W2WF: Virginia Tech

The Tom O'Brien era at Boston College was starting to hit a stride when Virginia Tech rumbled into Chestnut Hill early in the 2000 season. Wins over both Army and Navy handed the Eagles a 2-1 overall record after an opening week loss to West Virginia, and the 103 points scored over the service academies had an offense led by Tim Hasselbeck humming towards the game against the defending conference champions and national runners-up.

Beating Virginia Tech in those days required a Herculean effort, but the 1999 game offered BC assurances and confidence against a team bound for the national championship game. The Eagles had lost, 38-14, but the way they pressured the Hokies was a sign of the toughness and collective strength of their new era. They entered that game 8-2, and the defeat did nothing to diminish all that was accomplished in the first bowl season since 1994.

"For us, three years ago we were on the front page of every newspaper for all the wrong reasons," said O'Brien after the Virginia Tech loss in 1999. "We woke up this morning, three years later, and I think we're on the front page for all the right reasons. It was a remarkable effort by this coaching and by these players this year."

Any optimism running through Chestnut Hill when the series shifted back to Alumni Stadium in 2000, though, had to run through Michael Vick, the college football Frankenstein who finished third in Heisman Trophy voting as a redshirt freshman. He had opened up the 2000 season with a little under 300 yards against Akron after completing seven passes and running eight times, and it was his trophy to lose by the time the Hokies arrived at BC.

That enthusiasm didn't dampen through the game's first three quarters, but in the fourth quarter, Vick executed an 82-yard run still turning heads some 20 years later. Facing a 3rd-and-12 from his own red zone, the quarterback dropped back from a shotgun snap and eluded an eight-man blitz that charged as soon as the ball left the center's hand. After initially dancing through three defenders, he slipped through chaos and evaded two more tackles with a skip-step before breaking into the open field.

By the time Vick juked past Lenny Walls, the last remaining defender, he was at the BC goal line with an 82-yard run, but he covered more than 90 yards of lateral space in order to get the score. It helped push him over 200 yards on the ground, and his three touchdowns produced one of the all-time greatest individual efforts by an opposing quarterback. He finished with 13.1 yard per carry on 16 rushes, and though he only passed for 62 yards, Virginia Tech defeated the Eagles, 48-34.

His performance singularly fomented and forged a rivalry between the two conference opponents. Prior to 2000, the Hokies were a constant presence atop the Big East while BC rebuilt its program, but that game, coupled with the 1999 season finale, prevented the Eagles from joining the conference's upper echelon. It took three more tries for BC to finally beat Virginia Tech, at which point the Hokies were on their way to the ACC one year before the Eagles. When BC finally moved over, the two teams became permanent crossover opponents and laid the groundwork for the ACC Championship meetings in 2007 and 2008 and Matt Ryan's comeback during the 2007 regular season.

With that in mind, the rivalry between Boston College and Virginia Tech now takes center stage for the Red Bandana Game. Here's what to watch for:

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Weekly Storylines (The Avengers: Infinity War Edition)

Loki: If you're going to Earth, you might want a guide. I do have a bit of experience in that arena.
Thanos: Well, if you consider failure experience.
Loki: I consider "experience" experience.

Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley's bold decision last week to rotate the quarterback position between Dennis Grosel and Emmett Morehead was intended to stabilize the offense after three weeks of inconsistency. He hoped Grosel's leadership and Morehead's raw abilities would play off one another and catch Syracuse off-guard, and over the course of four quarter, the glimpses and flashes proved Hafley found an ace in the hole by keeping the Orange guessing at which quarterback would run which offense.

"We changed our game plan to try and slow it down for us as an offense," Morehead said. "We got rid of the wristband last week and went to a more spread offense so it was a little easier to process, and it helped me kind of move quicker. It's been a while since I played the game, so it was exciting."

Hafley was correct in judging BC's ability to mount drives and execute individual plays, but the inconsistency in stringing those successes together prevented the team from scoring touchdowns. It eventually cost the Eagles the game after they settled for two field goals and surrendered three explosive scores to Syracuse, and they entered practice this week with the coach hoping the switch would eventually force one of them grab a proverbial brass ring.

"I'm hoping it's one," Hafley said this week. "I don't want to [say] that it's one guy and then all of a sudden, it could be two, but I'd like it to be one. I just want a guy to get a chance to go play, but something could happen where we have to change it up."

