Boston College at Maryland: BC offense vs. MD defense

The Eagles offense has been nothing to write home about for three years now. In fact, this coming Monday, we will hit the two-year anniversary of the last time Boston College football scored 30 points on an FBS team. Will they prevent themselves from reaching that dubious milestone, or will yet another defense lull the Eagles to sleep?

First, the Boston College offense, and damn if it doesn’t stink to high heaven. I’m going on about it every week like a broken record, and that’s because nothing is changing. From Tranquill to Rogers (who is “sick”) to Brock, the Boston College offensive output is locked in static mode. This year, their points plateau seems to be even lower than it was last year, and that is extremely detrimental considering that the defense is not as smothering as it was in 2010. Boston College, as noted in the intro, hasn’t scored 30 points on an FBS team in almost two years, or 22-straight games. It has already been over two years since they last did that against a BCS-conference team (NC State on Oct. 17, 2009). They also have yet to crack 20 points against an FBS team this season; the last team against whom they did it was Duke on Nov. 13, 2010, so we’re coming close to the one-year anniversary of that.

Rather than beat myself senseless trying to put some depth in here regarding specific problems with the BC offense, of which BC fans are already well aware, including the offensive line, the quarterback, lack of player development, and everyone else, I’ll save myself the trouble and be very general. Chase Rettig has, at times, been failed by his offensive line, but to be fair, he has also had opportunities to be sharp and hasn’t always made the most of them. The offensive line hasn’t been standing up to tough ACC defensive fronts and has, at best, been inconsistent. Players are not developing as far as anyone can see, either; a bunch of players aren’t contributing, quite a few haven’t gotten any better, and several may have even gotten worse. That is a very quick summary of some of BC’s offensive problems, but is by no means all-encompassing.

When you have this kind of catastrophic failure extending over multiple seasons and involving a range of different players, who else can you blame but the coaches? Players are regressing and the quality of play on this offense has actually gotten worse, if one can believe that, since 2009. In 2009, I didn’t think it could get much worse, but in 2010, it did. Last year, I thought since we were so close to the bottom, there was no way the BC offense could be worse in 2011. And yet, here we are in 2011, talking about how the Eagles have somehow managed to top their own offensive inadequacy from last season, with no sign of busting loose.

Enter the Terps defense, which has been much maligned this year (and will be much maligned tomorrow by our guest blogger from Fansided’s Maryland blog, but in greater detail). In the last two games, in which they played Clemson and Florida State, they allowed 97 points and 1058 yards. Both, obviously, were losses. Now, they have the good fortune of facing a Boston College offense that essentially can’t score off of anyone.

The Maryland defense is statistically the worst in the ACC, allowing 31.4 points per game and 442 yards per game (both are dead last in the conference). But what luck, Boston College is statistically the worst offense in the ACC! The Eagles manage only 18.7 points per game (even less when you don’t count push-overs like UMass) and 311.3 yards per game. In both cases, the second-worst team is a good distance ahead of the Eagles.

Before my head begins to hurt, I’ll stop. When you put the worst offense in the ACC (and it’s really not even close) against the worst defense, there aren’t too many worse matchups you’re going to see over the course of a season. This is pure, race-to-the-bottom awful. I will call this a push because both of these units are horrid and neither deserve to be considered at an advantage.