UCF 30, BC 3: What the hell was THAT?

I don’t think there’s a one of you out there that saw this coming. By that, I don’t mean about BC simply losing, but getting creamed by Central Florida. On Saturday night, the Eagles fell by a 30-3 score, setting the team back to an unusual 0-2 mark and casting doubt on the direction that the 2011 season may take. Watching the replay of this game was most certainly not a pleasure.

To answer one of the 5 big questions from Thursday, yes, the Eagles’ “first road game woes” streak under Spaz has continued. Three years, three blowouts. The offensive stats were ugly and reminiscent of last year:

seven first downs, 1/12 on third down, 141 total yards of offense, 422 yards allowed, another 200+ yard rushing day allowed, and only 22:35 time of possession. Rettig took his share of licks and wasn’t sharp, the offensive line again looked like it wasn’t holding up to pressure, and the defense has been a major disappointment. Not every play they made was bad, but clearly enough of them were. If anything at all impressed me, it’s that BC went for it on a 4th down early in the game (but, strangely enough, they generally have an aversion to it later in the game).

Let me give credit to Central Florida for doing what they had to do, but the Eagles played a legitimately awful game on Saturday as well. There is nothing good to take from those numbers whatsoever. If anything, this raises a lot more questions about Boston College. For one thing, a very obvious concern should be the rush defense, which again got burned to the tune of 235 yards on the ground. Last year, this was the NUMBER ONE rush defense in the country; now, they’ve had consecutive very bad games. The defensive line is decimated and what’s left of it isn’t holding up. I also regret to inform my readers (not that they didn’t know already) that offensive lines they’ll see in ACC play aren’t exactly going to be charitable. Further, Boston College’s offensive line had another poor performance, as did the rest of the Tranquill-esque offense.

Believe me, I’m not beating my chest over my pick for this game. Yes, I did have a gut feeling over the summer that the Eagles would fall in Orlando, but I thought it would be a close game and that BC would retain some pride. They didn’t retain any.

I’m sorry, but I don’t care that the score was 9-3 at the end of the third quarter. When you are an AQ team, there is no good way to spin ultimately losing to a Conference USA team by 27 points. None. I don’t care if it’s played at home, on the road, in freaking Hokkaido, when you get your asses beaten to a pulp by a team that had NEVER previously defeated a major-conference school at home, you have issues which need to be addressed. The fact that they’re a defending conference champion is also irrelevant to me; that does not change the irrefutable fact that Boston College sucked on Saturday night. Yeah, UCF might have run up the score at the end, but BC still only scored three points. If you’re keeping track, that is now eighteen (18) FBS games in a row in which they have not made it to 30 points, and thirteen (13) games in a row against all opposition scoring 25 or less. That symbolizes a deep, deep problem in the offense of this team, and in a way, I can’t fault the defense for cracking, because they were out there for essentially the whole game. They have, however, cracked in a big way early on in the 2011 season.

Tomorrow, more on how I think this thing may shake out for the remainder of the season. I have blame to freely distribute for the ghastly football we’ve seen these first two weeks.