Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Joe Sullivan
The Replay: No. 3 Florida State
September 17, 2023 | Football, #ForBoston Files
The Red Bandanna Game restored BC's pride and inserted the Eagles back into this season's conversation.
The run-up to Saturday's matchup against Florida State gave Boston College no shot of even hanging with the third-ranked Seminoles. Popular belief assured the Eagles of a blowout loss, and even wider opinions thought BC didn't even belong on the same field as a national championship contender. The team had no shot of even competing, and the only question remaining at kickoff asked if FSU would run away in the first quarter or later in the first half.
Nobody believed in BC, but the Eagles flipped the college football script on its head by standing and punching with a top-ranked team in the country. They delivered body blows and picked themselves off the canvas after FSU returned knockdown favors, and they set a tone for the rest of the season by finally answering questions about their internal fortitude and ability to compete with the best in the land.
BC lost, 31-29, but the split decision inserted levels of doubt into the national championship conversation. It wasn't a technical knockout and wasn't an early-round destruction, and the unquestionable momentum generated by the restoration of the Eagles' pride rippled an electric mana through Alumni Stadium at a time when the team might have just needed it most.
"We didn't come into this game to be close with them," said head coach Jeff Hafley. "We came to win the game. I thought we had a really good plan. We wanted to win time of possession, which is why we kind of played the way we did. I was going to be very aggressive, and maybe I was too aggressive on fourth down early in the game, but it worked out for us. I felt good going into halftime, and then they jumped on us quickly, but we fought back. We fought all the way back…I'm really proud of our guys."
Hafley's emotion spoke volumes about how BC executed a game plan with its inspired play over and first and last quarter-plus of Saturday's game. The signature toughness, at times lacking in the first two games, returned with a matched intensity against the flapping winds of an off-shore hurricane, and the Eagles punched FSU right in the mouth on its first drive of the game when quarterback Thomas Castellanos hit Lewis Bond for a 32-yard catch-and-run touchdown across the field.
FSU responded with a field goal, but the offensive wizardry continued on the next drive when Castellanos produced a 29-yard rush for a first down on 3rd-and-8 from deep in his own zone. Kye Robichaux had previously bashed a fourth-down conversion from the BC red zone, and as the drive bled into the second quarter, it became evident how the Eagles intended to use time-of-possession to its advantage.
"Our line did a really good job," Hafley said. "I thought the protection was really good. They gave [Castellanos] time, but he extended some with his feet and hit some plays downfield. I thought we caught the ball much, much better, and our receivers broke tackles and made plays with their feet. We hit some big runs."
"We knew they were going to pressure us," Castellanos said. "They have a good front [on the defensive line], and we knew those guys were going to be coming. Just seeing that and being patient and waiting for holes to open up in the passing game, I used that to my advantage."
The defense, meanwhile, gambled on its physicality against an offense that shredded its first two opponents by moving to a single-high safety with multiple defensive backs at the line of scrimmage. An incorporated communication shifted those players opposite receivers or played them off-line to allow for physical play at the line, and secondary aspects slid into place when the running game attempted to get wide.
"If you had the ball for 34 minutes, [FSU] was 3-10 [under Mike Norvell]," Hafley said, "and if you didn't, they haven't lost. We held the ball for 33:50. I wanted to take as much clock as we could off the field, and there were a variety of ways that we did that. We pressed the wideouts, which teams hadn't done against them. They have big guys, and if you play them off, they take advantage of you, so I called out the corners in the team meeting on Tuesday and said we were going to press them. So [our corners] had to play great and get their hands on guys like that to make them stop and start their feet [to make them] not accelerate as fast."
Executing the scheme brought BC back from a mid-game deficit built by FSU's ability to rebound from the early-quarter rush. The Eagles had, at that point, delivered a couple of nice shots to the Seminoles, but the national championship contenders understood how to counterpunch in those moments. They forced mistakes and used their own bend-don't-break attitude to sit on an inevitable mistake they knew they could cause, and the parting seas around halftime broke the game open when FSU scored twice at the start of the third quarter after taking a 17-10 lead on its penultimate possession in the second.
A record number of BC penalties clearly helped, but the Noles also finally got to Castellanos when they blitzed him off the edges on his first play of the second quarter. The all-out attack rushed him backwards, and he tried to get rid of the ball by throwing off his back foot. The result was a floated ball into double coverage, to which linebacker DJ Lundy made the easy pick before later rushing an old-fashioned first-and-beef goal line run up the middle for a 31-10 advantage.
