W2WF: Missouri

The official start of fall hit New England this week with the annual autumnal equinox on Wednesday, and with it came the hope of the most magical time of year. There's a promise to these still-warm days that they won't last much longer, and our hot, muggy wardrobes are starting to creep their way into the closet as hooded sweatshirts and jeans appear with more regularity. Trees are already changing, and hot apple cider or warm cider donuts start to dot stores even though pumpkin spice season started sometime around July 4th.

Every native has a traditional grand opening or personal memory for the season, and mine was always that first football game after the official date for fall. The Red Sox were usually in the midst of a playoff drive, and the Bruins and Celtics were firing up preseason practices, and something different hung in the air at a high school football stadium on a Friday or a college stadium on a Saturday before the Patriots buried some other unsuspecting team on a Sunday.

Autumn is the harbinger of outdoor weather after months of sitting indoors with the air conditioner cranking, and on Saturday, Boston College will play its first official game of the fall season when it hosts Missouri.

"There's not a better season [than fall]," BC head coach Jeff Hafley agreed. "We get a home football game on Saturday, and it's going to be a nice day to spend time with your kids. Get to the game early, be loud and have fun."

For Hafley's Eagles, fall is the perfect line of demarcation for its 2021 season. The first three games came and went during the end of the summer weeks, but much has been made about the Eagles' 3-0 undefeated start. They remain one of two unbeaten teams in the ACC, but they aren't nationally ranked because those three wins came over teams regarded as lighter fare. Nobody on the team has ever bitten on that tone, but the Tigers approach Alumni Stadium as an undeniably heavier meal compared to Colgate or the road games at UMass and Temple.

The Tigers' spot in the SEC East plays a big role in that, but even finishing third behind Florida and Georgia last year is enough to generate controversial conversation around the ACC water cooler, where nobody wants to acknowledge one league's superiority over another. That said, Missouri is still a two-time former division champion who entered the conference with immediate success.

This team is barely a decade removed from its top-5 national ranking or its Cotton Bowl win, but those division wins quickly established the program as a budding SEC power. There was a downturn, but it echoed the Boston College experience when the Eagles joined the ACC and won the newly-formed Atlantic Division twice within five years.

Jeff Hafley was at Pittsburgh and Rutgers when BC left the Big East, and college football looked remarkably different when he returned at the end of the 2010s. His old teams were, by then, in different leagues - and not with each other - and the SEC had gained both Missouri and Texas A&M. His second year at BC is bringing more realignment talk to the table, especially with the SEC, the Big 12 and programs that both the Eagles and Tigers used to play in some capacity.

"So much has changed since I left for the NFL," Hafley said. "I came back, and it was one year at the Big Ten before I jumped into the ACC as a coach. Then COVID hits and the transfer portal hits, and there's more talk about realignment. Change is going to happen, but we just have to be careful to protect college football and to protect football games and do everything we can for student-athletes. To me, that's the most important thing."

Maybe that's why BC and Mizzou are more alike than people think. Both teams find themselves in the middle of conversations of teams that just might compete with the bigger, more traditional conference powers, but neither is a traditional school for their respective leagues. Both are trying to prove something that the other is also attempting to show, but only one team - the winner - actually can.

Here's what to watch for when Missouri makes its first trip to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

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Weekly Storylines (Good Will Hunting Edition)

Sean: You're not perfect, sport, and let me save you the suspense: this girl you've met, she's not perfect either. But the question is whether or not you're perfect for each other.

Every football season represents a finite, fragile chapter in the long history of volumes that comprise a program. Together, they are a larger tradition and present the recognizable images of the past, but their individualism is an open-and-closed novel constructed more of a life spent in the moment of week-to-week existence.

Jeff Hafley's steadfast approach very obviously adheres to that mentality, and his remarks are a weekly exercise in internal improvements regardless of the opponent or location or even situation facing the team. He knows a season is only 12 games long, and it's his job to avoid the high highs or low lows that can and invariably do envelope an individual practice or game.

"The way I look at football, the way I always have, whether it was in the NFC West or the NFC South or wherever it was, it's whoever you're playing," Hafley said. "You have to get ready as if you're playing the best team you're going to play all year. And if I don't do that, then I'm not a good head coach. I don't care who we play. I don't care where the game is. Let's just go play football and do the best that we can and get better. Let's get better today and tomorrow, and I hope Saturday, we play better than we did last Saturday."

The lack of history in this matchup admittedly doesn't make great copy, but the unknowns are ever the same as the knowns in this instance. Hafley simply doesn't care about all of that, and neither does his team, which morphed almost overnight into an approach that every game is the most important, regardless of location, opponent or conference affiliation.

