O-Line Convoy Keeps On Truckin'

Kye Robichaux's second touchdown of Saturday's 21-14 win over Connecticut was the kind of run every running back dreams about. He chugged up the middle between guards Kyle Hergel and Christian Mahogany, but nobody so much as breathed on his uniform for the entirety of the 13 yards he covered. Defensive tackle Jelanie Stafford was the same 300-pound behemoth who dragged a first-quarter offensive touchdown for the Huskies, but center Drew Kendall pancaked him far enough out of the play that the hole doubled in size. Would-be tackler Jackson Mitchell was the next logical option for UConn, but Hergel wiped him far enough out of the play that he landed in a second zip code.

Only a couple of token defensive backs made an attempt at grabbing Robichaux, but neither Noah Plack, Mumu Bin-Wahad or Lee Molette had any shot at tackling him before the goal line. So when he cruised into the end zone and dropped the ball to send a kiss to the heavens, the 220-pound freight train had enough space to step behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler if he wanted.

"The biggest key, I would say, was getting meshed with the offensive line," he said with a smile after the game. "That o-line does an amazing job, and they make everything easy for me, so all I really have to do is go [on the field] and execute."

To anyone watching the game in its entirety, that one play represented UConn's recurrent bad dream against an angry and motivated offensive line. A defense averaging 150 yards per game instead surrendered 246 yards and let a resurgent BC backfield run roughshod over Alumni Stadium for its fourth consecutive win. The dream-come-true for the old school Eagle, the team kept its execution levels at all-time highs thanks to an offensive line that's forcing teams to fear a unit averaging 270 yards on the ground over that stretch.

"They're athletic guys," said head coach Jeff Hafley in his postgame remarks. "When you have guards that can pull like Kyle [Hergel] and Christian [Mahogany], and you have a center [in Drew Kendall] who can do the same thing, you have some really athletic guys who can move."

UConn's defense built an improved reputation around its ability to stop an opposing running game despite its one-win record entering Saturday, and both FIU and Duke failed to gain 100 yards before Utah State and Rice barely cracked the century plateau. South Florida broke through for 200-plus yards in the game prior to the Eagles, but the prevailing expectation centered on quarterback Thomas Castellanos' ability to spread the ball to different receivers against a passing defense ranked well into the lower third of the football bowl subdivision.

BC instead chugged forward behind its line, and the running game steadily broke through the Huskies' front four by alternating between Robichaux's blast runs and some steady and quick work on the outside. The Eagles were able to average over five yards per carry with Robichaux gaining 42 yards on six carries in the quarter, and Castellanos posted a 17-yard run in addition to a couple of well-placed scampers around the end of a stacked line.

"It wasn't just a lot of zone schemes," Hafley said. "There were a lot of gap schemes, and there were plays where we got out on the perimeter by tossing the ball out there. Guys worked really hard, and they gelled as a group and continued to get better."

The steady improvements were obvious from the jump, and BC changed some of its scheme to get some of its blockers out into mismatches in space. Christian Mahogany's sprint from left to right barreled through linebackers and safeties on the edge from the first drive, and Hergel added pulls from right to left against the weak side's fourth or fifth rusher.

UConn had been placing a defensive tackle in the nose position, but freeing the guards for movement forced the Huskies to abandon their scheme by shifting the defensive tackles over to the guard gaps. They occasionally shifted to a three-man front, but spreading players out to prevent against the different holes allowed Kendall to burst into the second level and isolate a downhill runner against secondary tacklers who couldn't stop his forward momentum.

The result left linebackers Tui Faumuina-Brown and Jackson Mitchell atop the team's tackle charts with safety Durante Jones with limited tackles-for-loss and the vast majority of takedowns requiring assisted tacklers. There were minimal solo tackles up the middle or in the secondary, and the Eagles' runners finished the game with Robichaux breaking the century mark and Alex Broome averaging well over five yards per carry on his 15-touch day.

"It's fun to see them get out and run," Broome laughed. "We have athletic guys, and they can get out there, so it's fun to see them run the pools and whatever they're trying to do. But I just love seeing gratifying that work because they work hard in the trenches, and not everybody's built for that. They are, and they get the job done."

BC had a monster day up front, and the continued steps forward are obvious with each passing week. Saturday was the seventh time in eight games that the Eagles' starting combination began a game together, and the only switch over the course of the season was when Jack Conley, one of the most experienced players on the team, started the Army game in place of Ozzy Trapilo.

His performance in that game forced Jeff Hafley and his coaches to find a way to incorporate him back into the fold, and after BC ran formations of extra linemen against Georgia Tech, Conley swapped his customary No. 67 for a tight end's No. 44 on Saturday afternoon. He was allowed to therefore play as a sixth offensive lineman without checking into the game as an eligible receiver, but while he was technically a receiver, keeping him on the line further allowed Trapilo to step out into the convoy while his teammate handled the edge rush.

"We were short-handed at tight end," Hafley said. "George [Takacs] was out, and we wanted Jack to play that position, which meant we put an eligible number on him. They had to cover him because of the threat of a pass because Jack's a really good athlete. That's another guy that we're proud of because he was a starter in every game for us last year, but he became a backup after we brought in some guys. He's another guy that in this world of college football, he could have left and been on his own, but he didn't. He stuck through, and now he's playing a ton of football. He's a really good player, and he's a guy that I'm really proud of. I'm really proud of that offensive line. We've run the ball really well."

BC is back in action on Friday night when the Eagles head to New York to renew their rivalry with the Syracuse Orange. Game time is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. and can be seen on national television via ESPN2.

Players Mentioned

Alex Broome

Thomas Castellanos

Jack Conley

Kyle Hergel

Drew Kendall

Christian Mahogany

Kye Robichaux

Ozzy Trapilo

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