Can't Stop, Won't Stop - Boston College Athletics

The first six weeks of Boston College's 2024 season felt downright Dickensian in its ability to capture the best of times and worst of times.

A year starting with a return to the national polls for the first time in six years met its one-week match in a loss to a Missouri team ranked inside the national top-10 in mid-September, after which fourth quarter comebacks over Michigan State and Western Kentucky led BC back to within shouting range of the Atlantic Coast Conference's top tier. The Eagles piled those wins atop the previous victories over Florida State and Duquesne, but surrendering 24 consecutive points to Virginia sent BC into its first bye with an overall effort equally lined with excitement and disappointment.

Living in those extremities is part of each football season, but that same team entered its Week Seven preparations without the auditory emotions associated with its 4-2 overall record. Instead, the outside noise did little to impact the Eagles, who now look to their Virginia Tech preparations with the feeling that reshuffling the card deck is exactly on the horizon for the Atlantic Coast Conference's high-stakes table game.

"It's always good to have a bye about halfway through [the season]," said head coach Bill O'Brien. "You never want it too early. You never want it too late. Halfway is really good [because] you have enough information on yourself that you can really study and see where you need to get better and things like that. It also allows you to maybe heal up a little bit [for] some guys that have been playing a lot, and it gives you a chance to work your younger guys in some of these practices."

BC lived the first six games as a chameleon mashed into a conversation about its ongoing development, but the inherent identity associated with the Eagles still forced its way to the front and center spotlight of their early goings. Success largely stemmed from a stiff defense that jumped more than 20 spots in scoring points allowed compared to last year's 13-game slate while the offense maintained its heading behind dual-threat quarterback Thomas Castellanos.

At its best, BC balanced the ability to elongate drives against a three-and-out, stingy defensive style, and Castellanos' ongoing development with his receivers summarily showed-out in their statistics. It wasn't a coincidence that his performance in three of the team's wins went for 480 yards, seven touchdowns and no interceptions while his four interceptions tipped razor-thin margins against the Eagles in the losses to Missouri and Virginia, but it produced an icy conversation point for a team that averaged 32 points in its four wins while slashing that number in half in its two losses.

"He's done a good job," emphasized O'Brien. "There are things we can do better, [but] that's part of the reason why you work so hard during the bye week as a coaching staff to figure it out. Whether it's Tommy, the receivers, the line, the tight ends, the running backs, whoever it is, there are areas to improve, no doubt about it, and hopefully we've been able to do that. Tommy's a very instinctive player, and we're never going to take that away from him. He just has to do a great job taking care of the football and making good decisions for the team, and we need to continue to improve things that we're doing around him."

Fusing performances together explains exactly why BC finds itself in a unique position for the second half of the year, and removing the win over Duquesne as an outlier victory over a championship subdivision team illustrates the importance in creating synergy between the different units because the Eagles averaged a full touchdown less than they allowed in their 3-2 record against FBS opponents.

The 18.7 points and eight touchdowns were likewise flipped against a defense that allowed 23.7 points per game in wins over FBS opponents while allowing 16.0 points in its two losses, and while it's important to note why numbers don't align perfectly with final scores because of the one defensive score in the Virginia game, it's also imperative to further explain just how much turnovers make a difference in the missed opportunities.

"There's nothing more important than the ball," explained O'Brien, "so we try to work on turnover drills every day. Whether it's strip drills or interception drills, we're working it every single day. Sometimes it's something that's a year-to-year [number] because [it depends] on how the ball bounces. I can remember in 1998 with Georgia Tech that we returned eight fumbles or interceptions for touchdowns, and we were 10-2…and then the following year we didn't have any of those. But you always want to emphasize it. It's not luck, but it's gone our way so far this year."

Everything reflects the ability to dictate a game's overall pace, a storyline often associated but not directly linked to time of possession. Indeed, BC's overall time of possession through six games actually decreased compared to last season, but the one-minute difference separating last year's top-40 slot with this year's top-70 spot still keeps the Eagles well over 30 minutes per game.

There's no official link between time of possession and a team's ability to dictate its pace, but BC's ability to utilize drivability within its overall production is a more key analytic. Including Duquesne as an indicator, the six-game start of the season is averaging a full yard more on offense than allowed on defense, and an 11 percent differential on third down conversions kept the sticks moving on a team that's also been forced into an average of two less situations than opponents because its eight interceptions through six games is equal to the number of picks from the entirety of 2023.

"Any time you can take the ball away, it's a huge thing," said O'Brien. "There's no doubt about it. You can see it in some of the games that we've had that those turnovers have been huge. They can shorten the field, and they can get the crowd into it. If it's a home game, they can create momentum, and football is a game of momentum at times. That's why it's so important for us to do a better job of taking care of the ball. If you look at our two losses, you can pinpoint [momentum with] the turnovers."

BC enters the second half of its season as an unknown commodity within the ACC's pecking order at a time when the league is ascending through a resurgence with two undefeated teams and four more one-loss programs. Of the teams that are either 6-0 or 5-1, Clemson, Miami, Pittsburgh and SMU are undefeated in league play, and Syracuse, Louisville and Virginia all hold multiple conference wins. Teams like North Carolina and NC State are suddenly looking at potential bowl ineligibility after losing three times to league opponents, and FSU is 1-5 after starting the year ranked tenth in the nation.

Nothing is solidified, but the swollen ranks threaten to overlook a BC team that largely plays the remainder of its schedule in Chestnut Hill. Neither of its two remaining road games are against unfamiliar opponents, and Thursday night's matchup at Virginia Tech features a former cross-divisional rival that annually appeared on the Eagles' schedule.

"We think about the process of how we can get better today," O'Brien said. "The process of improvement, the process of one play at a time, the process of what we're trying to do as a program, whether it's a play or technique or a scheme, we try very hard not to focus on results. If you start to focus on results, you start thinking about [your record]...We think about how to get better today and how to get better tomorrow. It's day-by-day, play-to-play, one play at a time."

BC and Virginia Tech kick off on Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. from Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Virginia. Television coverage is available on nationally on ESPN with streaming available through the network's platform family of Internet and mobile device apps.

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