Figuring out which quarterback is next on the depth chart feels like an easy exercise, but the raw metrics and measurables made it substantially harder to predict into Friday's game. Grosel silenced doubters with an ability to go deep last week, and Morehead executed check downs when he had the time to go through his progressions.

"If you really watch the film and watch how [Morehead] played, those were the first live bullets he faced [since high school]," Hafley said. "He didn't have a senior year in high school, [but] he hasn't played much football in his whole life. He's not like a kid who's grown up playing football since the second grade, and then for him to go in with limited practice reps and play the way he did, he'll just get better. He was probably nervous and anxious, but he'll get better."

How BC eventually beats Virginia Tech likely falls somewhere in the middle between these two players. If Hafley chooses to go with one quarterback, that person will need to have grown with the experience of watching the other play. Morehead, for example, forced Grosel to throw the deep ball better, while the freshman learned how to find the right read and right target while looking defenders off of intended receivers.

Peter Quill: Who are you?
Peter Parker: We're the Avengers, man.
Mantis: You're the ones Thor told us about.
Tony Stark: You know Thor?
Peter Quill: Yeah, tall guy, not-that-good-looking, needed saving.

The short week intensified the conversation on the quarterback position at BC, but it threatened to overshadow the Virginia Tech team coming into Chestnut Hill on Friday after the Hokies snapped their own three-game losing streak with a 26-17 win over Georgia Tech last weekend.

It was the consistent performance Justin Fuente searched for as the team dropped three very distinct results to Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and Syracuse. Ranked after beating North Carolina to start the season, Tech went from No. 19 to No. 15 after beating Middle Tennessee before a 27-21 loss to West Virginia dropped it entirely from the polls. A win over an FCS ranked team, Richmond, buoyed a 3-1 record, but the three defeats at the start of October put Fuente under the microscope after they all came at Lane Stadium.

Enter the Georgia Tech game and Braxton Burmeister's breakout performance against the Yellow Jackets. He threw for 254 yards and two touchdowns, and seven of his 15 completions went to Tre Turner for 187 yards. Turner found openings against the Georgia Tech secondary over the entire game and scored a touchdown, while Tayvion Robinson added four catches for 27 yards and a score of his own.

Malachi Thomas, meanwhile, ran for 103 yards on the ground while Raheem Blackshear averaged just under six yards per carry for his 83 yards. For Thomas, it was the second consecutive game with 100 yards after the freshman ran for 150-plus against Syracuse in the game before Georgia Tech.

"They're a very athletic team," Jeff Hafley said. "Last year it was a different quarterback and different running back. This year, it's the same style. The quarterback's a good athlete. He's fast and quick, and I think he's tough because he takes some shots. He can throw the ball down the field."

Burmeister remained the team's leading rusher coming out of the game, which offers a glimpse into his dual threat ability, but both Thomas and Blackshear, a Rutgers transfer in his fifth season of college football, are capable of posting their own brand of success. Turner, Robinson and Kaleb Smith, meanwhile, are the team's leading receivers and finally saw their chemistry with Burmeister pay dividends after the Oregon transfer struggled to consistently throw for 200 yards earlier in the season.

"They have three different backs, who I think are good players," Hafley said. "I think they have the best wideouts that we've played in [Tre Turner], [Tayvion Robinson] and [Kaleb Smith]. The line is big and strong. I know they lost their tight end [James Mitchell] who was a really good player, but it's the same style of football."

Rocket: How much for the gun?
Bucky Barnes: It's not for sale.
Rocket: Okay, then how much for the arm?
[Bucky walks away]
Rocket: Oh, I'll get that arm.

Virginia Tech is long recognized for Bud Foster's Lunch Pail Defense, but the first season after the longtime coordinator's retirement produced growing pains throughout the 2020 season when the Hokies surrendered an average of 32 points per game and ranked in the bottom third of the football bowl subdivision. They held only one team to under 20 points last year: Boston College, the recipient of a 40-14 loss at Lane Stadium in the first game the Eagles played before fans.

Continuing the transition away from Foster's fingerprints is a necessary piece of Virginia Tech's continued growth under Justin Fuente, but BC will very much see a team ranked in the middle percentile of total defense when it takes the field on Friday night. The Hokies, a team historically built around stingy defense and special teams, are 63rd in total defense, 21 spots behind Boston College, and hover around an extra field goal allowed per game than the Eagles' vaunted No Fly Zone defense under Jeff Hafley and Tem Lukabu.

The two teams are more similar than they appear, though, because the Hokies are still stopping teams as they get closer to the goal line. Four of their eight opponents haven't scored 20 points in a game, and the averages are only thrown out of flux because of the 73 points surrendered to both Notre Dame and Syracuse.

