2010-2011 BC Year in Review, Part I: Football

With today being commencement day at Boston College, signifying the end of the journey for a few thousand students at my alma mater, I figure that it’s time we commence wrapping up the sports year as well.

Just as I have done for each of my first two years as head writer, sole proprietor, president, and chancellor of the exchequer of Soaring to Glory (Note: I may have slightly embellished on my title…slightly), I am beginning a five-part year-in-review series for Boston College sports. This will be my way of closing out the 2010-2011 academic year in Eagles athletics, putting a period on it, and moving on.

No doubt about it: this was, on balance, a tough and mostly unsatisfying year for BC sports. Such was the case for the Eagles football team, which will be the topic of Part I.

The 2010 Boston College football season began with a great deal of promise. Media outlets, who are typically predisposed to underestimate this team, actually heaped praise upon the Eagles after having overachieved in the 2009 campaign. We should have known then what kind of trouble was brewing.

When the Eagles were picked third in the ACC Atlantic in the preseason poll, Eagles fans like me contended that this Boston College team could do better than that. After all, they won eight games in ’09 when most people thought they’d win only a couple. With a year of extra experience for our quarterbacks and Mark Herzlich’s return for his senior season, up seemed like the only place the Eagles could go.

On Week 1 of the season, we saw the Boston College Eagles defeat the Weber State Wildcats 38-20. This was the kind of game where most of us would have expected a 41-10 type of win, but the Eagles offense was silent for most of the second half. By the time the game was over, the Eagles only outgained the visiting FCS team by thirty yards. Dave Shinskie was hit or miss, 10-20 for 185 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions. Turnovers on the game were even, 3-3.

The defense was on the field for over 37 minutes, which undoubtedly led to their numbers being less impressive than one might have expected. It was still a win, and so was Week 2’s 26-13 victory over the Kent State Golden Flashes. In that game, the defense was far better, but the offense was less effective. Despite playing spotty football in their opening acts, the Eagles were 2-0 heading into a bye week, which would be followed by a big game against Virginia Tech, who were 0-2 and had just lost to James Madison.

In Week 4, the main problem with Boston College manifested itself for all the world to see. The Eagles were shut out by the Hokies at home, 19-0. Dave Shinskie had a disastrous game, 11/25 for 130 yards and two picks. The Eagles managed only 250 offensive yards and had three turnovers. The BC defense was fine, allowing only one Virginia Tech touchdown, but there was no help from the Tranquill offense.

The following weekend, however, in the midst of a 31-13 bitchslapping at the hands of Notre Dame, BC fans saw a complete failure of offense and defense. It was this game that led to Dave Shinskie being deposed as starting quarterback, Mike Marscovetra being exposed as woefully inadequate, and Chase Rettig’s redshirt getting set aflame.

Unfortunately for Rettig, as if that game against the Irish could not have gotten any worse, he was injured and missed the next game against NC State. Unfortunately for the Eagles at large, their losing streak would not stop at two. They got thrashed by the Wolfpack, 44-17, followed by losses to Florida State (24-19) and Maryland (24-21). By the time the Terps skipped town, BC was 2-5 (0-4) and left for dead.

Luckily for the Eagles and their bowl chances, however, the schedule got far easier after their somewhat surprising home win over Clemson on October 30. Boston College, once again under the leadership of Chase Rettig and a strong defense, ended up winning their remaining five games of the regular season to finish 7-5 (4-4).

The offense was still terrible, but the defense had shown great promise. The Eagles’ draw in their postseason game, the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, however, was a high-flying offensive team in Nevada. Despite another strong effort for the defense, the offense’s inability to remove their heads from their posteriors saw the Eagles lose a third-straight bowl game, this time by a score of 20-13. Five-game win streak at the end of the season or not, none of the teams BC beat over that stretch were any good, so I remained somewhat skeptical of the Eagles’ chances. BC’s defense showed during this game that they were up to the task of slowing Nevada down, but they couldn’t slow them down enough to let the Eagles’ pathetic offense catch up. Ultimately, regardless of how good your defense is, it’s hard to win football games when your offense can’t score points.

No matter how you slice it, the Eagles football team had a disappointing season. Some may say that going 7-6 after starting 2-5 is an accomplishment, but let’s be perfectly honest with ourselves: Boston College’s sights were set higher than seven wins and a .500 record in a mediocre ACC, but that’s what we got, along with our “veteran” quarterbacks being stuck in neutral (if not regressing) and losing a third-rate bowl game to a non-AQ team in a lackluster offensive performance.

In fact, the offense was a very large part of the reason why the Eagles did not soar to new heights in 2010. The Eagles were without a doubt one of the worst offenses in FBS, a statement which is justifiable by their being ranked 109th in both total offense and scoring offense (out of 120). In an astounding statistic, the Boston College Eagles did not score in excess of 30 points on offense against any FBS opponent in 2010. In fact, dating back to the 2009 season, the Eagles will enter the 2011 season having been held under 30 points for fifteen (15) straight FBS games. The last one in which they scored more than that against an FBS team was October 31, 2009 against Central Michigan.

The failure of the coaching staff, particularly on offense, and the original quarterbacks gave us the season we had. Gary Tranquill, the former offensive coordinator, put forth two years of exceptionally-weak offense and simply had to be replaced. Thankfully, he was, by former Minnesota Vikings QB coach Kevin Rogers. Further, the head coach employed more of his conservative philosophy to the frustration of Eagles fans, complete with punts in go-for-it situations, poor clock management, taking a knee instead of seizing opportunity, and going to the football equivalent of the “four corners” when the Eagles had the lead, taking few risks. It also took Frank Spaziani until Week 5 of the season to pull the plug on Shinskie and Marscovetra, when others had called for it sooner (in other words, when it became obvious that they were inadequate).

We ended 2010 with some losses, most notably Anthony Castonzo and Mark Herzlich, one of whom is set to be gainfully employed in the NFL (if there is a season). Castonzo will be heading to the Indianapolis Colts while Herzlich, in my opinion, was unfairly cast aside by the NFL’s 32 teams at the same time as players with recent injuries, brain tumors, and lymphoma got drafted. The Eagles will start 2011 with some new faces and what we hope will be an improved Chase Rettig. Expectations for this Eagles team probably will not be very low or very high, as other teams in the division are improving, but at least next season, unlike this season, we won’t have high hopes crash down around us.

Part II is men’s basketball tomorrow.