BC Football Mailbag: Is the O-Line Overrated?
Andy Backstrom (@andybackstrom)
Staff Writer
After a slow first quarter, Boston College rolled over Colgate to start the year 1-0. It wasn’t much of a game, but we did learn a good bit about this year’s Eagles team from Saturday alone.
Let’s take a swing at some early-season BC questions in the first edition of our Eagle Action mailbag.
mod12a: Is our OL overrated off yesterday’s running game performance?
It’s too early to make this call, but I get where you’re coming from. Although BC rushed for 178 yards, running backs Travis Levy (nine carries, 32 yards) and Alec Sinkfield (six carries, 20 yards) both averaged under four yards per tote. The explosion still wasn’t there. Outside of a 16-yard Pat Garwo III run, the only other 10-plus-yard plays on the ground came from BC’s quarterbacks: a 41-yard keeper by Phil Jurkovec and a 12-yard scamper from Dennis Grosel.
But, as head coach Jeff Hafley pointed out in the postgame presser, Colgate was stacking up against the run, which is why so many Eagles receivers were open on deep crossing routes (Exhibit A. Trae Barry’s 51-yard touchdown reception). The Raiders were selling out, and BC took advantage through the air. It’s also worth noting that the O-Line graded out pretty well in terms of run blocking. The only BC lineman with a run blocking score below 77, according to Pro Football Focus, was Zion Johnson. Still, if you’re offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti Jr., you’d certainly like to see more push up front, especially against an FCS defensive line. So, I’d say the jury’s still out on whether BC’s O-Line can live up to the hype.
But I wouldn’t press the panic button right now. There’s something to be said about the Eagles using five different running backs. Sometimes, productive rushing offenses hinge on a back getting in a rhythm. When you’re rotating a new one in every series—Hafley did that for evaluation purposes—it’s tough to establish a hot hand.
shermy4422: Did AJ and the jumbo schemes/sets hide their deficiencies?
Good question. No Power Five team ran into eight-plus defenders in the box more than BC in 2019. The Eagles did so 42.7% of the time, largely because of how predictable Steve Addazio’s offense was. Still, Dillon put up big numbers. He rushed for 1,685 yards and 14 touchdowns.
But any time people point to Dillon’s production masking the O-Line’s potential deficiencies, I think it’s important to bring up David Bailey, who also had a monster 2019. That year, through nine regular season games, 71% of Bailey’s rushing attempts had come against a stacked box. And, at the time, he ranked sixth in the ACC in rushing yards.
Last year, Bailey’s yards per attempt notably dropped from 5.7 to 4.0. How much of that is the offensive line? To me, it’s the scheme change. Just as switching positions on the line isn’t easy, switching blocking schemes is difficult, too. I do think BC returning to more 12-personnel packages—we saw a lot of two-tight end sets with Trae Barry and Joey Luchetti on Saturday—will help the run game significantly. Leaving behind most of what the Eagles did during the Addazio regime is a good idea. But Hafley’s staff could take a page out of Addazio's book when it comes to run blocking. It seems like those stacked formations are on their way back.
Kevin84: How much eligibility does Dennis Grosel have after the 2021 season?
Ah, yes. Dennis Grosel has one year of eligibility remaining after this season. But that doesn’t guarantee that he’s coming back to play. There are a number of factors here. If Jurkovec ends up with a Day Three NFL Draft grade, he’ll likely return to Chestnut Hill for one final season, in which case Grosel might just hang his hat and call it a career. He’ll have already graduated and backed up Jurkovec for two seasons. I also don’t see him transferring somewhere else at this point. He loves BC and seems content with the role he’s carved out for himself in the program.
And, even if Jurkovec plays his way into the top three rounds of the 2022 NFL Draft, there’s no telling if Grosel will stick around for what would be his sixth year with the team. He graduated high school in 2016, enrolled at BC in January 2017, redshirted that following season and didn’t see the field in 2018 as he was near the bottom of the six-quarterback depth chart. He got his shot in 2019 when Anthony Brown Jr. tore his ACL at Louisville and started BC’s final seven games of that season. Last year, he fended off a Louisville comeback on Senior Day before tying Doug Flutie’s single-game program record for passing yards (520) in a loss to Virginia.