"I was asked about how I felt about playing at UMass, and we had to go to Temple to play Temple," he said. "If Colgate wanted us to play there, I'd have gone [to Colgate]. If [Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz] didn't want to come to Boston, he should have called me and asked me, and I would have gone on a plane to fly out to Missouri to play. I don't care where we play. Football season is about getting our team better every day and having a great time doing it with each other."

Morgan: My boy's wicked smart.

(This is one of my favorite lines in any move, and I couldn't wait to drop it in over the exchange that happens just before Casey Affleck delivers it. It also had naughty language, so this was an even better excuse to go to the Affleck line.)

Neither Jeff Hafley nor Dennis Grosel shied away from the statistics of last week's win. It was Grosel's first start in place of the injured Phil Jurkovec, but he only completed 5-of-13 attempts for 34 yards in the 28-3 outcome over Temple. He threw a dart to Jaden Williams on the first drive for a touchdown but spent the rest of the game controlling the clock with a bruising combination of a running game, and he finished with the lowest number of passing yards in a win since BC blasted UConn during the 2017 game at Fenway

They refused to recognize the performance as a red flag, though, because it was largely by design. The running game plowed through the Owls and rendered the passing game irrelevant after the field flipped almost immediately. The deficit piled up when all three phases worked in unison, and Hafley didn't see a need to change much when the running game gashed Temple on short fields created by special teams after the defense stopped a rushed Owl offense.

"We went up so fast in that game," Jeff Hafley said this week, "and I felt so good about how we were playing on defense that after I talked to [offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti], we were going to run the ball. It was just a matter of managing the game at that point, and I felt like we were in control of that game from the opening kickoff return. That's how our plan to win was for that week."

Grosel will ultimately even out his numbers from Temple with a better performance down the road, and he remains one of Cignetti's best success stories. His completion percentage under this offense is up by almost a full quarter of his attempts, and he's thrown for as many yards in five games as he did in his previous dozen-plus games prior to Hafley's arrival. More than half of those yards came in the Virginia game, but his quarterback efficiency rating is 70 points better than it was before Cignetti started molding him. Both his yards-per attempt and his yards-per-completion are considerably higher, and he has that signature game from last year.

"We're facing a better opponent [in Missouri] but we have a lot of stuff in our back pocket," Grosel said. "It's good stuff. We've tried to look at that, given the circumstances, what we have, what we have from our defense, but we have a lot of stuff that we've been working on for a long time."

Will: I didn't ask for this.
Sean: No, you were born with it. So don't cop out behind "I didn't ask for this."

None of that means Grosel is going to immediately throw for 500 yards on Saturday. There's no real cause to believe anything about the BC offense right now, anyways, because it's been so different in each of its first three games. It has a reputation as a pass-first option, but the running game's emergence can't be overlooked against a defense that surrendered 332 yards against Kentucky.

"We definitely feel comfortable," offensive lineman Zion Johnson said. "I think guys are settling in. Tyler [Vrabel] is settling into left tackle, and Ben [Petrula] is settling back in at right tackle. I think our preparation has elevated as the weeks have gone on. Our practices have become more physical and more violent, and we're just prepared to have a great game on Saturday."

Those diesel engines are enough to scare any team, but Missouri should enter this week with advanced trepidation after it struggled to stop the run in its SEC opener. Kentucky running back Chris Rodriguez gained over seven yards per carry in that game, and he scored two touchdowns to go with a rushing score by quarterback Will Levis in the win over the Tigers.

Those are gaudy numbers, and it's hard to judge one game by one player even after Pat Garwo destroyed UMass for 160 yards in the second game of BC's season. It's just equally hard to ignore the performance when the defensive front won't have a particular size advantage against any of BC's five offensive linemen. Nor is it easy to diminish the 200 yards from last week's game when Garwo led all ball carriers but Grosel and Alec Sinkfield combined for nearly 100 yards.

"Let's go into Saturday and be fearless," Hafley said. "There's nothing more we can do. Let's go play the game. Let's go coach the game. Let's go have fun. And wherever it falls, if we do all of those things, we can't be ashamed of anything. We should be confident, and you earn the right to do that by the way practice."

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Countdown to Kickoff

10…Boston College has previously played against 10 different SEC teams and most recently played Vanderbilt in the 2008 Music City Bowl.
9…There are nine, one-loss ACC teams through the first three weeks of the season, including four Atlantic Division teams. Two other teams have two losses, and Florida State is the lone winless team at 0-3.
8…Eight undefeated teams make up the top eight slots in the national polls, but only one team is from the Group of Five (Cincinnati, No. 8).
7…Opponents have gained seven first downs this year via penalties against BC.
6...BC is seeking its sixth straight win in August or September to start the Jeff Hafley era.
5…BC is 5-1 over the last six years in its final game in September.
4…Since 2000, BC played its second home game on or later than Saturday's Sept. 29 date on four different occasions: 2000 (September 30), 2001 (September 29), 2016 (October 1), and 2020 (October 3).
3…Opponents are 3-0 when scoring 40-plus points against BC under Hafley. The Eagles are likewise 3-0 when scoring 40-plus points against opponents, including two wins this year.
2...Travis Levy became the second active BC player with 50 career games when he appeared against Temple last week.
1…Ben Petrula is the player ahead of Levy by one game, with 51, though Petrula has 51 consecutive starts.

