The Tailgate: Syracuse

Football and Thanksgiving are two things that just go hand-in-hand. They've been paired since the earliest days of both the sport and the holiday, but the 150 years of tradition turned a morning football game before a big family dinner into a national pastime enjoyed in every community and township across the American landscape.

They are huge deals, and anyone who lived or grew up in Massachusetts understands how the long-standing rivalries date back to the ancient times near the immediate aftermath of the Civil War era in New England. Matchups between Boston Latin and Boston English date back to the 1880s, and other games between Wellesley and Needham or Malden and Medford aren't easily erased by the passage of time. The decades and centuries tie them together too much, and they tie years together for communities that live to reunite around a football game.

The importance of playing a traditional rival can lift a community for an entire year, and the matchups endured world wars, economic downturns, and, most recently, a global pandemic that canceled or postponed games off of the actual Thanksgiving holiday. Nearly every town has a game on Thursday morning, and a changed playoff format that minimized Thanksgiving's impact on the regular season and playoffs did nothing to take away the significance of winning a Turkey Day rivalry.

The history is a big part of it, but for many seniors, Thanksgiving is the final time they'll ever wear their high school uniform for a football game. It's the last chapter, and since many never compete at the next level, it's the end of the road for a career that began 10 years earlier with Pop Warner practices and trips to games in faraway lands throughout the state. It's a tribute to the work that got them to that level, and it's an emotional moment shared between the players and their parents, many of whom spent years sacrificing their own lives and time to get their sons (and daughters!) to practices, games, and road trips.

Those moments and speeches are encapsulated perfectly in a world where social media offers unfettered and unlimited access, and we're all now privy to the sacred moments offered up by coaches and teammates. We'll see them trickle out throughout the day on Thursday as we sit down to our own meals, and they'll provide one last appetizer before the same feeling intensifies with the main course of Boston College's rivalry game against Syracuse on Saturday night.

There's still plenty to break down, of course, but it's forever worth noting how the season ends on Saturday for the Eagles. This is their Thanksgiving Day game and their Senior Day. This is their final ride, and it's at home, under the lights, against its most historic current rival. Syracuse is the one team that carries just as much history and tradition as a Holy Cross, and the regular series is part of both teams' record books. With the exception of Notre Dame, no matchup means more, and there's no better way for the seniors to end their careers than with one last ride against the Orange, two days after Turkey Day.
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The Podcast For Boston: For The Podcast '22 Ep. 12 -- Marcus Valdez

Here's what to watch for when the Eagles play Syracuse in the final game of the 2022 season:

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Game Storylines (Bon Jovi Edition)

And I walk these streets,
A loaded six-string on my back
I play for keeps, cuz I might not make it back.
I've been everywhere, and I'm standing tall.
I've seen a million faces, and I've rocked them all.
-Wanted Dead or Alive

For the first time since 2015, Boston College enters its final week knowing the season finale is, indeed, the last game. Last week's loss at Notre Dame erased the possibility of a straight line shot to a bowl game based on a possible 5-7 record and left the Eagles with the knowledge that the season ends on Saturday against Syracuse - without question, without reservation, and without even the slimmest chance of playing in a game in the event that Bowl Season doesn't have enough eligible, .500 teams.

"It's kind of interesting to get ready for Senior Day," said head coach Jeff Hafley, "because you have sixth-year super seniors, fifth year seniors with eligibility [remaining], and you have fourth year seniors. So there's a whole mix of guys, but it's a special group that I've been with through a lot since the time that I got here. You look at guys who have been here forever, and we form great relationships. There'll always be very meaningful to me becoming a first time head coach, and being with those guys for the first three years, it's a special group, and that's why this [game] is important."

This season is nowhere near what Hafley and the Eagles expected when they arrived for training camp back in August, but the fact that there isn't another game after Saturday adds a sense of urgency to what they're trying to accomplish in the final matchup against Syracuse. Add in a dash of a rivalry with the Orange and the history, plus an under-the-lights atmosphere over Thanksgiving weekend, and there's a real chance that Alumni Stadium produced a lasting memory for the players to carry long after their careers end.

This ain't a song for the broken-hearted.
No silent prayer for faith departed.
And I can't gonna be just a face in the crowd.
You're gonna hear my voice when I shout it out loud.
-It's My Life

BC's last home win over Syracuse came in 2014 when the Orange were newly-minted members of the ACC, but this is also the first time the teams have met at Alumni Stadium since the Eagles dropped the 2018 season finale to the No. 19 team in the nation, 42-21. The last three matchups have been indoors at Syracuse, and that makes it a little easy to forget how BC bludgeoned the Orange, 58-27, with 691 total yards in 2019 before winning, 16-13, during the empty arena game during the COVID year in 2020.