Point is, the former preferred walk-on has been through a lot and already written himself a storybook college career (considering he started as a scout team quarterback without a scholarship). And, quite frankly, he’s been at BC a long time. He isn’t a graduate student right now, so there’s the possibility he returns for a master’s in 2022 and grabs that starting role—assuming he wins the job (because you know Hafley wouldn’t just hand it to him). But it’s not a sure thing. Regardless, he would be a stopgap between Jurkovec and the Eagles’ next quarterback of the future. That leads us to our next question.
duda: What are you hearing on the development of the young quarterbacks. Who is the likely successor to Jurkovec/Grosel?
Last year’s third- and fourth-string quarterbacks—Sam Johnson III and Matt Valecce—transferred from the program this offseason. Interestingly enough, BC’s Week 1 depth chart didn’t include more than a two-deep at the quarterback position. The Eagles brought in a couple walk-on quarterbacks this year, but, right now, it looks like the successor to Jurkovec/Grosel—assuming they both leave in the same year—would be true freshman Emmett Morehead, redshirt freshman Matthew Rueve or redshirt sophomore Daelen Menard.
All three have yet to make their collegiate debut. Of the group, Rueve got the most reps in this year’s Jay McGillis Memorial Spring Game. He was 5-of-9 for 61 yards and a touchdown. Meanwhile, Menard was 3-of-4 for 13 yards and a score. And Morehead only hit on one of his three passes in limited action. Still, Morehead’s intangibles have generated some excitement. He’s the highest-rated quarterback of the three.
Morehead is a three-star prospect from Woodside, California, but he played his high school ball at Episcopal in Virginia, where he became the No. 28 Class of 2021 player in the state. His pocket presence and size are a great fit for Cignetti’s pro-style offense. Of course, Hafley could always turn to the portal again, like he did with Jurkovec. But that would go against his philosophy of building the program from within.
Flutie_in_2004: What do you know about the status of all the various injuries (Valdez, “Boom,” Gill) And was the usage of all those different DL in the game out of necessity due to injuries or do you think we end up using the possible redshirt season for many of the freshman DL?
Defensive end Marcus Valdez was out with a hand injury, and wide receiver Jaelen Gill was out with a foot injury. Judging by the way Hafley talked postgame, it seems like both are week-to-week injuries. I will try to follow-up on these during tomorrow’s press conference, but my understanding is that Aaron Boumerhi’s hip injury is the most serious of the three, considering that he’s had surgery on that kicking hip twice in his career.
Back in 2018, Boumerhi had a bony impingement on his acetabulum—in other words, the cup of his hip—and his femur, in addition to a torn labrum. He missed most of that season after his operation. Then, in 2019, Boumerhi re-aggravated his torn labrum and had to have hip surgery again. The operation occurred during the offseason, and although it was less serious than his first surgery, it cost him a game of the 2020 season.
Hafley said there’s no timeline for Boumerhi’s recovery because his hip has been a bit of a roller coaster these past few years. Boumerhi told me that last season was about adjusting to a “new normal.” Every kick felt different, and he had to find ways to keep himself consistent and healthy, like adjusting his number of warmup kicks to prevent discomfort.
As for the defensive line rotations, I think you’ll continue to see D-Line coach Vince Oghobaase rolling players in and out like, to use Hafley’s words, “hockey line shifts.” BC is using what it’s got, and that’s a lot of young guys up front. I don’t think the staff will burn all of their redshirts, but expect to see a whole lot more of Donovan Ezeiruaku, Neto Okpala and Ty Clemons. All three of them posted PFF defensive grades above 70 on Saturday. Ezeiruaku is still 17 years old and already has three tackles, two TFLs and one sack to his name.
Often, BC was using three edge rushers in a 4-2-5 formation. Shitta Sillah, Brandon Barlow and Ezeiruaku would line up with either Cam Horsley or Izaiah Henderson. The alignment is out of necessity, accounting for BC’s thin interior—the Chibueze Onwuka injury really hurt the Eagles. But it actually could be a good thing for BC, as it gives the Eagles more speed up front.
