2011 BC Football Retrospective, Part II: Defense
By Joe Micik
Secondary
Growing pains this year for the Boston College secondary, which lost manpower before they even saw a snap in 2011. Okechukwu Okoroha and Dominick LeGrande were on their way out the door in the summer, and that eliminated upperclassman depth in the Eagles’ defensive backfield. Freshmen like Al Louis-Jean and Sean Sylvia were thrust into action, as well as other inexperienced players like Hampton Hughes and Spenser Rositano. The young guy back here who really seemed to stand out this year, however, was Manny Asprilla. He came on strong and ended with 30 tackles in just eight games.
The cushion has annoyed me for years, and it especially did this year when it caused the Eagles pass defense to get gashed for sizable gains before anyone even got near the receiver. It became a little less of a problem when BC started playing teams that weren’t doing well, but opposing quarterbacks completed quite a bit of their passes against the Eagles (63% to be exact) and it truly harmed the team in the long run. Opposing teams had over 2900 yards of passing offense against BC this year, which was part of the 4,732 total yards allowed by the Eagles defense.
The pass defense had its hits and misses in every game, but the closest they came to a complete effort would have to be the Miami game, where they picked off Jacory Harris four times. Boston College had not been gaining turnovers, but got them in bunches in the season finale.