Eagles Open as 20.5-Point Underdogs Against No. 5 Clemson
Andy Backstrom (@andybackstrom)
Publisher
Boston College (2-3, 1-2 ACC) is a 20.5-point underdog this week against No. 5 Clemson (5-0, 3-0), according to Action Network. The Eagles are coming off a 34-33 win over a Louisville team that entered last weekend as a two-touchdown favorite.
Action Network has the over/under for BC-Clemson set at 49.5 points. The BC moneyline is +869.
The Eagles are now 1-4 against the spread this season. They haven't beaten Clemson since Oct. 30, 2010. When Saturday night's Red Bandana Game rolls around, it will have been 4,361 days since BC's last victory over the Tigers.
Clemson leads the all-time series, 20-9-2. BC won its first three games against the Tigers after joining the ACC in 2005. Since, however, the Eagles have won just once. Things got ugly in the 2010s. That decade, the Tigers beat BC by an average of 21.2 points per game. In 2017, 2018 and 2019, the Eagles mustered just one touchdown.
That included their top-20, "College GameDay"-featured matchup, in which BC starting quarterback Anthony Brown was sidelined on BC's first offensive series. Because of the COVID-19-adjusted schedule, that was the last time Clemson was in Chestnut Hill—BC has played the Tigers on the road the last three seasons.
In 2020, the Phil Jurkovec-led Eagles staked themselves to a 28-10 lead in the first half but couldn't hold on in Memorial Stadium. Last year, BC was 11 yards away from the Death Valley upset, but a mistimed snap cost Dennis Grosel and the Eagles the monumental win.
Still, the Eagles have been six points away from the Atlantic Division titan in both of those losses. So they've been knocking on Clemson's door under head coach Jeff Hafley.
"I didn't come here to be close," Hafley said the day after last year's gut-wrenching defeat in Memorial Stadium.
BC has a chance to put Clemson on upset watch yet again this week—well, only if the Eagles can build on their bounce-back performance versus Louisville.
This will be the second time in the Red Bandana Game's soon-to-be nine-year history that the Eagles will play Clemson. In 2016, BC hosted a Deshaun Watson-led Tigers team that ran away with a 56-10 victory in Alumni Stadium.
