The Sgt. Slaughter meets Steve Ballmer person that is Boston College head coach Steve Addazio returns to Chestnut Hill for his 5th season but just barely. The Eagles won the Quick Lane Bowl against Maryland to give Addazio a key 7th victory and winning record. They even scored 30+ points against a Power 5 team for the first time in 2 full seasons!
Boston College was off the schedule last year but will be meeting the Irish for the 21st time out of the last 26 seasons. Let’s check back in with them and see how they’re doing.
BOSTON COLLEGE
2016 Record: 7-6
2016 S&P Rank: 86
Offense Returning Production Rank: 53
Defense Returning Production Rank: 43
Wade v. Brown
The Eagles have been going through a quarterback competition this spring following the departure of Kentucky grad transfer Patrick Towles and his modest single year as starter. Darius Wade is a redshirt junior who began as the starter back in 2015 but suffered a season-ending injury and comes into this fall with only 69 career pass attempts.
Anthony Brown is a redshirt freshman who is getting praised for all of the things younger guys receive in competitions with an older teammate: He’s faster, stronger arm, but still learning.
Both players are pretty similar: black, around 6’0″ and 200 pounds, and more athletic than polished passers. In order to take advantage of their skill-sets the Eagles are trying to run more uptempo this off-season.
Help!
Boston College is in need of copious amounts of help on offense as they’ve finished 124th and 125th in S&P+ offense over the last 2 seasons. Quite literally, among the worst offenses in the game. There’s some building confidence in Darius Wade but if the spring game is any indication he won’t offer much explosiveness in the pass game, just 194 yards on 27 attempts. Last year, BC was second-to-last in YPA in the ACC.
The offensive line returns several pieces from last year only to spend most of spring dealing with a lot of injuries and shuffling of positions. At the playmaking spots there’s just not enough proven talent anywhere to really comment too much on right now.
In short, the Eagles are probably looking at a ceiling of below average Power 5 offense and likely being worse than that once again.
Groundhog Day
The loss of Don Brown at the defensive coordinator position (he’s now making $1.4 million per year at Michigan) was big but not back-breaking for the Eagles. They fell from the 2nd overall S&P+ defense to the 21st rank. Imagine if the Irish could achieve that type of success on defense?
Will they continue to slide down the rankings? Maybe a little bit. All-American defensive end Harold Landry returns after a dominant 2016 (22 TFL, 16.5 sacks, 7 forced fumbles) which is a huge boost. A couple of draft picks are gone (4 from the defense selected over the last two drafts) and two out of the top 3 players who helped lead the No. 2 overall havoc rate in the country have moved on.
Enough guys are coming back + Landry where this will still be a good defense and a tricky one to face coming off the heels of the Georgia game.
Summer Spread: Irish Favored by 9.5
When the Irish met BC last time around at Fenway Park in 2015 the spread was a healthy 16.5 points. That was when Notre Dame was 9-1 and the Eagles 3-7 coming in with 6 straight losses.
The last two trips to Alumni Stadium have been notable for boring but relatively easy victories. Notre Dame’s poor record in true road games plus the uncertainty around the program will drag this spread down a little bit.
Buy or Sell: Addazio Coaching BC in 2018
It’s going to be very close but I will sell. The schedule is unusually difficult featuring Clemson, FSU, and Louisville in league play plus a not terrible OOC lineup of Northern Illinois, Central Michigan, and UConn.
Boston College also just hired a young hot-shot new athletic director Martin Jarmond from Ohio State where he was the deputy director of athletics. Won’t he want to make a splashy new hire? The bad news is that Addazio will have 3 years left on his contract after 2017. Not an insurmountable hurdle but perhaps something to force an additional year of Sargent Ballmer.
Know a Player: RB Jon Hilliman
Boston College has been trying their best to run Hilliman straight into the ground. In 2014, he broke the Eagles’ freshman record for rushing attempts (211) with a decent 860 yards and more impressive 13 touchdowns. Hilliman was supposed to be the future star in Chestnut Hill.
However, he broke his foot early in 2015 and missed the majority of the season and came back last year with an atrocious 542 yards on 184 carries. His 2.95 YPC was half a yard worse than any other qualifying ACC running back last year.
Outfitter: Under Armour
BC was one of the first Power 5 programs to ink a deal with Under Armour. Heading into 2017 they’ll be wearing the Baltimore-based company gear for the 8th year. Their original deal was for 6 years and a 10-year extension was signed back in 2015.
Most Important Game: Virginia, Week 8
The Eagles need to find a way to get bowl eligible and they’ll have a relatively easy string of games to conclude the season (NC State, at UConn, at Syracuse) to do just that. The game in Charlottesville is sandwiched in between Louisville and Florida State which is a real tough break. They’re really going to need this game against Virginia.
In re: Splashy new hire. What if Sanford has a great year at WKU? Is BC actually considered a step up from there at this point?
If I were a young AD, especially at a school with pretty low football standards (and honestly no one here in Boston cares that much about BC football), I would totally shoot for a young charismatic guy over a more experienced one with a higher floor.
I wouldn’t make that move, would you?
