BC football: a tale of new offensive coordinators and schedules

Way to go, BC football and the ACC: on the day of the Beanpot finals, and in what will be an otherwise very slow news week, you’ve dumped two major stories onto our laps all at once. No use in crying about it now, however.

First, we learned that the Eagles have finally replaced their erstwhile septuagenarian offensive coordinator, Gary Tranquill, with someone who apparently has more than three plays in his playbook. The new guy in town will be Kevin Rogers, who was most recently the quarterbacks coach for the Minnesota Vikings, coaching Jenn Sterger’s least-favorite Wrangler-wearing gunslinger. This year, all he had to work with was a decrepit Brett Favre, an essentially useless Tarvaris Jackson, and some dude named Joe Webb. Furthermore, his head coach for much of the season was Brad Childress — enough said. I don’t hold him responsible for the failings of their team this year, but he has compiled a good resume overall.

From 1991 to 1998, he was the offensive coordinator and eventually the assistant head coach of the Syracuse Orange. From there, unfortunately, Rogers spent the 1999 to 2001 seasons as the offensive coordinator in some unappealing hovel in northern Indiana, but was liberated by Virginia Tech, meaning, most importantly, that he has prior history in the ACC. From 2002 to 2005, he was the quarterbacks coach of the Hokies. In that time since the early 90s, he has groomed quarterbacks like Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick’s brother, Marcus, wherever the hell he is now.

I think this has the potential to be a good hire, and a good job by Spaziani and DeFilippo (take a picture, you won’t see me saying that too often). For one thing, this wasn’t just a “let’s just promote from within a day after Tranquill retires and save ourselves the trouble of searching” type deal. The head coaching search a few years back was a sham; this was not. They clearly took their time on this one and examined outside candidates with an open mind. Furthermore, it seems that he has been a part of some inventive offenses, which would be a dramatic and welcome change from the previous regime.

I have no problem with bringing in a guy from the outside. There is concern amongst some BC fans that Day or Brock would have been better hires, and maybe they would have been, but we’ll never know. BC may have wanted to get some new blood in the offensive coaching staff, or maybe they felt Rogers interviewed better than the other guys. Whatever the case, we have a new offensive coordinator now, and like we gave Tranquill a chance, so too must we give Rogers a chance.

Now, onto the schedule which was released mere hours after Rogers’ hire was announced. Perfect timing, right? Well, the schedule that Rogers, Spaz, Rettig, and all the rest will face is as follows:

Sat Sept. 3: Northwestern
Sat Sept. 10: at Central Florida
Sat Sept. 17: Duke
Sat Sept. 24: Massachusetts
Sat Oct. 1: Wake Forest
Sat Oct. 8: at Clemson
(BYE)
Sat Oct. 22: at Virginia Tech
Sat Oct. 29: at Maryland
Thu Nov. 3: Florida State
Sat Nov. 12: NC State
Sat Nov. 19: at Notre Dame
Sat Nov. 26: at Miami

This looks very much like it could be a fast start/slow finish kind of schedule. The first five games appear to be much lighter in difficulty than the rest, so if the Eagles plan to rack up the wins, they had better do it early. The thing is, Northwestern isn’t godawful and Central Florida on the road will probably be a pain.

They close the first half of the season at Death Valley — the last time BC was there, Tranquill’s offensive wizardry, along with the skillful quarterback mastery of Dave Shinskie and Justin Tuggle, netted the Eagles all of 54 yards. If Rogers and Rettig can do better, it’s a start.

The second half, following their bye week in mid-October, is simply brutal. If the Eagles win three or more games in that stretch, BC fans should be very, very pleased. Every last one of those teams will be a pain in the ass to us.

One thing I’ve also heard a lot about is the Thursday night home game against Florida State. I remember the last time we had one of of those games on campus, and it was a fun night. Fun for the students, for sure, but for the alums? Probably not so much, unless they’ve got personal or sick days to burn on Friday. It’s nice that we’ll be featured somewhat prominently later on in the season; I hope the product on the field is less embarrassing than the one we had last year.

I won’t offer any schedule predictions until around July or August, but it’s almost like we have two schedules: “the easy” and “the hard.” I’m not prepared to say how I think BC will weather either one, but I’m eager to find out.