"This game was a little different," Hafley said. "It wasn't post-snap personal fouls that got me really hot. I wanted to take as much clock as we could, and we were doing stuff early in the game. We were staying in the huddle as long as we could and then kind of ran up to the line to take a lot of clock, so this week's [penalties] were operationally between the quarterback and the offensive line with it being loud. There were other issues that I tried to explain to the refs, but I'm not sure that helped. We cleaned it up in the second half, but it was just young guys jumping. We didn't have the false starts. We didn't have the dumb fouls."
A penalty ended BC's comeback bid, but greater truth revealed plenty about the Eagles' future. Their second-half and fourth-quarter comeback included trick plays and momentum shifts that sent shivers through the Florida State sideline. They outgained a team with 1,000-plus yards in its first two games by slamming 457 yards into the teeth of their defense. They opened the playbook and created a blueprint capable of negating the Seminoles' overall team speed, and they played rugged, tough, physical defense that finished violent, clean tackles.
Thomas Castellanos became the 22nd quarterback since 1996 to finish with at least 305 yards passing and 95 yards rushing against a top-25 opponent, and his rushing total was the most since Patrick Towles gained 75 yards against Syracuse in 2016. His 644 yards passing through three games are the third-most by a BC quarterback since 1981, and he's one of three quarterbacks in program history to hit 600-plus yards with at least five touchdowns in his first three games.
Lewis Bond broke open for 80 yards and a deep, chunk play for a touchdown, and Dino Tomlin later recorded a 52-yard reception that nearly broke the FSU secondary. Linebacker Kam Arnold led the team with nine tackles, a number tied with safety John Pupel, while his first half tackle of an FSU running back sent shockwaves through both sidelines.
"There were holes opening up for me," Arnold said, "and that created one-on-one matchups. That's every linebacker's dream to get a shot that's just me at him to make that big collision."
The penalties need correction, but one thing was clear on Saturday night: pride had been restored to the BC program, and if the Eagles consistently play like they did on Saturday, wins will come, as Hafley promised after last week's game against Holy Cross.
"That is a really good football team," he said, "and they could have run away with this game, which is what they've done [this year]. That team just totally took over the second half against LSU, and against everybody else they played, they scored 35 points per game. I'm hurt. I'm upset for the guys, but I'm really proud of this. I'm proud of this group right now."
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Nobody believed in BC, but the Eagles flipped the college football script on its head by standing and punching with a top-ranked team in the country. They delivered body blows and picked themselves off the canvas after FSU returned knockdown favors, and they set a tone for the rest of the season by finally answering questions about their internal fortitude and ability to compete with the best in the land.
BC lost, 31-29, but the split decision inserted levels of doubt into the national championship conversation. It wasn't a technical knockout and wasn't an early-round destruction, and the unquestionable momentum generated by the restoration of the Eagles' pride rippled an electric mana through Alumni Stadium at a time when the team might have just needed it most.
"We didn't come into this game to be close with them," said head coach Jeff Hafley. "We came to win the game. I thought we had a really good plan. We wanted to win time of possession, which is why we kind of played the way we did. I was going to be very aggressive, and maybe I was too aggressive on fourth down early in the game, but it worked out for us. I felt good going into halftime, and then they jumped on us quickly, but we fought back. We fought all the way back…I'm really proud of our guys."
Hafley's emotion spoke volumes about how BC executed a game plan with its inspired play over and first and last quarter-plus of Saturday's game. The signature toughness, at times lacking in the first two games, returned with a matched intensity against the flapping winds of an off-shore hurricane, and the Eagles punched FSU right in the mouth on its first drive of the game when quarterback Thomas Castellanos hit Lewis Bond for a 32-yard catch-and-run touchdown across the field.
FSU responded with a field goal, but the offensive wizardry continued on the next drive when Castellanos produced a 29-yard rush for a first down on 3rd-and-8 from deep in his own zone. Kye Robichaux had previously bashed a fourth-down conversion from the BC red zone, and as the drive bled into the second quarter, it became evident how the Eagles intended to use time-of-possession to its advantage.
"Our line did a really good job," Hafley said. "I thought the protection was really good. They gave [Castellanos] time, but he extended some with his feet and hit some plays downfield. I thought we caught the ball much, much better, and our receivers broke tackles and made plays with their feet. We hit some big runs."