They've been prickly thorns at each other, and last year was no different after Jeff Hafley made the decision to play Emmett Morehead as a true freshman in a rotation with Dennis Grosel. Both showed flashes of what made each other effective, but neither gathered the right amount of momentum to match Sean Tucker's 207 yards rushing. Garrett Shrader had almost no responsibilities throwing the ball against a proud but porous BC defense, and the Orange rolled to 358 yards by adding 78 yards and an explosive touchdown from the transfer quarterback.

"We've played good running backs," Hafley said, "but [Tucker] is as good as any running back that we've played all year. He's an NFL back. He's patient, and he's very strong. He can accelerate, he breaks tackles, he makes people miss, he can hit the home run, he catches the ball out of the backfield. And I know [Shrader] has been a little hurt, but he's made improvements from a year ago. That's no disrespect to how he played last year, but as a passer throwing the ball with accuracy, he has a really high completion percentage. He's a tough kid. He's a big, big man, and he runs hard."

An angel's smile is what you sell.
You promise me heaven, then put me through hell.
Chains of love got a hold on me.
When passion's a prison, you can't break free.
-You Give Love A Bad Name

Last year's numbers stood out for a number of reasons, but BC truthfully doesn't have the same defense as last season. It's significantly better, specifically against the run, and last week's game was more of an aberration than a trend due to Notre Dame's old-school style of running the football. No team on the BC schedule ran that much of a multi-headed approach on the ground, and Syracuse certainly doesn't have that reputation with a coach like Dino Babers and an offense that's still fast, even if it's a little slower than previous iterations.

The game itself is going to boil down to which team plays better on the defensive end. BC is an improved unit this year that ran into a lack of synergy when the offense failed to match, and Syracuse is an aggressive unit that's going to pressure whichever player is under center for the Eagles' offense.

"It's an aggressive scheme," said Hafley. "They're different. They'll play a lot of three-down, they'll play over and under, but they'll run a lot of [schemes] up front. They'll blitz a lot of different people. They'll bring their safeties down tight, and they're very, very aggressive. I respect their nose guard. He's a throwback, tough, disruptive player."

BC's biggest issue this year has been a lack of cohesion between the different phases of the football game. The defense came up with an early stop on Notre Dame's first drive, but the offense turned the ball over and gave the Fighting Irish a short field that resulted in a quick touchdown. A couple of weeks earlier against Duke, BC lost its defensive tackling traction, and 31 points out of the offense wasn't enough to win the game. There have been issues along the way on special teams, either with a missed kick or a missed tackle on a runback or a shanked punt, and it always seems to come right as the team needs to flip field position.

All of those things happen over the course of a season, but the hope is that they occur at times when they won't offer a major blow to the team's chances of winning. Bad luck made them all happen in succession of one another. That's nobody's fault, but minimizing it on Sunday would go a long way to forcing game play and flow against the Syracuse phases.

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Question Box

Can BC prevent Syracuse from rediscovering what made it great?

What made Syracuse especially great during the team's 6-0 start became its downfall over the last five starts after Garrett Shrader suffered an injury against Notre Dame. He had been the offensive lynchpin for a team that lacked the same explosiveness in its running game, but after going 18-for-26 for 167 yards and a touchdown against Clemson, he saw limited duty against Notre Dame and Florida State because of lingering injuries. He missed the Pitt game entirely in between those two and returned to at least lead the Orange to 35 points and 477 yards against Wake Forest, but the five straight losses are a clear result of Dino Babers' offense losing its explosiveness.

This makes Saturday a huge game for both Shrader and the Orange offense. Falling to 6-6 would prevent Syracuse from having its pick of a bowl game and might relegate it to an early December trip to Boston for the Fenway Bowl. A win would put it in line for the Military Bowl that was BC's qualification last year, or a trip to the Pinstripe Bowl, which is essentially a home game for a team billed as New York's College Team.

How does BC balance playing veterans versus younger players?

The Eagles kind of answered this question earlier in the season when injuries forced them to play a number of younger players, and there isn't a huge likelihood that anyone suffering from major injury comes back to play the last game of the season. The biggest question remains centered on the quarterback position and if Phil Jurkovec is healthy enough to play one more game for the maroon and gold this season.

It's hard to argue this point after he missed the last three games, and anyone pointing to Emmett Morehead's struggles last week fail to recognize how the redshirt freshman rallied the team in the two prior games. Last week wasn't very good, but it's not an indicator of his skill or ceiling. Morehead remains the team's future, and he deserves a do-over opportunity to step on the field and leave one more positive impression into the offseason.

Speaking of last week, that was really his first taste of cold and snow. I know that sounds weird and probably gets a couple of eye rolls, but the California product has never played in those conditions before (I'd argue that few players actually played games in white-out conditions like what existed in the second half). He's obviously going to need to get used to playing in the cold, but the whole dynamic of playing quarterback changes when it's snowing or cold. Last week was a blowout, but I would argue that it was a necessary step in his development towards future accomplishments.