The money can’t be that different nowadays and it would always seem better to wait for a more high profile job.
Yeah, I’m with Eric here. I think if Sanford does well he’ll get a chance to step up to a tier 2 Power 5 job, which is not Boston College. Right now he has MAC level talent and MAC level competition; at BC, he would have MAC level talent and ACC level competition. If he puts in a couple of good years at WKU, I could see him getting a shot at something like Tennessee, UCLA, Wisconsin, Georgia Tech, something like that.
Maybe he’d have to pay his dues at one more AAC stop or something, like Taggart did going from WKU to USF to Oregon. That would still be better than taking the BC job. I’m sure BC would be interested, but he’d be nuts to take it.
Call me a delicate snowflake if you’d like, but of what significance is it that both the QBs competing for BC’s starting job are black?
They’re both slow and unathletic.
Seems like an extraneous detail, to me. Something tells me they’re not the first QBs to be black and not fit the dual-threat label. Heck, Kizer got out-athlete-d by numerous dudes, white and black, at the combine.
It’s right up there with the white running back thing. It’s a label that highlights a “funny oddity” on the field, but the supposed humor just feels like a relic of the attitude that black and white players belong only in certain positions and aren’t fit for others.
I’m not very uptight about race. BC has two guys who look very similar in their uniforms (although Wade is a lefty) and offer more athleticism than the usual David Shinskie and Brian St. Pierre’s of the world. That doesn’t exactly feel irrelevant to me.
You think the white running backs are just a funny oddity in the NFL? What about the corners in the NFL or the top sprinters in the 100 meters?
Their athleticism is certainly relevant, and I’d say their race is incidental. The vast majority of football players are black and yeah, I agree it would be silly to pretend otherwise, but knowing whether a player happens to be black or white doesn’t add anything to my experience of the game.
I don’t think much about white running backs in the NFL, or otherwise, at all. There aren’t many, but I’m not sure what’s so noteworthy about that. Kinda like last NFL postseason, the Seahawks’ DL Michael Bennett said the Lions’ RB Zach Zenner was the best white running back in the league. It wasn’t a dig at Zenner, and I don’t find it racist, but the detail doesn’t seem necessary because it doesn’t add anything to my understanding of the player or the game.
Many black QBs are more athletic than white QBs, but Trevor Knight & Mitch Trubitsky tested best at the ’17 combine. Lots and lots of OL are white, but Ronnie Stanley (whom I acknowledge is Polynesian) and Laremy Tunsil were the top tackle prospects in ’16. JJ Watt, Harrison Smith, and Jordy Nelson provide similar examples at other positions, but does knowing these guys’ races add to our experience of the game?
It’s not a huge deal to me, but I think it’s an interesting thing to consider. I like knowing non-football facts about these guys — hometown & alma mater come to mind, but discussing those things doesn’t harken back to any inappropriate ideas, whereas pointing out players’ races reminds me of the unfair, prejudiced generalizations that have been made in the past about black players’ ability to succeed at certain positions. No one’s ever said anything like “oh, that kid’ll never make it at Tight End, he’s from Philadelphia!”, but people have said, “Ah, he’s black, he probably won’t make a great QB.” JJ Watt didn’t have to overcome his whiteness to be a nasty DL and Russell Wilson didn’t have to overcome his blackness to win a Super Bowl, so why point out their race?
A couple points of clarification:
1) I should have said I didn’t find Bennett’s comment offensive, not racist.
2) “interesting thing to consider” = I’m not trying to call you out, I believe thinking and talking about how/why we say & do things can make us all better people.
3) In the broadest possible way, Russell Wilson’s blackness might have worked against him at some point, in some way, during his time on earth on his way to winning a Super Bowl, I meant that neither his nor Watt’s race significantly impacts their ability to perform at a high level on a snap-to-snap basis.
It’s not like I’m disagreeing harshly with anything you’re saying but I’m not super clear on the exact stand you’re taking.
Why isn’t it noteworthy that there aren’t many white running backs anymore? As a white guy myself I’d take some pride in a white running back becoming an all-time great in the NFL, it’d be pretty cool to see. Except, if it’s Christian McCaffrey.
Wasn’t Russell Wilson criticism invariably that he’s really short? Did I miss something where people didn’t think he could be good because he’s black? That does sound like something out of the 1970’s but it’s not the 70’s anymore.
I feel like you don’t hear people talk too much about a person’s race and that they CAN’T be good in a certain sport. I didn’t say that, right? I’d agree there’s no reason to harshly discriminate athletes based on there race.
But race is still important. One thing that immediately jumps out is Notre Dame’s grad rate for black players.
Yeah, no harshness felt or intended, and I agree that race can often be important.
I guess my stand, if I’m taking one, is that although it isn’t the 1970s, stuff like this is still out there — http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/04/25/blind-quotes-about-quarterbacks-turn-up-the-usual-racism/
So, since the conversation can get hijacked in that way, why bring up a player’s race in the first place when discussing his on-field abilities? You rarely mention it in your other previews, and I’m well aware you didn’t bring race up as a point of criticism, so it stood out to me here.