Thoughts In Brief: Boston College

• A.J. Dillon was pretty monstrous and all,, going 185 yards and 1 TD on 33 carries for 5.6 YPC, but it at least felt like we did a reasonable job containing him all things considered. When you factor in that taking away his one 45 yard TD run on the first drive of the game dropped him to a little over 4 YPC, that is a solid job of containing arguably the best rusher in the country.
• The big problem, though, was Anthony Brown. 16/25, 304 yards, and FIVE TOUCHDOWNS. Good golly Miss Molly, that is atrocious defensively.
• On that note, BC was 5/6 on third down in the second half, many of them on third and long. STOP THAT.
• Our offense was good. Yeah, Sam Hartman had a rough day with 2 picks (one of which was truly, truly awful), but we put up 214 pass yards, 298 rush yards, and 34 points. Honestly that’s kind of beyond repute as far as I’m concerned. That SHOULD be enough to win you pretty much every game. Offense did their job.
• Matt Colburn II and Cade Carney both had amazing games, honestly rivaling Dillon. They put up 117 yards on 23 carries (5.1 YPC) and 116 on 18 (6.4) respectively, with Colburn also finding paydirt once.
• Special teams was also pretty spectacular, with an amazing punt downed at the 1, a blocked extra point, and even a touchdown on a blocked punt after a bad snap. Was that freak luck? Absolutely, but it also takes heady play and execution to actually capitalize on something like that, which the ST unit did with more aplomb than I’ve seen in ages.
• Normally I wouldn’t do this, but Coach Clawson did so I’m going to say it. Secondary, good lord. This was absolutely a team loss but that unit needs to get it together and step up if we want to try to get to yet another bowl, period. I’m not going to put individual players on blast or say dudes can’t play, but they did not bring their best, period. I’m sure they’d be the first to agree. So I’m just gonna say this in case any of the team is reading this. I still believe in you guys but you have to do better. You just have to.
• I loved our aggressiveness on fourth down to be honest. I hated us not taking the points down 7 in chip shot field goal range but to be fair we got a really good look out of it and the aggressiveness is smart as a general rule. So even the one I wasn’t a fan of almost worked out alright, and it’s almost always better than being overly conservative.

This game deflated me a good bit. I overestimated our guys some, but more notably I underestimated Boston College. I stil think, if we play that game 10 times, it comes pretty close to an even split, but unfortunately college football isn’t played in series.

On to the next. Hope everyone is safe and dry. Go Deacs.

—SF