Boston College at Virginia Tech: 5 Big Questions

4.) VT has outscored BC 97-26 in the last three meetings; is the difference between these two teams really that big, or were those just three bad games?

It really is as bad as it looks.

Right now, the Hokies are #12 in the BCS; we are pretty damn near the bottom of all the teams in BCS conferences. Virginia Tech does everything better than us across the board, and in some cases, it’s not even close. Looking at the offense/defense matchup articles from the last two days, one can see that the Eagles are at a substantial disadvantage on both sides of the football and are going to have to work hard to score 10 points, let alone win. This isn’t STG trying to be all depressing and woe-is-me: this is objective fact.

The first of those three losses was in 2008 at the ACC Championship (30-12 loss); it was in the pre-Spaz era, and a little too long ago, so I’ll leave it out. Take that 2009 game (48-14 loss at Blacksburg): the Eagles had just won an overtime game against Wake Forest that they were extremely fortunate to have pulled off after blowing a two-touchdown lead, followed by another solid win over Florida State at home. They then went back on the road and, like the Clemson game, got bombed hard. The Eagles completely mailed it in that Saturday afternoon, finally getting on the board in the fourth quarter when they were already down 34-0. For the game, BC was outgained 441 to 163.

Last time (19-0 home loss), the Eagles never got off the ground, but to their credit, the BC defense played pretty well all things considered. Mark Herzlich and company were on the field for over 33 minutes and only let the Hokies score one touchdown. The problem this time was the offense, which turned the ball over three times and was 4 of 15 on third downs.

This year, Virginia Tech seems to be firing on nearly all cylinders and the Eagles don’t even have the stout defense to keep them in games (and let’s be honest, without the defense doing its thing, BC doesn’t win more than 3 games last year). Make no mistake: this will be a very difficult game, and what makes it worse is that this 2011 team is worse than the last two which got blown out.