The Replay: Louisville
September 24, 2023 | Football, #ForBoston Files
The Eagles dropped one to Louisville on Saturday.
The first quarter of Boston College's 56-28 loss to Louisville on Saturday started off looking like a possible shootout at football's version of the OK Corral. The Cardinals had forced the Eagles to receive the opening kickoff by deferring their coin toss win to the second half, and BC responded by sending its offense over midfield with a 30-yard drive in less than three minutes.
Quarterback Thomas Castellanos had made defenders miss with a wild nine-yard run on the Eagles' second play, and the 21 yards gained between his run and Kye Robichaux's 12-yard run on the first play had the Cardinals' defenders flummoxed by a quick-snap, no-huddle scheme. Robichaux later ran for six yards before a hurried play to Ryan O'Keefe established fourth-and-short, a situation BC dominated last week against Florida State.
Louisville was on its heels, and not even Quincy Riley's tackle on Robichaux's conversion run up the middle stopped BC's energy. It forced third-and-long when Neto Okpala gave quarterback Jack Plummer an uncontested sack, and it, too, got off the field quickly after Ahmari Bruce-Higgins' 10-yard catch fell well short of the sticks. The offense readied itself for another shot, and an old fashioned slugfest felt ready to emerge.
The only thing capable of stopping it was the one yellow flag sitting on Louisville's 40-yard line, and the officials' conference confirmed the one thing capable of zapping all of the Eagles' momentum: a 15-yard facemask penalty, the Achilles' heel from the first three games, gave the Cardinals a fresh set of downs.
Two plays later, Jawhar Jordan sprung a 33-yard touchdown run for daylight. Louisville was off and running, and despite everything the Eagles' brought to the table, a 56-28 loss emerged and dropped BC to 1-3 on the season.
"We felt really flat early in the game," said head coach Jeff Hafley. "It was kind of like we were all waiting for somebody else to make a play…I felt we were flat, and I felt we lacked energy. Just very uncharacteristic on defense, and I haven't seen us play like that since [I've] been here."
Saturday's loss is the kind of game that cuts a clear divide through the perception of how BC played. Louisville scored touchdowns on its first seven drives and dropped the first 50-point outcome on the Eagles since Lamar Jackson single-handedly produced seven scores in the Cardinals' 52-7 rout in a 2016 game at Alumni Stadium. The Cardinals didn't punt until their second drive of the third quarter, and the scoreboard offered them three different lopsided leads - 28-0, 35-7 and 49-14 - before the Eagles moved out of first gear.
Ten different chunk plays boosted Louisville's average offense to over nine yards per play, and the Cardinals finished with 582 yards of total offense while running 10 less plays than BC. Four of those big plays resulted in touchdowns specifically for Plummer, who threw a 75-yard score to Jordan on the first play of the third quarter and later completed a 55-yard bomb to Bruce-Higgins for his second breakout touchdown.
"He's thrown for over 3,000 yards at two different places," Hafley said. "He's played a lot of football. They attacked downfield on one-on-ones, and their receivers and him connected and made some big plays. He's a good player, and he played a really good game. I think he had a great day, threw some great balls and managed the game really well.
Louisville twice hit big plays at the start of the third quarter and sandwiched house calls around its first three-and-out, but BC also never really let the Cardinals coast through the game. The early struggles aside, the Eagles produced consecutive 75-yard scoring drives with a fast-paced offense, and the half ended with roughly six minutes of scoring offense for a unit that clicked after two three-and-outs and the turnover-on-downs.
The cadence issues between Castellanos and the offensive line were gone, and the only penalties beyond a second quarter false start centered around a holding call and a delay of game on a drive during which the offense went deep into the red zone. Castellanos and Ryan O'Keefe rendered the holding call moot with a 38-yard pass to the Cardinals' 16-yard line, but the delay of game pushed the Eagles far enough backwards to fail a 4th-and-16 with about 5:40 remaining in the third quarter.
