Injury Count Makes BC's Bye Week Atypical
Andy Backstrom (@andybackstrom)Publisher
Usually, during a college football bye week, the starters get some rest, and the young players earn valuable reps in practice.
That said, when it comes to this year's Boston College team, several young players are already starting because of a slew of injuries.
It's presented a peculiar situation to third-year head coach Jeff Hafley, who admitted after last weekend's loss to then-No. 5 Clemson that the Eagles' bye week came a week too late.
"It can't just be rest because we have work to do, and they're young," Hafley said Wednesday of BC's bye. "But, at the same time, we don't really have the depth to just go out and practice and scrimmage with those young guys like I'd like to."
Hafley said that, regardless of where his team is at when the bye week comes, he always takes a big-picture look at all three phases of the game with his staff with an eye on three questions in particular.
"What do you do well, what do you need to fix, what aren't you doing well? So you look at scheme, you look at coaching, and you look at players," Hafley explained.
He said that the staff heavily focused on that self scouting Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, they included a Wake Forest introduction—the Eagles face the No. 14 Demon Deacons on the road on Oct. 22.
Hafley noted that he and the coordinators have remained on campus while other assistants have hit the recruiting trail. He's going to do some recruiting toward the end of the week, he mentioned.
Right now, his attention is on getting this BC team back on track. That starts with making sure the offensive line is finally starting to gel.
Last weekend marked the first time all season that the Eagles had started consecutive games with the same five up front. BC's embattled O-Line struggled much more against Clemson's vaunted front seven than it did versus Louisville the week prior.
The Eagles are currently starting a pair of offensive guards—Dwayne Allick and Jackson Ness—who were playing defensive line at the beginning of the 2021 season. BC has allowed 22 sacks through six games, the most in the ACC and the fifth most in the FBS. The Eagles are last in the nation in rushing offense with 69.5 yards per game on the ground.
BC has been at its best offensively when its achieved some kind of run/pass balance. For instance, in the Eagles' two wins this year, they've piled up 127.5 rushing yards per game. In turn, quarterback Phil Jurkovec has faced less pressure and thrown for more than 300 yards in both of those outings.
Hafley said he's "not sure" when he will have left guard Finn Dirstine—who has missed the last two games with an upper-body injury—back. He added that there were some offensive linemen who were "banged up" in the Clemson game and were sidelined for Wednesday's practice.
Still, Hafley remains confident that continuity in the trenches will soon result in payoff.
"I'm hoping that we get to play with the same five next week against Wake and continue to build forward on that," Hafley said. "I think if you turn on the tape, I think our offensive line's gotten better the last two weeks. And I know that might not show based on the numbers. But I would tell you if I didn't think they were."
BC's 2-4 start is its worst six-game start since 2017. That season, the Eagles flipped the script after then-head coach Steve Addazio proclaimed that "It'll come together, and it'll be beautiful." BC finished that regular season 5-1, averaging 36 points per game in that span—19.7 points per game more than it scored in the first half of the year.
Hafley and Co. would welcome a similar pivot. Following last year's adversity, which saw Hafley's Eagles lose four straight after BC's first 4-0 start since 2007, the player's coach feels better prepared to navigate this season's obstacles.
"You gotta stay focused on your process," Hafley said. You can't change who you are, whether you win a game, like when we beat Louisville, or you lose four in a row like we did last year."
He continued: "We're getting better. We beat Louisville and played a good first half [against Clemson] and didn't finish the game, which I get no one wants to hear. But we're a better football team than we were three weeks ago. We need to be better next week when we play Wake."
