BC 45, UMass 17: Curb your enthusiasm?

At least we know the Eagles won’t fall to 0-12 — in some sense, that’s at least a comforting thought.

Frank Spaziani will officially avoid getting Ed Chlebek’d this season as Boston College found a way to beat Massachusetts by a 45-17 score at Alumni Stadium. The win brings the Eagles up to 1-3 (0-1) on the season.

I can’t go any further in this analysis without saying that I’m glad BC finally found their way into the win column, and that they also finally did what they had to do. With all of that said, however, keep in mind who the Eagles played. They didn’t beat Florida State, LSU, or Alabama; they beat an FCS team. This game went exactly the way it was supposed to go, and while you as fans are certainly within your rights to retain some sort of optimism, just be mindful to take this game for what it was and enjoy appropriately.

The Minutemen offense looked bad, and so did their defense. They basically did nothing right in the entire game and, as a result, the Eagles looked much, much better than they had been in previous weeks. While I have no desire to read too much into what we saw out there today, one thing I will try to read into is Chase Rettig’s play. He threw a lot of nice passes today, although against UMass. If he could look like that the entire season, the Eagles would get better results than they have to this point.

The Eagles also did a good job today of converting on third downs. UMass was doing fine in stopping the Eagles on first and second down, but when it came to third down, Rettig would often come up throwing and find his man.

The defense made the plays it had to make as well, making Kellen Pagel look very uncomfortable and very raw under center and limiting Jonathan Hernandez on the ground. They also came up with a number of turnovers, some of which were caused by colossal mistakes by the Minutemen. The offensive stats (in terms of yardage) look a lot closer than the game actually was.

This was the first time since October 17, 2009 that Boston College crossed the forty-point threshhold, though the Eagles still haven’t done it against an FBS team since October 31 of the same year when they blasted Central Michigan.

I’m not trying to take anything away from what Boston College did today, but take this game for what it is. It was evident very early on that UMass, despite somehow being ranked in the FCS Coaches poll, is a vastly inferior team, and the Eagles played accordingly for the most part. Boston College had to punch them in the mouth, and that’s what they did.

I can think of all kinds of names I’m going to be called by certain fans, but permit me not to get too carried away. You’ll forgive me if I want to see them beat a few real teams first before I believe they’ve turned anything around, but for today, they’ve accomplished what they had to accomplish. This is what an FBS-AQ team is supposed to do to an FCS team, and I’m glad our collective fears of a close, ugly game were allayed.

All week, I stated my belief that Boston College would win this game since it was the easiest on the schedule and it was played against a clearly lesser opponent. They won, so you the fans should enjoy it, and the players should also enjoy it. Worry about next week and what else is to come on the schedule later.