It wasn't blemish-free, but Castellanos finished with 265 yards passing and another net-49 yards rushing, while accounting for four different touchdowns. He didn't have an interception, and both O'Keefe and Joe Griffin finished with five catches for a combined 162 yards and a score. Lewis Bond added 71 yards on four receptions and two scores, and four different pass catchers had chunk plays of 20 yards or more despite dealing with several drops throughout the game that ultimately rang in everyone's ears by the end of the game.
"For Tommy, as far as how his throws went, I thought he did really well," O'Keefe said. "The team needed to rally behind better, and we needed to make more plays down on the field. We had a couple of drops that shouldn't have been dropped, and at the end of the day, it's a team effort, and we didn't do what we should've done."
It's weird to think positively about a 28-point loss that included a poor defensive showing, but it's also worth noting the aberration of this type of game. BC hadn't allowed 50-points in a game in four years, and the two 50-point games scored by Clemson and Louisville during the 2016 season were the first burgers allowed since 2012's loss to Florida State, which itself had been the first 50-point game allowed by the program since a Thanksgiving weekend loss to Miami during the 2000 season. Simply put, Saturday was a bad day for a defense that only allowed 500 yards of total offense once last year.
The offense didn't let Louisville off its hook, and the game didn't feel out of reach until the twin scores around the halftime break. The two scores by Castellanos - the 39-yard rush and the 30-yard pass to O'Keefe - kept the Eagles within three-score deficits, and it felt like one stop could've turned momentum. The two scores around the half ended that by extending the lead to 35 points, but it's hard not to imagine how fixing those stops could have changed the tenor of a matchup that finished at the wire with combined point totals well into the 70s and 80s on three separate occasions since Jackson's Heisman moment game.
None of that matters, naturally, because the game went into the loss column, but how BC fixes its mistakes moving forward ultimately dictates the rest of the season. To a degree, there's no difference between a one-point loss and a blowout loss because they enter the record and history books the same way, but the duality and contrast of a bad defensive day and a good offensive day are worth noting because, like the score, that's an aberration to a coaching staff that felt excited about its game plan and the preparation after the battle against FSU.
"I don't see [the spiraling] from this team," Hafley said. "Just listening to them at halftime and listening to them at the end, I don't see that happening. It's my job to make sure that it doesn't. So we have to get back to work and think about fixing things and seeing what we need to do."
Quarterback Thomas Castellanos had made defenders miss with a wild nine-yard run on the Eagles' second play, and the 21 yards gained between his run and Kye Robichaux's 12-yard run on the first play had the Cardinals' defenders flummoxed by a quick-snap, no-huddle scheme. Robichaux later ran for six yards before a hurried play to Ryan O'Keefe established fourth-and-short, a situation BC dominated last week against Florida State.
Louisville was on its heels, and not even Quincy Riley's tackle on Robichaux's conversion run up the middle stopped BC's energy. It forced third-and-long when Neto Okpala gave quarterback Jack Plummer an uncontested sack, and it, too, got off the field quickly after Ahmari Bruce-Higgins' 10-yard catch fell well short of the sticks. The offense readied itself for another shot, and an old fashioned slugfest felt ready to emerge.
The only thing capable of stopping it was the one yellow flag sitting on Louisville's 40-yard line, and the officials' conference confirmed the one thing capable of zapping all of the Eagles' momentum: a 15-yard facemask penalty, the Achilles' heel from the first three games, gave the Cardinals a fresh set of downs.
Two plays later, Jawhar Jordan sprung a 33-yard touchdown run for daylight. Louisville was off and running, and despite everything the Eagles' brought to the table, a 56-28 loss emerged and dropped BC to 1-3 on the season.
"We felt really flat early in the game," said head coach Jeff Hafley. "It was kind of like we were all waiting for somebody else to make a play…I felt we were flat, and I felt we lacked energy. Just very uncharacteristic on defense, and I haven't seen us play like that since [I've] been here."
