Reflecting on FSU: What Did Hafley Say During His Sunday Presser?
Andy Backstrom (@andybackstrom)Publisher
Jeff Hafley said that he spent a lot of time thinking about it last night: Why is Boston College stumbling out to slow starts? The second-year Eagles head coach perused the possible reasons.
Maybe it was the start time, he first considered, but then he immediately shot that down because he realized BC played at 3:30 p.m. the week before in Atlanta and dug itself into a 21-7 hole there.
Then his mind drifted to the offense before recognizing that the last two weeks haven’t quite been the same. While BC averaged 3.3 yards per play on its first two drives against Florida State Saturday, it jumped out to a 7-0 lead at Georgia Tech with a series of chunk gains, most notably a 48-yard touchdown pass from Phil Jurkovec to Zay Flowers.
Hafley concluded that BC’s slow starts are both physical and mental. Why, exactly, he hasn’t determined.
“I’m not sure yet,” Hafley said Sunday. “I talked to the team today about that. I talked to them about their resiliency. And the score was 26-3, right? We were heavy on the ropes. They were ready to knock us out. And we came out swinging. We got it all the way down to a chance to win at the end of the game.”
He continued: “But you can’t let the game get to that because you’re going to run out of time, and it’s not always going to be this great comeback. So we need to start faster. We need to execute faster. And we need to make adjustments faster. We need to do everything a little bit quicker.”
BC was a combined 3-of-10 on third and fourth down in the first half of Saturday’s 26-23 defeat. The Eagles mustered just 95 total yards through two quarters, including a mere 34 in the air.
Jurkovec didn’t have much time to throw. The Eagles’ offensive line arguably had its worst game of the season. The group was missing right guard Christian Mahogany, who was out with a knee injury, but his absence wasn’t the sole root of the Eagles’ troubles in the trenches. Not one BC O-Linemen posted a Pro Football Focus offensive grade above 65 against FSU.
Left tackle Tyler Vrabel (five), right tackle Ben Petrula (four) and right guard Ozzy Trapilo (three) allowed a combined 12 pressures. When all was said and done, Jurkovec was sacked four times, and it could have been way more had he not pulled off his typical Houdini-like escape tactics.
Trapilo wasn’t responsible for any of the sacks, however, he did register a PFF pass blocking grade of just 36.4, a score 47.4 points lower than the one he earned for his first career start when he slotted in at left guard for the Virginia Tech game.
“We put him in because we do believe he’s the next best guy so that’s our priority: to put the best guys on the field and try to win the game,” Hafley said of Trapilo.
Hafley noted that the 6-foot-8, 305-pound redshirt freshman had his moments, good and bad, but that he’s going to be “a guy in the future that we’re gonna count on.”
Right now, the Eagles count on Flowers as their primary receiving threat. That said, he didn’t get a touch in the first half. The star wideout ended up with six targets and three catches for 92 yards and a score.
Hafley was asked Sunday if there are discussions with his staff to get Flowers the ball more.
“We talked about it,” Hafley said. “Just because there were six targets doesn’t mean we weren’t trying to get him the ball more. We had a couple plays designed that, for one reason or another, we didn’t get it to him. But it wasn’t for a lack of effort to try to get him the football.”
BC was particularly run heavy against the Seminoles. The Eagles had 51 run plays as opposed to just 24 pass attempts, granted some of those runs were a byproduct of Jurkovec scrambling rather than actually being designed. Hafley explained that such a lopsided run-pass split wasn’t the game plan. Instead, it was how the game “developed.”
He added that he liked how BC was running the ball in the second half and, more specifically, how it wore down FSU’s edge rushers on long drives, which gave the Eagles more time to throw.
Offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti Jr. had a number of run/pass fourth down decisions Saturday. One of the most critical came in the second quarter with BC down, 14-3, and on the 12-yard line facing a 4th-an-2. The Eagles stacked the right side with two tight ends and had running back Pat Garwo III surge off tackle. He was stopped in his tracks, and BC turned the ball over on downs.
“A lot of times, I might have kicked that,” Hafley said Sunday. “And, trust me, I thought a lot about that last night, too. The way the game was going, I felt like we were gonna need to score a lot of points. And that’s the feel I got early on. And I’m a defensive guy so I usually get sense of that.”
Hafley said that he stands by the decision to go for it, and felt like that run play was there. He attributed the failed conversion to poor execution.
Hafley discussed BC’s in-game defensive adjustments, pointing out that people mistakenly think the only adjustments a team makes are at halftime. He said that the Eagles make changes series by series.
There were some looks the Seminoles threw at BC, namely formations that spread out the Eagles, that Hafley and his staff weren’t anticipating. So it took a few drives for BC to figure out the best way to defend FSU.
“They really tried to spread us out yesterday, more so than we had seen on tape from them,” Hafley elaborated. “It really hurt not having Josh DeBerry because we were playing a lot of three-linebacker sets against their spread sets.”
Usually BC employs a 4-2-5 defensive formation, but, without DeBerry, who suffered an ankle injury at GT, the Eagles were missing their nickelback (and backup Shawn Asbury II is out for the year with a broken arm). Instead of trying to fill that nickel spot, BC first went with a 4-3-4.
FSU head coach Mike Norvell exploited that with quick throws to running backs, who were matched up 1-on-1 with BC’s linebackers, Hafley said.
When the Eagles adjusted, they went back to their traditional 4-2-5 and moved cornerback Elijah Jones inside. One of the reasons why they didn’t start with that plan, Hafley said, was that Jones only practiced Wednesday and Thursday so he didn’t have many reps at the nickel position.
Hafley said that second down was where BC struggled the most defensively.
“We couldn’t get them into enough third downs,” Hafley said. “I think we played 78 snaps, and we only had them in 10 third downs. Something’s wrong. Means we weren’t doing a good enough job on, really, first and second down. Primarily second.”
Several of those early-down gains came in space for FSU.
“That’s a fast team,” Hafley said.
He wants BC to be faster. In every way.
Last edited:
