Flowers in Full Bloom Amid Record-Breaking Senior Season
Andy Backstrom (@andybackstrom)
Publisher
Ahead of last week's game between Boston College and Clemson, Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney said that figuring out where BC is going to line up wide receiver Zay Flowers is like playing a game of "Where's Waldo?"
At times throughout Flowers' Eagles career, the dynamic playmaker has been underutilized. The back half of his freshman season, his touches were practically limited to jet sweeps and flanker screens. Last year, he was BC's top Z receiver but then-offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti Jr. hardly moved Flowers around for anything more. He had just seven carries, and because of BC's struggles to hit the deep ball—a backbone of its offense in 2020—Flowers' target total dropped from 91 to 82, despite playing one more game, in 2021.
This offseason, Flowers had his choice of six-figure offers from NIL companies, each that would have required him to enter the portal and transfer to a specific school. But Flowers—one of 14 children in a single-parent household—prioritized his loyalty to BC over what he called "life-changing" money in Pete Thamel's May ESPN story.
First-year Eagles OC John McNulty made a promise to get Flowers the ball early and often in 2022, and he has made good on his word.
Flowers' skill set is being maximized with not just jet sweeps but also pop passes, double passes, a variety of screens and pretty much every pattern in the intermediate and deep passing route tree. Although BC's offense has been far from pretty this season, six games in, Flowers is in full bloom.
"I don’t know if I’ve seen anybody right now that’s as good as him, and I mean that," third-year Eagles head coach Jeff Hafley said last week. "If he can continue to do that, he has to be in consideration to be the top wide receiver in the country this year."
As far as the ACC goes, Flowers is first in receptions (42), first in receiving yards (556) and tied for first in receiving touchdowns (five) this season. The senior's 63 targets are the 12th most in the the country, according to Pro Football Focus. No other ACC wide receiver has more than 60 this season.
Of Flowers' 63 targets, 40 of them have come within 0-9 yards or behind the line of scrimmage. That's partly because BC's injury-riddled and inexperienced offensive line hasn't been able to give quarterback Phil Jurkovec much time to throw. But it's also because Flowers is balletic in space. He has four missed tackles forced in that 0-9 yard range or behind the LOS, resulting in 14 first downs on those catches, per PFF.
Additionally, he leads the ACC with four receptions of 40-plus yards. That's after entering 2022 as one of two FBS players who logged at least six such receptions in both 2021 and 2020 (the other was Wake Forest's Jaquarii Roberson).
Flowers scored touchdowns of 57 and 69 yards in BC's Week 5 win over Louisville. The first featured a leaping reception in double coverage that Jurkovec deemed Flowers' best catch in the tandem's three years together. The second saw Flowers rack up yards after the catch en route to the end zone.
"He's so dynamic and so quick, yet he's a threat down the field as well," McNulty said, when describing Flowers in spring ball. "Usually, those are the bigger guys that can do the stuff down the field, and the little guys can do the stuff in the slot.
"Well, this guy is doing both."
McNulty admitted that Flowers—who he said effortlessly smiles more than he sweats in conditioning drills—is not anyone like he's coached in NFL. And he was a wide receivers coach with the Arizona Cardinals when they had Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin.
McNulty said before the start of the season that it was his goal to help Flowers leave BC as the school's all-time leader in receiving yards, receptions and receiving touchdowns. In McNulty's eyes, the more Flowers gets the ball, the better the Eagles will play.
At midseason, Flowers is on pace to break at least two of the three program records. After all, he needed 70 receptions, 822 receiving yards and 12 touchdown grabs to go out on top of the Eagles' leaderboard in all three of those categories.
"I like everything they’re doing with me," Flowers said last week. "I feel like Coach McNulty puts me in the best positions—not only me—he’s putting everybody in the best positions to be successful. I feel like he’s doing a good job with moving us around."
There's no doubt Flowers breathes life into an offense that's scored 14 points or fewer in each of its three ACC losses. And he certainly makes everyone around him better, however, he does command a disproportional target share. His 63 targets are 39 more than any other Eagle this season, per PFF. Hafley has been asked about that distribution a couple times this season, including this week during the bye.
"I'd like to see it evened out a little bit," Hafley said. "But I think Zay deserves to catch the football and get the ball in his hands as much as he can."
Hafley likes the way his new offensive staff has used creativity to get Flowers involved. He credits Flowers for his own work ethic but also cites the impact of wide receivers coach Darrell Wyatt, a three-decade-plus veteran assistant who has helped the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, native become a complete wideout.
Flowers talked about Wyatt emphasizing the importance of "meeting the ball in the air." Contested catches are something that Wyatt preaches, Flowers said, and, according to PFF, Flowers has three of them in 2022.
"I think that's what the next level is going to look at the most," Hafley said. "I'm not calling Zay small, but he's not this giant wideout. But he's playing bigger than he is by going up and taking the ball away from bigger DBs.
"It's very hard to tackle him—not only [because] you've gotta get your hands on him, but he plays stronger than his size."
ESPN currently ranks Flowers the 43rd overall prospect, and the sixth wide receiver, in the 2023 NFL Draft. He's primed to be BC's first wideout drafted since 1987, and, at this rate, he could even go in the first round.
Just as he's been underutilized throughout parts of his four-year BC career, he's also been overlooked on a national level. That, of course, is tied to the Eagles' inability to break through, in terms of win-loss record.
Flowers' usage in 2022 is nipping that trend in the bud.
"You’ve gotta find No. 4," Swinney said last week. "I mean, he’s as good of a player as there is in college football."
By the time May rolls around, Flowers' NFL career will be taking root.
He won't be hard to find anymore.
