Final Page Turns As BC Meets ACC Kickoff

2020 was a strange, weird time for a college football coach. The season wasn't lost, but riding into the thick of the year felt like a castle erected on soft mud. Individual schools and conferences attempted to complete a full schedule under a global pandemic, and the surreality of cancellations and constant rescheduled postponements turned a grind into a grueling and unrelenting daily struggle.

The very public weight of the season pressurized players and coaches living under the equal, indiscriminate threat of the novel coronavirus. Every game felt like a small victory before the opening kickoff just because the completed work of climbing that constant mountain enabled it.

It was in that maelstrom that Jeff Hafley first tasted head coaching life. He was hired to rebuild Boston College's winning tradition, but the COVID-19 pandemic complicated the task of stacking wins on top of the usual bowl season. The Eagles finished 6-5, but somehow their seventh season at or within .500 in the last eight years felt like a massive victory given how the tree shook the schedule down from the heavens.

"I basically got the job and all of a sudden was sent home," Hafley reflected during Thursday's continuation of the ACC Kickoff event. "You don't really get to know your football team, you don't really get to meet them (or) spend time with them. You get to know them on Zoom, and you do the best you can, (but) you don't know if you're going to play a real football game. You don't have a team meeting room. So it was different."

It led prognosticators to predict a freefall from grace for the 2020 Eagles, but it never happened despite the lack of full preparation. Hafley's coaching staff finished installing its scheme during the summer's extended training camp and entered the season with a stripped-down model of what it wanted to run, but the team's sheer athleticism launched wins over Duke, Texas State and Pittsburgh with a near-miss loss against a nationally-ranked North Carolina team.

It grew and battled through a disappointing score at Virginia Tech and traded wins and losses with ACC opponents as consecutive weeks piled up. The record only threatened to mask the success after BC hung with both No. 1 Clemson and No. 2 Notre Dame within three weeks of each other, and the way people looked at Hafley after the season launched his recruiting efforts into another stratosphere in the offseason.

"It was really hard," Hafley said. "I barely met the team, and we were getting ready to play a game. But we didn't make excuses. We have some great men and some great coaches. I learned more about myself and more about our football team going forward because of the pandemic than I probably would have in four or five years being the head coach at Boston College."

All of that warranted a mention at the media dais on Thursday during a day calibrated to everyone's rearview mirror. Teams enter media days without anyone truly knowing what the future holds and only possess a reputation built from what it accomplished last season. That meant BC, for all of its success, was still an upstart team to the assembled masses, a good team that completed an 11-game slate without a single postponement caused by a positive COVID-19 test.

"We had a bunch of guys who came together and didn't make excuses," Hafley told the group. "We had over 8,000 tests (for COVID-19), and up until the last week of the season, we didn't have one kid test positive. We had a bunch of guys who were told they wouldn't be able to do something, and they proved they could. When you coach football or play football, you deal with adversity. Usually it doesn't come right away.

"For our guys, it came right away," he said. "For our staff, it came right away. Our guys decided to get together and sacrifice. We didn't miss a game (or) a practice. We were competitive. Our guys started to love each other and believe in each other. That's what I took out of the pandemic."

In an era defined by case counts and surges, BC's accomplishment still stood alone, but a burning desire to turn the page emerged over the course of the day. A media day is filled with necessary lookbacks, but popular opinion is quickly establishing the Eagles as the preeminent sleeper team in the ACC's reemerging two-division format.

A heightened spotlight shone specifically on the offense and its potential in a league stacked with elite quarterbacks following the departure of First Team All-American and No. 1 overall draft pick Trevor Lawrence. The Clemson signal caller missed the BC game last year after testing positive for COVID-19, but his vacuum and mantle aren't assured to successor DJ Uiagalelei.

Nor are the Tigers guaranteed to once again reign over the rest of the ACC even if no team has successfully knocked them from their pedestal over the past five years. There stands a reason to believe BC has that potential, though, though that dogma is more ascertained by the media planting it on the shoulders and feet of Phil Jurkovec.

"We have so many weapons," Jurkovec said. "Kobay White didn't play last year, but he was the most productive receiver for BC in the years prior. We have him back (with) CJ Lewis, Jaelen Gill, Zay Flowers. We have transfers (like) Trae Barry from Jacksonville State and Alec Sinkfield from West Virginia to go along with our running backs.

"We just have so many options," he said. "I know everybody's going to want the ball, but it's going to be fun just to see the different personnel groupings we can go with, just all the different options that we have."

It's a wonderful pressure, but it ultimately means nothing to a season unwritten into the history books. Clemson is still the defending champion - again - and BC is still the sixth place team from last year's 15-team league. Notre Dame is gone, and the division split returned Wake Forest, Florida State and NC State to BC's world after last year was heavily scheduled against Coastal Division teams.

Nobody knows what to expect, but last year's shadow won't loom large for very much longer. It's a year everyone wants to put behind them for a number of reasons even as COVID-19 continues its assault on daily life around the world, but the transition is now only easier knowing it's now squarely last season as 2021 gets ready to rumble as this season.

"Every game, my mind would kind of play tricks on me," Hafley said of last season. "Every game, I ran out of the tunnel, and I'd get so worked up, so excited. The smoke would clear, (and) my mind would play tricks on me. I would look for people, (but) there were the damn cardboard fans every time. I swear, the smoke would be there, here they are. Then it was cardboard again.

"When you put on the headsets, you kind of forget," he explained. "The only part that was weird was after the game (when) there was no traffic on the way home. SO it will be a lot more fun knowing my wife and kids and family and parents, all (the players') parents, can come to the games. I'm excited about that again.

"I honestly can't wait to run out of the tunnel," he finished, "whether I'm getting booed by another crowd or applauded by ours. It's one of the reasons I wanted to come back to college football, just the atmosphere. I'm really excited to be a part of (that) again."

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Players Mentioned

Trae Barry

Zay Flowers

Jaelen Gill

Phil Jurkovec

CJ Lewis

Alec Sinkfield

Kobay White

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