Factoring in the Wake Forest game pushes the scoring total of opponents to 101 points over a three-game span, an average of just under 34 points that is actually a field goal less than just the games against the Fighting Irish and the Orange. Beating Georgia Tech helped secure some confidence, but Virginia Tech is still a defense allowing an average of 179.8 yards per game, which only ranks 97th in the nation.

"I think a lot of it will be [our] scheme," Jeff Hafley said. "A lot of it will be how well we hold onto the ball, and then some of it will be our players blocking their players. They have a defensive end who is a really good player, and their nose is a really good player. They're a three-down team that's similar to us, so there is not as much odd, crazy pressure and twisting and slanting all over the place."

Over the last four weeks, BC lost its ability to generate balance when it fell behind in the third quarter against opponents. Those further struggles with scoring touchdowns over field goals also leaked into the game plan and forced the Eagles to throw more than they ran, which in turn placed pressure on an offensive line and a quarterback under duress. Facing Virginia Tech essentially plays to the opposite strength and potentially enables BC to get its running game going, which would then further equate to an improved forward passing game.

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Countdown to Kickoff

10...BC has scored 10 touchdowns this year while its opponent was scoreless on the scoreboard, including scoring touchdowns to open four of its eight games this year.
9…Nine ACC teams have either four or five losses on their overall records this season.
8…BC has rushed for 100 yards during the Jeff Hafley era, with a 7-1 overall record.
7…October is the only month in which Jeff Hafley has a losing record, having gone 2-7 compared to 8-2 across August, September, November and December.
6…Virginia Tech's entry into the national polls earlier this year marked the sixth consecutive season in which the Hokies were ranked for at least one week.
5…Five ACC quarterbacks have thrown for 2,000 yards through the first eight weeks of the season.
4…Four ACC quarterbacks are in the top-10 nationally for passing touchdowns. Virginia's Brennan Armstrong leads them with 27 scores, while Kenny Pickett, Sam Hartman and Devin Leary have 26, 22 and 21, respectively.
3…Three quarterbacks in the league's top-10 have not thrown for 1,500 yards, led by DJ Uiagalelei, who has only thrown for 1,291 yards.
2…Braxton Burmeister has thrown for multiple touchdowns in only two games as quarterback of the Hokies, both coming this year (West Virginia, Georgia Tech).
1…Sean Tucker became the first running back to 200 carries this season in last week's game against BC.

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BC-Virginia Tech X Factor

Boston College's Offense

Boston College's well-documented offensive inconsistencies have been fodder for Jeff Hafley in the aftermath of each of the Eagles' four consecutive losses, but the coach readily admits that more of the analysis belongs in the film room and on the staff than it does on the players. There is a large component of looking at a team's ability to execute plays, but Hafley has been at the forefront of assuming responsibility for why his team isn't scoring the necessary touchdowns to win football games.

That's because an offense is more than just one player. If it were easy enough to swap out one player based on measurable talent and skills, then the Eagles would have easily been able to watch which quarterback threw a ball the longest to determine the starter, but it goes well beyond the scope of simple arm strength or even accuracy.

Every play requires cohesion, meaning the offensive line needs to give the quarterback enough time to go through his progressions in order to read a throw. The quarterback needs to release at the right point for a receiver, who in turn needs the proper separation from a defensive player in order to make the catch. The throw itself needs to be in the right spot, which is something we learned after the Missouri game when Josh DeBerry didn't bite on a quarterback's ability to look off defensive backs as part of a throw.

"[Alec Lindstrom] reads coverages," quarterback Emmett Morehead said, "which I think is pretty rare for a college center. I know they do that in the NFL, but he's great because the [identifications] of linebackers can be kind of complicated, especially where I haven't played that much. It's not super easy, so he's great to have, just pointing everybody out down the line, where to go. I don't really have to make as many calls as I think a normal college quarterback would have."

Fixing the BC offense is not, then, going to be done by swapping one player for another, and Hafley knew it when he rotated the quarterbacks last week. It wasn't ideal, but he saw an opportunity to build a scheme around different players and different looks. This week, it's the same analysis to determine which quarterback plays best with which offensive line rotation in order to move the football and enable the running game with a particular back.

All of this is situational awareness and remains as fluid as anything both on a football field and in a football game. Fixing it has been a paramount piece of BC's work over the last three weeks, and as Virginia Tech looms, it's now a piece that Hafley has assumed with the rest of the coaches as the last four games grow closer.

