We’re finally here! On Saturday afternoon, the Boston College football team will host the Fordham Rams at Alumni Stadium for their first game of the 2025 regular season. The forecast for Saturday is 72 degrees and sunny for what should be a BC beatdown.
Expectations for Boston College in 2025
According to FanDuel Sportsbook, Boston College has +7000 odds (1 in 71) to win the ACC and +3500 odds (1 in 36) to make the College Football Playoff. So unfortunately it doesn’t look like the team is expected
to be competitive nationally at all, especially considering their tough schedule.
FanDuel puts BC’s over/under win total at 5.5, with +104 odds to go over and -128 odds to go under, which means that they expect BC to finish the season at 5-7. We talked last week about how our expectations are a bit higher than that, but the ballpark seems about right. With lots of turnover on the offensive and defensive lines, we can’t be quite sure that the Eagles will be able to string together many wins in the ACC. But if Dylan Lonergan turns into a great QB in his first season under center, that opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
I think there’s a lot of optimism around the team in general this year. Year 1 of Bill O’Brien was a success and there’s a lot of reasons to think the team could be even better this season. They’re bringing back a lot of key playmakers on offense especially, they have a new QB that beat out Grayson James in training camp, and their losses in the trenches could end up being overblown. The team will also be well-disciplined like usual and BoB will put them in a position to win close games. The optimist in me says that an 8+ win season could even be attainable if everything goes well.
But I still have some deep mental scars from that 2022 offensive line under Jeff Hafley that failed to protect Phil Jurkovec. The OL was the biggest reason BC tanked that season. I trust BoB more than I trusted Hafley, though, and we still have some key veterans like Logan Taylor, Jude Bowry, and Dwayne Allick coming back from last year. My bigger concern may actually be the defensive line, which is losing 4 starters, with only Quintayvious Hutchins really giving me any hope.
I’ll be very surprised if BC doesn’t dominate Fordham on Saturday. We’ll finally get to see Lonergan in action at Alumni Stadium, but otherwise we won’t really learn much about this team from that game. That will have to wait until Week 2 against Michigan State.
This Season’s College Football Landscape
Looking at the rest of the ACC, FanDuel expects Clemson to be the favorite to win the conference, followed by Miami, Louisville, and SMU with odds that are better than 1 in 10. BC faces three of those four teams this season. You can read about all of these match-ups in our preseason preview series.
Nationally, though, Clemson barely reaches contender status. There’s a clear top-4 expected to make a run at the national championship this season: Texas, Georgia, Ohio State, and Penn State. Clemson falls more into that second tier of teams that includes Alabama, LSU, Oregon, and Notre Dame. And the ACC will probably be a 0ne-bid conference to the CFP this season, unless we get a surprise conference winner like we saw with Clemson last season.