Saturday's loss is the kind of game that cuts a clear divide through the perception of how BC played. Louisville scored touchdowns on its first seven drives and dropped the first 50-point outcome on the Eagles since Lamar Jackson single-handedly produced seven scores in the Cardinals' 52-7 rout in a 2016 game at Alumni Stadium. The Cardinals didn't punt until their second drive of the third quarter, and the scoreboard offered them three different lopsided leads - 28-0, 35-7 and 49-14 - before the Eagles moved out of first gear.
Ten different chunk plays boosted Louisville's average offense to over nine yards per play, and the Cardinals finished with 582 yards of total offense while running 10 less plays than BC. Four of those big plays resulted in touchdowns specifically for Plummer, who threw a 75-yard score to Jordan on the first play of the third quarter and later completed a 55-yard bomb to Bruce-Higgins for his second breakout touchdown.
"He's thrown for over 3,000 yards at two different places," Hafley said. "He's played a lot of football. They attacked downfield on one-on-ones, and their receivers and him connected and made some big plays. He's a good player, and he played a really good game. I think he had a great day, threw some great balls and managed the game really well.
Louisville twice hit big plays at the start of the third quarter and sandwiched house calls around its first three-and-out, but BC also never really let the Cardinals coast through the game. The early struggles aside, the Eagles produced consecutive 75-yard scoring drives with a fast-paced offense, and the half ended with roughly six minutes of scoring offense for a unit that clicked after two three-and-outs and the turnover-on-downs.
The cadence issues between Castellanos and the offensive line were gone, and the only penalties beyond a second quarter false start centered around a holding call and a delay of game on a drive during which the offense went deep into the red zone. Castellanos and Ryan O'Keefe rendered the holding call moot with a 38-yard pass to the Cardinals' 16-yard line, but the delay of game pushed the Eagles far enough backwards to fail a 4th-and-16 with about 5:40 remaining in the third quarter.
It wasn't blemish-free, but Castellanos finished with 265 yards passing and another net-49 yards rushing, while accounting for four different touchdowns. He didn't have an interception, and both O'Keefe and Joe Griffin finished with five catches for a combined 162 yards and a score. Lewis Bond added 71 yards on four receptions and two scores, and four different pass catchers had chunk plays of 20 yards or more despite dealing with several drops throughout the game that ultimately rang in everyone's ears by the end of the game.
"For Tommy, as far as how his throws went, I thought he did really well," O'Keefe said. "The team needed to rally behind better, and we needed to make more plays down on the field. We had a couple of drops that shouldn't have been dropped, and at the end of the day, it's a team effort, and we didn't do what we should've done."
It's weird to think positively about a 28-point loss that included a poor defensive showing, but it's also worth noting the aberration of this type of game. BC hadn't allowed 50-points in a game in four years, and the two 50-point games scored by Clemson and Louisville during the 2016 season were the first burgers allowed since 2012's loss to Florida State, which itself had been the first 50-point game allowed by the program since a Thanksgiving weekend loss to Miami during the 2000 season. Simply put, Saturday was a bad day for a defense that only allowed 500 yards of total offense once last year.
The offense didn't let Louisville off its hook, and the game didn't feel out of reach until the twin scores around the halftime break. The two scores by Castellanos - the 39-yard rush and the 30-yard pass to O'Keefe - kept the Eagles within three-score deficits, and it felt like one stop could've turned momentum. The two scores around the half ended that by extending the lead to 35 points, but it's hard not to imagine how fixing those stops could have changed the tenor of a matchup that finished at the wire with combined point totals well into the 70s and 80s on three separate occasions since Jackson's Heisman moment game.
None of that matters, naturally, because the game went into the loss column, but how BC fixes its mistakes moving forward ultimately dictates the rest of the season. To a degree, there's no difference between a one-point loss and a blowout loss because they enter the record and history books the same way, but the duality and contrast of a bad defensive day and a good offensive day are worth noting because, like the score, that's an aberration to a coaching staff that felt excited about its game plan and the preparation after the battle against FSU.
"I don't see [the spiraling] from this team," Hafley said. "Just listening to them at halftime and listening to them at the end, I don't see that happening. It's my job to make sure that it doesn't. So we have to get back to work and think about fixing things and seeing what we need to do."
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