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BC-Mizzou X Factor

Plow the road

Quarterback conversations naturally draw the lion's share of attention whenever a starter goes down injured, but BC's approach to the Temple game last week had nothing to do with Dennis Grosel replacing Phil Jurkovec. The Eagles simply took what the Owls handed them, and the running game became an important piece as to why Temple forced its offense to rush into mistakes against the defense. The defense likewise is why Temple's defense got tired against the bruising BC attack.

Expecting BC to abandon its running game to go head-to-head with a solid Missouri offense isn't prudent, and even though it can attack through the air, the Eagles are more likely to grind into the teeth of a Missouri defense that hasn't quite shown consistency against its prior three opponents.

That doesn't mean Missouri's front four is weak by any stretch, but it's a clear bat signal for where BC might try to attack first. There's a potential mismatch between the tackles, and the Eagles succeeded in the area where Missouri struggled earlier this season. Therefore, they can challenge the defensive line and attempt to confuse linebackers Blaze Alldredge and Devin Nicholson with RPOs and play actions. That would then open up the pass plays and rollouts to Trae Barry and the downfield passes to Zay Flowers and company.

It sounds so simple, but if it's that easy, Missouri will be on its toes after surrendering just under 300 yards and four touchdowns to SEMO last week. The large bulk of that came after the Tigers ran away with the scoreboard, but it still happened two games after Central Michigan gained 4.5 yards per carry. None of this guarantees BC will pound the football, but it does offer a potential glimpse into the proven approaches for both teams.

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Dan's Non-Sports Observation of the Week

I am a really bad golfer. I love the game and love playing golf, especially in the early morning hours of a late summer or early fall day, and standing in that first tee box with a little chill in the air relaxes me after I spend most of the week at a pace best described as "hair on fire."

Golf was a central staple to my summer last year amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, but all of that screeched to a halt when Baby Rubin arrived in April. I was responsible for the bulk of early mornings, and it became impossible to keep a standing tee time at sunrise when diaper changes and bottle feedings were the bane of my existence.

I wound up not playing at all this summer, and I missed it terribly even though I adored spending every minute possible with the baby. This week, though, I swung a golf club for the first time since I returned to work from paternity leave. Those feelings of looking out over a lush, green fairway with the peaceful quiet came flooding back, and I gripped my club with a new appreciation for something I missed.

One problem: it felt like I swung an anvil. My back gave out somewhere around the 70th swing, and my poor wife sent me directly to a horizontal position when she saw me amble up the driveway like I'd been in the torture device in The Princess Bride. Baby Rubin thought it was hilarious, but that's because five months isn't old enough to recognize Dad's pain - or maybe it was.

I realized in that moment how much life can change over two years. I was an avid runner prior to COVID-19, and this week actually marked the two-year anniversary of the first time I ran a 10K. I once dreamed of springboarding out of that into the Boston Marathon, and I wanted to know the rush of turning down Boylston St. on Patriots Day weekend. Last summer, I didn't run as often, but I imagined breaking 90 for the first time as my scores seemingly dipped each time I was on the course.

This year, the only 18 I handled was the baby. I love every second of it, and I am by no means complaining. I just marvel at how much things change over the course of time. Two years doesn't feel like a long time, but my life is completely different from where it was in 2019.

Side note - my wife permitted me to play a full 18 holes with my friends this weekend, but I have zero faith that my legs will survive it because I'm too stubborn to get a cart. I couldn't make it through 85 swings without compressing my back into a red hot iron, and now I'm going to walk 18 holes. This is a great idea.

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Scoreboard Watching

The ACC's start to the 2021 season has been, in a word, sketchy, and it didn't exactly fade all that much after the conference rank-and-file struggled to find steady ground last week. Louisville beat Central Florida on a last-second interception return for a touchdown, but Virginia Tech, Miami and Pittsburgh all lost non-league games. The Panthers in particular hurt when they dropped a 44-41 decision to a non-power team, Western Michigan.

Duke at least beat Northwestern to pick up a win over the Big Ten, but the conference needs some more wins over a marquee conference. Only two league teams are ranked, and Clemson dropped to No. 9 in the Associated Press poll after it struggled to beat Georgia Tech. North Carolina is still hanging around, but the remainder of the teams are on the outside looking in at the teams with little numbers next to their names.