"We knew they were going to pressure us," Castellanos said. "They have a good front [on the defensive line], and we knew those guys were going to be coming. Just seeing that and being patient and waiting for holes to open up in the passing game, I used that to my advantage."
The defense, meanwhile, gambled on its physicality against an offense that shredded its first two opponents by moving to a single-high safety with multiple defensive backs at the line of scrimmage. An incorporated communication shifted those players opposite receivers or played them off-line to allow for physical play at the line, and secondary aspects slid into place when the running game attempted to get wide.
"If you had the ball for 34 minutes, [FSU] was 3-10 [under Mike Norvell]," Hafley said, "and if you didn't, they haven't lost. We held the ball for 33:50. I wanted to take as much clock as we could off the field, and there were a variety of ways that we did that. We pressed the wideouts, which teams hadn't done against them. They have big guys, and if you play them off, they take advantage of you, so I called out the corners in the team meeting on Tuesday and said we were going to press them. So [our corners] had to play great and get their hands on guys like that to make them stop and start their feet [to make them] not accelerate as fast."
Executing the scheme brought BC back from a mid-game deficit built by FSU's ability to rebound from the early-quarter rush. The Eagles had, at that point, delivered a couple of nice shots to the Seminoles, but the national championship contenders understood how to counterpunch in those moments. They forced mistakes and used their own bend-don't-break attitude to sit on an inevitable mistake they knew they could cause, and the parting seas around halftime broke the game open when FSU scored twice at the start of the third quarter after taking a 17-10 lead on its penultimate possession in the second.
A record number of BC penalties clearly helped, but the Noles also finally got to Castellanos when they blitzed him off the edges on his first play of the second quarter. The all-out attack rushed him backwards, and he tried to get rid of the ball by throwing off his back foot. The result was a floated ball into double coverage, to which linebacker DJ Lundy made the easy pick before later rushing an old-fashioned first-and-beef goal line run up the middle for a 31-10 advantage.
"This game was a little different," Hafley said. "It wasn't post-snap personal fouls that got me really hot. I wanted to take as much clock as we could, and we were doing stuff early in the game. We were staying in the huddle as long as we could and then kind of ran up to the line to take a lot of clock, so this week's [penalties] were operationally between the quarterback and the offensive line with it being loud. There were other issues that I tried to explain to the refs, but I'm not sure that helped. We cleaned it up in the second half, but it was just young guys jumping. We didn't have the false starts. We didn't have the dumb fouls."
A penalty ended BC's comeback bid, but greater truth revealed plenty about the Eagles' future. Their second-half and fourth-quarter comeback included trick plays and momentum shifts that sent shivers through the Florida State sideline. They outgained a team with 1,000-plus yards in its first two games by slamming 457 yards into the teeth of their defense. They opened the playbook and created a blueprint capable of negating the Seminoles' overall team speed, and they played rugged, tough, physical defense that finished violent, clean tackles.
Thomas Castellanos became the 22nd quarterback since 1996 to finish with at least 305 yards passing and 95 yards rushing against a top-25 opponent, and his rushing total was the most since Patrick Towles gained 75 yards against Syracuse in 2016. His 644 yards passing through three games are the third-most by a BC quarterback since 1981, and he's one of three quarterbacks in program history to hit 600-plus yards with at least five touchdowns in his first three games.
Lewis Bond broke open for 80 yards and a deep, chunk play for a touchdown, and Dino Tomlin later recorded a 52-yard reception that nearly broke the FSU secondary. Linebacker Kam Arnold led the team with nine tackles, a number tied with safety John Pupel, while his first half tackle of an FSU running back sent shockwaves through both sidelines.
"There were holes opening up for me," Arnold said, "and that created one-on-one matchups. That's every linebacker's dream to get a shot that's just me at him to make that big collision."
The penalties need correction, but one thing was clear on Saturday night: pride had been restored to the BC program, and if the Eagles consistently play like they did on Saturday, wins will come, as Hafley promised after last week's game against Holy Cross.
"That is a really good football team," he said, "and they could have run away with this game, which is what they've done [this year]. That team just totally took over the second half against LSU, and against everybody else they played, they scored 35 points per game. I'm hurt. I'm upset for the guys, but I'm really proud of this. I'm proud of this group right now."
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