Villanova at Boston College: 5 Big Questions

2. We’re finally going to see Don Brown’s defense; what will it look like against Villanova?

The Brown defense has been described as “organized chaos” where the team is blitzing often. Compare this to the Spaziani-McGovern defense which was more conservative and preventative in nature and you have executed a complete, 180-degree change in philosophy.

To be honest, I don’t think we can know what it’s going to look like because we have never seen this personnel do it. Brown’s defensive scheme, while very exciting to consider, is so contrary to everything these guys had been doing before that we cannot even visualize it or point to a frame of reference.

We can, however, make a guess. Villanova has some big guys on their offensive line but even so, their quarterback(s) got sacked 26 times last season. Some of that may have to do with the offense being a run-first unit and the quarterback carried 189 times last year, but Villanova still took those losses. Blitzing will probably have some impact against this team and the linebackers are good enough to help in run support.

I expect that we are going to see the new scheme and, in our amazement, wonder if this is really Boston College football.