My apologies for not getting to a opponent preview this week. I could give you a dozen different excuses, but I’m going with “my dog ate it.” It was a really great one, too. Instead, I offer you two different previews -- one from the guys at Rakes of Mallows and the other from the guys at Blue-Gray Sky. I was actually about to email Bill from Eagle in Atlanta, because I’ve been reading his site in my RSS for a few months, but just as I was about to do it, I noticed he had already done a better Q&A with BGS and it’s much easier to link to an article about Boston College than to actually force myself to think about BC.
Ah... BC. The thorn in the side of Irish fans everywhere, even if it weren’t for the 6 straight wins against the Irish. What to make of this team, that is now coached by Magnum PI Frank Spaziani? Going into this season, it was pretty much assumed that the Eagles would be mediocre, having lost their top two defensive tackles, their All-American middle linebacker to cancer, and having no quarterback to speak of. Yet here’s BC, chugging along at 5-2 after trouncing former coach Tom O’Brien’s NC State Wolfpack and all of a sudden looking like a team that could give Notre Dame all it can handle.
What can the Irish expect? Well, let’s take a look at what BC has done this season, and maybe that’ll help us draw some conclusions.
Week One and Two: Cupcakes for everyone!
The Eagles opened up the season with a cakewalk against Northeastern. Putting Northeastern on the schedule makes Western Michigan look like the ’85 Bears. After the 54-0 blanking by BC, Northeastern has gone on to get beaten by at least double digits to Maine, Youngstown State, Villanova (by 49 points!), Holy Cross, and William & Mary. BC would’ve been better served playing their scout team, and the victory did nothing to settle the QB race between Justin Tuggle and former minor-league farmhand Dave Shinskie. Week two brought the Kent State Golden Flashes, which sounds like a bad pharmaceutical commercial joke. The Eagles scored 24 points in the first half, sprinted out to a 34 point lead after three quarters and both Shinskie and Tuggle continued to split time, neither taking the reins on the job.
Week Three: Reality served cold.
It doesn’t get much uglier for the BC offense. They managed only 4 first downs and 54 total yards for the entire game. The Eagles managed one first down the first 43 minutes of the game -- and that was by penalty. Tuggle played his way out of a job going 4 for 20 with 3 interceptions, and Boston College looked like a team that ran went for a leisure jog for the first two weeks of the season instead of playing football games. Going on the road into a hostile environment proved fatal.
Week Four and Five: Building confidence
And now we begin to see the pesky nature of the Eagles. After putting nothing together offensively against Clemson, Spaziani goes to the bullpen (I had to) and starts Shinskie. The 25-year-old freshman responds with a great performance, going 18 of 29 for 228 yards and 3 TD passes, and the Eagles hold on for dear life to win an overtime thriller against Wake Forest.
Shinskie continued his solid play with another nice day against the Florida State Seminoles, and Montel Harris had his coming out party this season with 25 carries for 179 yards including a long touchdown run in the 4th quarter after the Seminoles had charged back to tie the game. It’s tough to say anything negative about a win against Florida State, but for the 2nd week in a row the Eagles let an opponent get back into a game that was in hand (sound familiar, Irish fans?) before pulling it out.
Week Six: Falling off the horse
It’s tough to find any positives about BC’s performance in Blacksburg. The Hokies were up 34-0 at halftime, and once again the Eagle offense looked punchless, managing only two first downs and 28 yards through 3 quarters. Shinkie went 1 for 12 throwing the ball before being pulled for freshman quarterback Mike Marscovetra, and Bud Foster’s V-Tech defense strangled both the running and passing attack of Boston College, only giving up yardage once the game was well in hand in the 4th.
Week Seven: Getting back up
The Jekyll and Hyde nature of the Eagles offense brought good things last week for Boston College as Montel Harris ran for over 100 yards in the first half and a record-breaking 264 for the day. Shinksie played an efficient game, and the passing game got a few big plays as well, racking up 480 total yards of offense and forcing three turnovers.
So where does that get us?
Boston College has played three good/decent teams, and they’ve been dominated by two of them. (I’m calling Wake Forest good, just for the sake of doing it.) Their victory over NC State could look impressive, but taking a closer look at the Wolfpack, you’ll see that they’ve managed to beat Pitt and... well, that’s about it.
Yet here’s what we know about the Irish. They have an ability to play to their opponents level pretty regularly and have managed to make every quarterback they’ve played (with the exception of Colin Kaepernick) look like an All-American. Quite literally. The past five passers Notre Dame has faced put up a QB efficiency rating of 146.30, nearly 10 full points better than Colt McCoy. The 8.5 yards per attempt these QBs are putting up against the woeful Irish passing defense would be good for 13th in the country, meaning we’re much more likely to see the Shinskie that rates 150.49 at home than the Shinskie that has a negative -11 QB rating on the road, even if Notre Dame stadium is 890 miles away from the friendly confines of Chestnut Hill.
What should we expect this week? A relatively easy victory by a Notre Dame football team that’s in a different class than the undermanned Boston College Eagles. Yet we could say that nearly every year, and Notre Dame fans know where that’s gotten them over the past twenty or so years. Still, Jon Tenuta has a great knowledge of both head coach Frank Spaziani and offensive coordinator Gary Tranquill, so you’d hope that the defensive troops would be well-informed on what their opponents are going to do. Still, it’s hard not to think that the Irish will be coming out flat, and if you look at the discussion this week around the net, there’s still a visible hangover from the deflating loss to the Trojans last weekend.
But if the Irish can’t get up for a game against Boston College, who can they get up for? And while we’ve got no idea what kind of team the Eagles have, any time you’ve got a running back that’s putting up numbers like Montel Harris, and a quarterback with full use of his throwing arm, you’ll have to hold your breath and see what happens come Saturday.