Boston College at Virginia Tech: BC Offense vs. VT Defense
By Joe Micik
What happens when you take a 1-5 team’s least-effective unit and put them up against the #16 team in the country’s (arguably) most-effective unit? You get this game, and on paper, it looks about as ugly a matchup as we will see this season from a Boston College perspective.
When the Eagles are playing Virginia Tech, their offense usually doesn’t show up. It’s been this way since Boston College joined the ACC, and the point totals back it up:
2010: 0 points (L)
2009: 14 points (L)
2008: 28 points (W), 12 points (L)
2007: 14 points (W), 16 points (L)
2006: 22 points (W)
2005: 10 points (L)
In Boston College’s eight games against the Hokies since joining the ACC, they have averaged 16.6 points per game. With the Eagles’ offense being what it is this year, there is absolutely no reason to expect that things will go any differently now. We’ve hashed and rehashed the stats all before, and will do so again shortly.
What makes this a particularly daunting task is that Virginia Tech’s scoring defense is ranked #1 in the ACC, and 14th in FBS by allowing just 16.43 points per game. Cutting out the four early cupcakes, it goes up to 25 points per game, which, even including UMass, is still slightly less than what Boston College’s defense has allowed (25.67), for purposes of comparison.
Now for those dreaded offensive statistics, which for the last few years haven’t seemed to have gotten any better from week to week. In terms of scoring offense, it’s 19.5 points per game, 105th in FBS and dead last in the ACC. Eliminating the UMass game and putting it against only FBS competition, it falls to only 14.4 points per game. The Eagles offense has been highly consistent, continuing to score about 10-19 points per game almost every time they go out onto the field. They’ve done it four times this season (17 against Northwestern, 19 against Duke and Wake Forest, and 14 against Clemson) and been in the 10s seventeen times since the Spaziani regime took over. What’s curious is that despite all of their problems offensively, they’ve only been in single-digits three times in the last three seasons to date (7 against Clemson in 2009, 0 against VT in 2010, and 3 against UCF in 2011). Boston College has made it over 20 points in a game 12 times since 2009, but half of those were in the 2009 season, and the Eagles haven’t done it against an FBS opponent since they put all of 21 points on Duke last year.
The 30-point plateau remains an unknown to the Eagles; their FBS streak of sub-30 games, which I’ve been tracking since last year and will continue to track until it ends, is at 21 straight games. It seems extremely unlikely they’ll snap that swoon against the Hokies, who (generally speaking) have had BC’s number defensively for the last six-plus seasons. Bud Foster never cuts us a break, and I don’t see how this offense as presently constituted will be able to get anything going.
Last week, in Virginia Tech’s victory over Wake Forest, they struggled defensively early on, allowing 138 yards in the first quarter, but only 182 in the final three while their offense took over. It was borderline scary how the Hokies took that game over completely from the second quarter on, and it definitely doesn’t bode well for this game.
Here are some other statistics and how they match up, with FBS ranks in parenthesis:
Boston College |
Virginia Tech
Total offense317.83 ypg (105
th
FBS)Total defense298.14 ypg (15
th
FBS)Scoring offense19.5 ppg (105
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FBS)Scoring defense16.43 ppg (14
th
FBS)Pass efficiency110.02 (104
th
FBS)Pass efficiency defense110.69 (20
th
FBS)Sacks allowed2.33 pg (81
st
FBS)Sacks3.14 pg (13
th
FBS)Turnovers lost8 (T-21
st
FBS)Turnovers gained11 (T-50
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FBS)3
rd
downs37.93% (80
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FBS)3
rd
down defense30% (13
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FBS)Red zone79% (T-78
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FBS)Red zone defense73% (T-20
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FBS)
There is no other way to say it: this is a complete mismatch; about as big of one as you will see in a conference game, at least on paper. Strong advantage to the Hokies when these two units are on the field.