What went wrong in BC football’s shocking loss to Kansas
The Eagles entered as 21-point favorites, but the Jayhawks won, 48-24.
COMMENTARY
After a strong start to the season with convincing wins over Virginia Tech and Richmond, the Boston College football team entered Friday night’s showdown against Kansas with a chance to move to 3-0.
The Eagles entered as 21-point favorites, but it was the Jayhawks – 48-game road losing streak against Power 5 teams and all – who ended up running away with a dominant 48-24 win at Alumni Stadium.
Suddenly, the Eagles are 2-1 and everything isn’t quite as rosy as it once was. It’s a long season, and BC has plenty of time to regain momentum, but Friday’s humbling loss was certainly a step back for a team looking to establish itself as a consistent threat in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
“You’ve got to be able to stop the run before you can even stop the pass,” BC head coach Steve Addazio told reporters. “We didn’t stop anything, so, you know, we need to go back and take a look at where all these breakdowns are, personnel, scheme. You know, I mean, we sure practiced hard, I can promise you that. There’s no lack of effort, but I need to look at the tape.”
Here’s what went wrong for BC in the teams’ first-ever meeting:
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The defense struggled to make tackles and allowed big plays.
BC allowed a season-high 329 rushing yards to a Kansas team that came in averaging 138 per game.
In total, the Jayhawks racked up a whopping 567 yards of total offense, compared to 447 for the Eagles. BC trailed, 28-24, at halftime, and Kansas added 13 points in the third and seven in the fourth while the Eagles remained scoreless after the break.
When asked whether the poor tackling boils down to coaching or a lack of effort, Addazio put the onus on himself.
“That’s absolutely coachable,” he said. “That’s my responsibility to make sure that we tackle better than that. I thought we tackled well in game one. I thought we had some mixed bag on game two, and I thought we missed a lot of tackles.”
He was also asked whether Kansas’s sped-up offense affected the Eagles at all, and he acknowledged that it did. Addazio pointed out that the defense practices against up-tempo every day, but he said the execution simply wasn’t there in the game.
An 82-yard run by Khalil Herbert before halftime – which Addazio called a backbreaker – encapsulated the way the night unfolded as a whole for the defense. Though he believes part of the problem was the way his team played, the head coach was quick to give Kansas credit.
“I’m not shocked that they were going to be explosive like that, to be honest with you,” he told reporters. “What I was shocked about is what had happened (to Kansas) the two weeks prior after I watched the tape this week. Having said that, there’s no reason why we should play the way we did on the field today.”
The offense went cold in the second half.
With yet another hot start behind them, and a 24-21 lead to show for it, the offense then entered a rut the rest of the game.
The Eagles showed some signs sporadically, but for the most part, the offensive rhythm they built up to start the season had disappeared. BC went scoreless in the final 2:48 of the second quarter and throughout the entire second half, as Kansas scored 27 unanswered to stun the home crowd.
Quarterback Anthony Brown, who finished 18 for 36 with 195 yards and a touchdown, insisted this was an anomaly for an offense that is fully capable of putting up points in a hurry.
Brown found Korab Idrizi for a 20-yard strike and caught a 12-yard TD pass from CJ Lewis on a special play, but those were the only scoring plays he was involved in on the evening.
“I’m gonna promise you, you’re never going to see this again,” Brown said. “ … This week is going to be a huge week. We won’t let this turn into two, and you’ll see a complete 360. You won’t see this same team ever again.”
Junior running back AJ Dillon was a bright spot, racking up 154 yards and one touchdown on 27 carries. He registered his 17th career game with at least one rushing touchdown, moving into a tie with Andre Williams for third place in BC history with his 28th rushing TD. That puts him just five behind William Green.
He also posted his 13th career 100-yard game and became the sixth BC player to rush for 3,000 career yards, but it wasn’t enough as he only got five carries after halftime and the Eagles collectively sputtered in the second half.
Addazio said he felt as though the Eagles still had a chance as long as they kept it within 10, but once it escalated, it did so quickly and unforgivingly.
“In the second half, on offense, we did not have enough explosives,” Addazio said. “We missed too many opportunities. I don’t remember every drive right now, but there was some key penalties that were getting us off-schedule in the second half.”
He referenced a fumble, two offsides penalties, and some other critical mistakes that came at unfortunate junctures.
“In a game where, you know, if you don’t match every drive, and you get behind so quick, this is what can happen to you,” he said.
They didn’t capitalize on the momentum they had built up.
The Eagles came into this game with an ideal opportunity. They had a Friday night audience, a beatable opponent in front of them, and had shown plenty of promise to start the season.
It was fair for fans to expect a victory, and it was fair for them to be disappointed after a perplexing and unexpected blowout loss. The Jayhawks were sharp, and they deserved to win, but the Eagles know they’re capable of more.
BC had a prime chance to piece together a string of wins before its schedule gets tougher. The Eagles still have a chance to be 6-1 or 5-2 entering the Clemson game Oct. 26, but the players and coaches all agree it will take a lot crisper of an effort to get by Rutgers this Saturday and Wake Forest, Louisville, and NC State after that.
Said Addazio: “Going to get back to the drawing board here first thing in the morning, and put the film on, and we’re going to get better and take that down next week and play a much better football game.”
