2013 Boston College Football Season In Review: General Improvement

Crystal LoGiudice-USA TODAY Sports

After being so rudely interrupted by the start of a new year and the need to assess the damage to the basketball team, now we officially conclude the 2013 Boston College football season with a series of reviews.

One year ago from right now, new Coach Steve Addazio had been on the job for about a month, was assembling his staff, and began recruiting. The 2014 class will sign next month and all things considered, it’s a very good one. That is just one of the general improvements made to the Eagles in the past year; specific improvements offensively and defensively will be addressed later.

When Addazio took over, Boston College football was at its lowest point in 35 years. The team was broken, the fans had given up, and there was nothing about which to smile. The 2012 Eagles went 2-10, their first ten-loss season in decades and the worst campaign in Chestnut Hill since Ed Chlebek’s first team went 0-11 in 1978. For a program that in the previous decade was frequently ranked and playing in bowl games, the later Frank Spaziani years brought an unprecedented level of losing.

In 2013, Addazio and the Eagles began the long and winding process of recovering this team’s pride. With seven wins, Boston College returned to a much more normal level of winning.

The Eagles’ five-win jump from 2012 to 2013 was one of the biggest in the program’s history. Though the AdvoCare V100 Bowl on New Year’s Eve did not turn out the way they wanted, Boston College had not been to a bowl game at all in several years; given the other most recent seasons, credit the Eagles for vastly improving upon their win total to get back to one.

Instrumental in the Eagles returning to the postseason was, amongst other things, the fact that they turned 2012 losses into 2013 wins. In fact, Boston College beat four teams this season — Wake Forest, Army, Virginia Tech, and NC State — to which they lost in 2012. The compete level of each one is a matter for debate, but you can only win the games on your schedule, and Boston College did a far better job of it in 2013.

Where the Eagles go from here, in 2014 and beyond, will be up for strong consideration over the course of the offseason. However, generally speaking, there is no debating that the 2013 Eagles were significantly better than the 2012 edition.