Can the Eagles jump into the offseason with a win?

Boston College went 4-7 in Tom O'Brien's first two seasons as head coach in the late 1990s, but the poor overall records overlook how the Eagles finished each season with a win worth mentioning. A 1997 win over Army damaged a Cadet win streak that included three wins in its last four games prior to the BC game, and it came two weeks after a 22-21 win over a Pittsburgh team that later won its last two games to qualify for a Liberty Bowl matchup with Southern Mississippi. One year later, the Eagles lost four games to nationally-ranked opponents as part of a six-game slide between September and November, but a penultimate week win over the Panthers helped jumpstart the team's climb into the national rankings in 1999 after BC opened 4-0 and 8-2 en route to the Insight.com Bowl.

The NC State win was a huge deal, but gaining a second victory before the end of the season can really push momentum into offseason workouts while tablesetting a tone for future success. There's no questioning how this year was a supreme disappointment, but playing free and opening up the playbook for the roster in the last game builds confidence for the future. BC is playing with house money in this game, and the most dangerous team on the schedule is the one with nothing to lose.

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Meteorology 101

It's going to rain this weekend, which is a real bummer for those of us who still haven't raked leaves or trimmed hedges, but the forecast is actually in really good shape for the last game at Alumni Stadium. The temperatures are going to push into the 50s, and splashing sunshine on Saturday should provide a window for darn good football weather between the wet weather expected on Friday and Sunday. Clouds will likely gather over the course of the night, but it doesn't look like the rain should arrive until well after the lights turn out on another season of Boston College football.

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BC-Syracuse X Factor

Sean Tucker

Tucker established himself as one of the best running backs in college football last year when he gained just under 1,500 yards and scored 12 touchdowns for a Syracuse offense historically built around a quarterback's ability to throw quick passes out of no huddle, go-fast spread sets. He ripped Ohio University for 181 yards in his first appearance of the season last year, and only three opponents held him under the 100-yard mark before the year ended.

His high water mark came when he hit 200 yards against BC, but he hasn't been the same runner since that game. He only hit 100 yards once in the three games after he ripped the Eagles' defense, and his per-carry average slipped to 2.2 yards per carry for the Orange's season finale against Pittsburgh. Defenses started keying on him more frequently this year, and coupled with Garrett Shrader's emergence, Tucker enters Saturday needing 65 yards to eclipse the 1,000-yard mark.

He did sustain an injury this year during a 200-yard game against Wagner that had shortened second-half quarters due to an extreme Syracuse blowout, but Tucker wasn't exactly right before that game happened. Purdue and Virginia held him to under three yards per carry, and in the aftermath of the injury, he's been used more sparingly in comparison to his trajectory after last season. It's been problematic at best for the Syracuse offense to watch him jam into stacked box after stacked box, and it's reminiscent of how defenses played against AJ Dillon, though the exception for Dillon was that he still averaged more than four yards per carry with his offensive line.

Tucker needs a big game on Saturday to help determine what happens in the offseason. He hasn't made a decision about the NFL Draft yet, but his stock needs a big game to boost his profile if he's going to leave for the professional ranks when the season ends.

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Around College Football

Welcome to Rivalry Week or, as I call it, the best week in college football.

Almost everyone in college football has that one opponent that they just plain hate. The matchup is critically important to both programs' history, and both schools acknowledge that they need this game on the schedule every year. Trophies are at stake, but the pride and knowledge that comes with beating this team is the most important piece of the entire puzzle.

This year carries some additional significance for several of the matchups, and it really begins and ends with the Michigan-Ohio State matchup between the second-ranked Wolverines and the third-ranked Buckeyes. The winner plays next week in the Big Ten Championship, while the loser likely has to watch its opponent play in the College Football Playoff unless something weird happens. It's the second straight year where both teams are in the top-5 for the matchup, and it's arguably the most important meeting since No. 1 Ohio State beat No. 2 Michigan, 42-39, in the 2006 "Game of the Century." I would argue that this game is a dress rehearsal for the national tournament and that the losing side might actually advance to the College Football Playoff without playing for a conference championship, but that's a debate for another time.

That game is where Saturday starts…I'll repeat that again: That game is where Saturday STARTS. It's scheduled opposite the Palmetto Bowl between No. 8 Clemson and South Carolina and the Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate game between No. 1 Georgia and Georgia Tech and continues a weekend built around these historic matchups. In the mid-afternoon, No. 25 Louisville plays Kentucky and No. 9 Oregon plays No. 21 Oregon State, with the latter possibly deciding the Pac-12 Championship participants and a possible shot at the College Football Playoff for the Ducks. Purdue also plays Indiana at 3:30 p.m. in a game that could determine the Big Ten Championship's second participant, since there's a possibility that the Big Ten West Division ends in a four-way tie between the Boilermakers and Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota.