It's still a matter of perspective, in my opinion, because Virginia Tech technically outranks Boston College despite BC's undefeated record and the Hokies' loss to West Virginia. For what it's worth, the Eagles haven't gained much traction in either poll, but there's at least been movement with votes in the Coaches Poll.

That forms the cornerstone of this week because the ACC can gain some good mojo if Syracuse beats Liberty on Friday night. BC can follow that up with a win over Missouri on Saturday afternoon, but that's really it for a league that features a number of noon games against FCS opponents. Separately, Kansas visits Duke in a game for a 4 p.m. start.

Conference-wise, the start of the round robin playoff among the Atlantic Division teams kicks into a stronger gear when Clemson and NC State play what amounts to a potential division title game. The two were part of a larger conversation involving BC, but this is the first game and the one between the top two preseason picks before the Eagles draw games against each over the next two weeks.

That game's at 3:30 opposite Louisville's game at Florida State. North Carolina and Georgia Tech have the late game with kickoff taking place inside the Atlanta Falcons' Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Elsewhere, Saturday is a huge day for the start of conference races in almost every league. Texas Tech is at Texas at noon, and both Iowa State-Baylor and Texas A&M-Arkansas kick off at 3:30 in the Big 12 and SEC. Rutgers, a pleasant surprise in the Big Ten, faces its biggest test as well when it heads to the Big House to play Michigan at that same time.

Notable games dot the entire slate. Tennessee's at Florida, and Nebraska is at Michigan State while West Virginia heads to Oklahoma. In the late-late games, Arizona is at Oregon, Oregon State is at USC and Colorado is at Arizona State.

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Around the Sports World

I know I talk about golf way too much, but this weekend's Ryder Cup is also one of those great tournaments worth watching for casual fans. It's not the typical stroke play tournament, and the nationalistic pride of the United States-Europe matchup combines with the same head-to-head and team-based scoring that occurs in golf outings among friends on local courses around the world.

It always brings out the best in everyone, but the United States has been crushed in two of the last three competitions. The last tournament in 2018 was a particularly spectacular failure after one of the strongest teams ever imploded from within. Europe recorded its seventh win since the infamous 1999 win for the USA at The Country Club in Brookline, and the United States, for its part, failed to defend a 2016 win over the Europeans.

It's always great theater, but the head-to-head competitions on the final day make it an outstanding spectacle after two days of fourballs and foursomes. It emphasizes being able to play certain holes and situations better than an opponent, and the better golfer doesn't automatically hold the best option for a particular matchup. Plus it comes after two days of golf built around chemistry and competition.

It reeks of the same type of golf I play with my friends, and the match play competition echoes a story from a few years ago when I almost won despite shooting worse overall. I was one-up on the 11th hole after alternating disaster holes with reasonable bogey stroke play, but I fell apart down the stretch against a persistent and consistent bogey golfer. I was still in position to earn some points in the last three holes despite shooting something like 10 strokes worse, and I still remember bombing three shots into three completely separate bodies of water on 18.

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Pregame Quote and Prediction

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall. -F. Scott Fitzgerald

The first three weeks watched Boston College assert itself in the face of opponents that simply couldn't keep up with a strong power conference team. The Eagles built insurmountable leads in each game before playing different approaches and player combinations in different situations. They kept some details away from opponents and gained experience for players who normally wouldn't see the field, and it all represented a building process to the team's future prospects.

That future eventually turned into the present, and it's why this week feels like it hinges on a little bit more than just the outcome. There have been storylines, but none match the overarching urgency of a Boston College win. Every conversation centered around the team entering next week with a potentially perfect, undefeated record, and now it can happen if BC beats Missouri at home.

If is always a small word with a big meaning, and it will define what happens on Saturday afternoon. Fall is upon us, and the last glimmers of warm New England summers will envelop Alumni Stadium if the rain can hold off (admittedly, I've seen about six different forecasts, which is so New England, it hurts). There is hope and belief in these Eagles, but the way to validate is by beating Missouri.

Boston College and Missouri kick off on Saturday at 12 p.m. from Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Mass. The game can be seen on national television on ESPN2 with online streaming available via the ESPN app. Radio broadcast can be heard on the Boston College SPorts Network from Learfield, locally in Boston on WEEI 850 AM, with satellite radio options at Sirius channel 111, XM channel 193 and Online channel 955.

Players Mentioned

Trae Barry

Zay Flowers

Dennis Grosel

Zion Johnson

Phil Jurkovec

Travis Levy

Ben Petrula

Alec Sinkfield

Jaden Williams

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