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Dan's Non-Sports Observation of the Week

Written in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bruce Springsteen's album "The Rising" told stories of pain and healing at both a social and individual level. It was his first album with the entire E Street Band in nearly two decades, but it was steeped in an interaction Springsteen had with a stranger who saw him in the immediate days after 9/11, rolled down his window and told him, "We need you now."

The album is my favorite in his catalog, and the titular song ranks second only to "Badlands" in my book. It talks mainly about the firefighters who charged into the fires of 9/11 without knowing what was in store for them, and its verses describe the darkness of their day, from the half mile of line to the 60-pound pack on their back. It talks about how they left their house with fire bells ringing, and the "cross of their calling" - the firefighter's cross or Saint Florian, depending on how you interpret it - flying down the hill on "wheels of fire," or the fire trucks speeding towards Ground Zero.

That song hits differently every time I listen to it, and as much as I love Springsteen, it's the one that forces me to respect the sacrifices of people who run into burning buildings for a living. They don't know what's on the other side because fire doesn't care about race, religion, personal wealth, political affiliation or gender identity. It's simplistically dangerous, which is why their job is so critical, and their battles are an intense fight to protect and serve life.

The firefighters who ran into the World Trade Center knew of the dangers in the situation, but they didn't blink and didn't think twice. They went into the building to do their job, and more than 300 didn't return home. Hundreds and thousands more suffered health impacts in the aftermath, and many survivors still feel those effects today.

Their heroism occurred to me this week because of someone like Welles Crowther. He didn't outwardly think twice about his own well-being, and he shoved his safety to the side in order to battle to protect life. That's the ultimate sacrifice in service to others, and it's why Boston College wears its special edition uniforms as a way to say thank you and honor that service.

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Scoreboard Watching

I always found it funny when preseason prognostications try to predict a dark horse candidate because a dark horse implies nobody sees it coming. If we all think a team is going to be good, I asked, then how can it actually be a dark horse? It's just one of those things that I always chuckled about.

What's not overly funny is how Wake Forest is taking the ACC by storm this year since absolutely nobody saw the Demon Deacons coming up the food chain. The league's media members selected them fifth in the Atlantic Division, behind both BC and Florida State, but they remain the league's only chance at the College Football Playoff as they head into their ninth game of the season.

Wake ranked ninth in the first College Football Playoff poll this week, right behind undefeated Oklahoma and the fifth-highest undefeated team behind No. 1 Georgia, No. 3 Michigan State, No. 6 Cincinnati and the Sooners. They were directly ahead of Notre Dame with both NC State and Pittsburgh finding homes at No. 19 and No. 25 when the committee revealed its choices.

The first rankings are always controversial, but the poll opened a door for Wake Forest's road forward. The Demon Deacons are at North Carolina on Saturday for a 12 p.m. game against the Tar Heels, a team that thought it would be ranked ninth in the nation heading into this week, for a non-conference game between the Tobacco Road universities. They play opposite Pittsburgh's game at Duke and Georgia Tech's game at Miami, which kicks off at 12:30, a half hour after the Panthers and Blue Devils.

Later in the afternoon, No. 19 NC State plays Florida State in Tallahassee before Clemson is at Louisville for the nighttime ACC Network bash. Both of those games will have pivotal bowl positioning at stake, especially for the Seminoles, who would fall to the brink of ineligibility if they sustain a sixth loss.

This is a real make-or-break week in college football, and it kicks off right away with the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy game between Army and Air Force at noon. After normally being played at one of the academies, this year's game moved to Choctaw Stadium, better recognized as the former home of the Texas Rangers in Arlington, Texas. Both No. 1 Georgia and No. 5 Ohio State will also be in action at the top of the day with games against Missouri and Nebraska, while No. 16 Ole Miss and No. 20 Minnesota host Liberty and Illinois.

The mid-afternoon likewise kicks off with a number of big games when No. 3 Michigan State heads to Purdue and No. 13 Auburn is in College Station to play No. 14 Texas A&M. No. 6 Cincinnati, a draw for obvious reasons involving the Group of Five and the CFP, hosts Tulsa at 3:30 opposite No. 10 Notre Dame's annual rivalry game against Navy. No. 15 BYU, a team that needs Cincinnati to lose in order to capitalize on the CFP's Group of Five berth, is hosting FCS-level Idaho State.