The CFP itself hangs in the balance throughout the day, and in the night hours, No. 6 USC plays No. 15 Notre Dame with a chance to finally put the Pac-12 back in the postseason championship picture. It's been kind of a lost conference through the years, but the Trojans have a chance to win a title before bolting for the Big Ten. The Big 12, meanwhile, has the inside track to the fourth spot in the playoff unless something weird happens to No. 4 Texas Christian over the next couple of weeks.

All of that leads to the night games between Kansas and Kansas State and the late-night Apple Cup between Washington and Washington State.

In the ACC, Clemson and North Carolina are bound for Charlotte's championship game next week, but the rest of the bowl seeds are entirely up for grabs. Miami needs to beat Pittsburgh this week at home to become bowl eligible, and Syracuse needs to defeat BC to retain hope of a better bowl game after losing five straight games following the team's 6-0 start. A huge chunk of teams are in the seven-win or eight-win range, which is going to make it interesting for bowl organizers to figure out which team goes to which game in the absence of a tiered system.

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Dan's Non-Sports Observation of the Week

Thanksgiving is easily my favorite holiday for a number of reasons, but this year hit differently with the arrival of my second daughter. I've talked about her a lot this year, largely because it's the most important and biggest thing going on in my world, and I hope that my stories provided at least some levity or entertainment to a weekly series based around football. I can honestly point to becoming a parent as the most humbling part of my life, and even as I type this up, I can hear my older daughter flipping out in her crib because nobody will come pick her up and feed her breakfast. Since it's the last week of the season, though, I figured it was worth sharing one more story about my kids because it really hit home about the meaning of the holiday.

My wife and I admittedly weren't sure if our older daughter would fully understand the concept of having a sibling. Our children are 18 months apart, and we admittedly had no idea how our older child would react to having a younger sister when she'd been the star of the show for the past year-and-a-half. We were genuinely afraid of her thinking her sister was a toy, and we expected her to treat the baby like a football because most toys usually get fired into the ether after she gets tired of playing with them.

Now that we're two months into the game, I can objectively state that the thought underestimated our daughter's capacity for empathy and love. It took her a minute or two, but she fully grasps the concept of a baby sister and how to gently treat her. She cries when the baby cries, and the other day, as the baby fussed, our daughter marched herself over and started patting her sister, as if she wanted to calm her down.

It was a really emotional moment for a parent, and I know there will be more times when she gets frustrated and throws a plush that hits her sister in the head (this was a thing that happened). But those moments of family togetherness is something my wife and I really wanted when we heard we would have a second child. It's what we fight to establish every day, and seeing it play out like that made me thankful for the life we've been blessed to have.

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Pregame Quote and Prediction

Here's to the nights we felt alive. Here's to the tears you knew you'd cry. Here's to goodbye, tomorrow's gonna come too soon -Eve 6

Eve 6 released this song as a single in March, 2001 and immediately became the background theme for every high school's graduation season. Its melancholy tone and sentimental lyrics tugged at the heartstrings of kids who grew up at the turn of the century and remained a staple of prom seasons until the alt-rock, indie sounds of the early decade disappeared in the middle and later years of the century's first decade.

I admittedly loved and hated the song because it felt cliche to feel that bad about something ending, but getting older made me realize how living in the moment (Lifehouse, not Eve 6, for those who got the Easter Egg reference) is critically important to people who don't have the same real world bills or responsibilities. Graduating from college turns even the most impressive physical athlete into someone who is just like the rest of us, and it happens in the blink of an eye over the span of three hours when a physical specimen who eats, sleeps, trains and studies on a schedule ends the game and doesn't have a meeting or a recovery session waiting for them on Sunday.

Senior Day is an important reminder about finalities. Time is undefeated, and everyone's career has to end at some point. It's a melancholy feeling, regardless of the age or level where it happens, but I hope the athletes have an opportunity to soak the atmosphere and moment into their bones on Saturday night. It's their last chance to wear the uniform before they join hundreds of former athletes as Boston College alumni. For their families, their friends, and their own selves, that's something the rest of us who didn't play a sport at that level understand, and it's worthy of congratulations, regardless of the outcome on the scoreboard.

Boston College and Syracuse kick off on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. from Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Television coverage is available through the ACC's Regional Sports Network coverage, with local clearances in Massachusetts on NESN. Radio broadcast is also available through the BC Learfield IMG Sports Network, which is on local radio in Boston via WEEI 93.7 FM with satellite options available via Sirius XM channel 136 and App channel 964.

Players Mentioned

Phil Jurkovec

Emmett Morehead

Marcus Valdez

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