on BC in light of the final score because the Eagles realize their execution is nominally better against every opponent. An assignment or motion can't be perfect on every play, but minimizing those errors are a direct path to victory. When that doesn't happen, it's about correcting the machine in order to avoid a similar fate in the next game.
That's something Hafley and the Eagles are acutely aware of doing after fighting through some growing pains at various intervals over the past season-plus. BC vastly improved after the Texas State win last year and nearly knocked a nationally-ranked North Carolina team from its perch seven days later. The week after that loss, the Eagles learned how to win another tight game when they beat Pittsburgh in overtime.
The Virginia Tech blowout followed, but the next week saw BC blow Georgia Tech out of the water with a 48-27 win. The momentum gathered from that turnaround carried the Eagles into Death Valley for a date with the No. 1 Clemson Tigers, and a classic letdown game occurred in between Clemson and Notre Dame with a squeaker win over Syracuse in the silenced Carrier Dome. Each week, individualized chapters arose against opponents, but stringing those games together offered trends of how BC stamped out those embers both offensively and defensively.
No team wants to learn those lessons through consecutive losses, but after playing solidly against Clemson, BC fumbled an opportunity against NC State. It happens in football, but what happens this week against Louisville will go a long way to removing any sour taste or negative tone. What happened this week is widely accepted, but the goal now is to move on, learn and improve in order to reverse course against Louisville.
"They'll be in a good spot," Hafley said. "I showed them, just like I do after a win, the plays that were there that we need to make. I talked about the things I need to do a better job as a coach. That's the truth.
"I wanted to turn on the film and see the fight that they had to finish the game," he said. "Regardless of what was going on, we have a bunch of young guys out there, and I wanted to make sure they knew they finished [strong]. That was my message."
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