It doesn't stop at all through the night when No. 18 Kentucky hosts Tennessee and No. 2 Alabama hosts LSU at 7 p.m. They kick off opposite No. 23 Fresno State's game against Boise State and games for both No. 4 Oregon and No. 7 Michigan.

Those of us who don't enjoy sleep also have the 11 p.m. kickoff in Hawaii against No. 24 San Diego State.

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Around the Sports World

For the second straight week, the Boston sports community mourned a legend when Jerry Remy, a local kid who became a Red Sox icon, died following a battle with cancer at the age of 68.

Understanding Remy's significance within the Boston sports landscape requires little more than a television and a connection to NESN broadcasts. The RemDawg, as he was known, was the embodiment of the team and the color analyst, and the way he explained the game made it easier to understand. He was the perfect foil to people like Sean McDonough, and his relationship and chemistry with Don Orsillo was evident from the first time the duo paired together during the 2001 season.

Remy was the centerpiece of when the Red Sox hit an apex, and it helped turn him into more than just a household name. The pairing with Orsillo made baseball a nightly spectacle, no small feat considering the monotony of a 162-game season, and it didn't seem to matter if the game was slow or plodding. He knew how to examine a Wednesday night game in Kansas City in the same vein as a Saturday night rivalry matchup against the Yankees, and the way he taught the game to viewers came across as easily as anything.

But he was also one of us. He grew up in Massachusetts and eventually achieved the dream of playing for the Red Sox when he arrived via a 1977 trade with the California Angels. The next year, he became an All Star for the only time in his career, and he was on the field when the infamous collapse during the 1978 season completed its denouement during the one-game playoff against the Yankees.

His last public appearance was a ceremonial first pitch prior to the Wild Card game, ironically a one-game playoff against the Yankees, and the sight of Remy with an oxygen tank was only slightly jarring given his smile and strike to partner Dennis Eckersley. The duo had been a piece of the Red Sox broadcast together ever since Remy started battling both health and personal issues, but the pairing there only rejuvenated him as he talked baseball with a former teammate and a legend in his own right.

To my generation, though, he remained the RemDawg, and the fact that he passed so soon after throwing that ceremonial first pitch is a reminder of the fragility associated with our health and heroes. Losing him meant more than just a broadcaster; he was the guy who couldn't stop laughing when a fan threw pizza at another fan during a blowout win over the Angels, and he was the one who lost a tooth on the air. He fell while he was playing an air guitar off-air, and the moments on YouTube involving him and Orsillo are memories that nobody can take away from the thousands of baseball fans who watched.

For the second straight week, the Boston sports community is in mourning, and this time, we're saying goodbye to a permanent fixture for the Red Sox. Godspeed, Jerry Remy. I hope the Red Sox are constantly pummeling the Yankees every night, every time you're at the ballpark.

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Pregame Quote and Prediction

Today, our nation saw evil - the very worst of human nature - and we responded with the best of America. With the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could. -President George W. Bush

Realizing the importance of Friday night's game won't take very long once Boston College runs out of its tunnel. The red bandana uniforms that debuted against UMass will make their arrival on the home turf, and with it comes the celebration of one of the biggest nights of the Boston College calendar.

It is meant as a tribute to BC graduate Welles Remy Crowther, but it serves its own reminder of how September 11 changed the way American lived their lives. Everything was different after the deadliest attack in the country's history, and the values and pillars we held close shook to their core as a nation came under fire from an outside evil.

What we all learned about, though, was how others gave their lives during the ultimate sacrifice. Welles Crowther did just that and saved more than a dozen people by simply helping them. His death told us everything about how he lived, and on Friday, aside from the game itself, we will honor that memory by wearing his signature red bandana.

It centers around a football game, but the Red Bandana Game reflects what I discussed earlier in the week. It's a special, sacred night that's part of the fabric of the university and of the people who remember what happened on that day. It's a tribute to the memory of how one man opened a light on the darkest day in this country's history, and it takes place with the spirit of competition surrounding it in one of the biggest home games of the year.

This is still a football game and an important one at that, but for one night, it stands alongside a different discussion. There is time to talk about football, but there is also time to talk about Welles.

Boston College and Virginia Tech kick off at 7:30 p.m. on Friday from Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The game can be seen on national television via ESPN2 with streaming available through ESPN.com and the ESPN family of mobile apps. Radio broadcast is also available from the Boston College Sports Network from Learfield heard locally in Boston on WEEI 93.7 FM with Satellite broadcast available on Sirius channel 83, XM channel 83 and Online channel 83.

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