The Replay: BC at Virginia Tech

The first half of the Boston College-Virginia Tech game is one the Eagles would like to have back. The first first down to their credit came late in the second quarter, the eighth drive of the game, leading to an eventual field goal to get on the scoreboard. For the first two quarter, BC no surge existed at the point of attack, and quarterback Phil Jurkovec found himself under duress against a stout Virginia Tech defensive front.

Nothing clicked, but with time running low, the offense finally found some footing after springing receiver Zay Flowers for his first touches of the half. The creative play calls specifically opened opportunities after he spent most of the first two quarters blanketed in coverage, and the rest of the offense fell in line as the first first down gradually turned into plus yardage. A pass interference call against Dax Hollifield added more yardage, and after a second flag on the Hokies, the Eagles found themselves on the board with their first points of the game.

It was the first sign of positive news to that point, but after halftime, the drive highlighted how the margin of error between advantageous drives and disappointing finishes boiled down to little details and minutiae that doesn't always rear its head on film. An inch of a missed block or a step in the wrong direction here or there turned a grudge match battle into death by papercuts as BC dropped to 0-2 on the season with a 27-10 loss on Saturday night.

"There's a lot of little things," said head coach Jeff Hafley. "I mean, we're not playing good enough. We're not coaching good enough. We had 150 yards on offense, and we need to score points. We have to find ways to score points. They had [about] 280 yards on 70 plays, but we got to move the ball. We have to score touchdowns."

Identifying the little things is difficult, but finding them offers windows into how the first two games unfolded. In the first quarter, for example, running back Keshawn King burst through an open hole for a 65-yard run to daylight to push the game to a three-score Virginia Tech advantage. BC lost a single-high defensive back when Elijah Jones crept to the side of the line of scrimmage, but playing outside the tight end position offered perfect positioning for an off-tackle run, not the off-guard that King wound up running. With a pull block coming across the line, King ran into a hole as an offensive lineman engaged linebacker Vinny DePalma. The mismatch removed tight end Nick Gallo, who misdirected to the other side of the line, and blasted open a hole that allowed him to hit a second level devoid of Jones' usual presence.

"Schematically, they just had a good play against us," said linebacker Kam Arnold. "There wasn't much we could do. It was just schematically a good play by [Virginia Tech]."

None of it was bad design or even execution by the Eagles, but those factoids just kept mounting until they broke the team's comeback in the second half. Phil Jurkovec had thrown a great touchdown pass to Jaden Williams, but Virginia Tech's rebound score essentially sealed what the Eagles comeback sought to deny. In the aftermath, had there not been the busted big play or even the interception on the second play of the first quarter, the game story would have given BC a lead, but because those plays occurred, it resulted in an insurmountable advantage as the late minutes bore forward.

That said, finding corrections isn't always as straightforward as making an adjustment here or there. BC knew and understood its scheme on Saturday and executed plays that it trusted both in practice and on film. Jurkovec's interception, for example, was on a pre-snap read that he liked, and he believed he could throw the pass into a place that worked for Williams. He still saw the potential for at least a penalty when his receiver got jammed, but it didn't work out because a detail - either the pass, the jam, the lack of a penalty he anticipated - broke the opposite way.

"[It was] a backside picture look," Jurkovec said. "You really have to love it. If not, you read the progression to the field, and we had a great look. I thought [Williams] would run the fade later in the game, and basically the same thing happened. On the backside, he catches the touchdown on that foot on that type of player, so I thought it was a great look. I wanted to take it, and that's pretty much it. Pre-snap, I [said] I'm taking this, and post-snap, I saw him get jammed a little bit. I thought to give him a chance, let him go make a play on the ball. The way he was getting jammed, I thought maybe we'd get a penalty, but I left the ball a little too much inside."

Most of this can be linked back to BC's inexperience running into headstrong opponents to start the season. The term itself - inexperience, youth, whatever anyone wants to call it - doesn't always have to mean a lack of games, and in this instance, it relates more to a team finding its footing while developing new chemistry. Every team is inexperienced in that regard, especially early in the season, but where Rutgers struggled until the bitter end to overcome growing pains in its first game against BC, Virginia Tech lost to Old Dominion before beating the Eagles on Saturday night.

As a result, BC entered this week with questions, but Hafley refused to point fingers after the loss at any one area because dwelling on the loss, it felt, called back to a number of "yeah-but" scenarios. Turning the page, or at least starting that process, allowed the sting of a second consecutive loss to settle into his team, and even in his closing remarks, the head coach reset the mission moving forward. It couldn't have resonated any clearer to him, and to the coaches and players who left everything they had on the field, the downtrodden nature of the first two games still has plenty of time for erasure if they're able to close ranks and serve reminders as to what Boston College football is all about.

"This isn't, 'oh look at the offense or look at the defense,'" Hafley said. "This isn't offensive coaches versus defensive coaches. The defense had good stuff, and I thought they fought all the way to the end. But when it became a one-possession game, we also could have made plays to get the ball back. I believe the defense is good enough to do that, so this is a team loss.

"We're all in this together," he said. "When things get really hard, you either get tighter as a team and figure it out, or you go in the opposite direction. That's what I told them. The guys will fight. They're going through a tough time right now, [but] we have a lot of football left to play, and we're going to go out and work. We are going to continue to get better, and that's exactly what I told them. I don't think this group is going to lay it down. They thought things were really hard in that first half, and they fought and went into the locker room [after scoring before halftime]. They were in a good place and came out swinging, but it was just too little, too late.

"There's a lot of football left, and by no means is anybody going to give up."

Players Mentioned

Kam Arnold

Vinny DePalma

Zay Flowers

Elijah Jones

Phil Jurkovec

Jaden Williams

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