After a much-needed week off, the Jackets return to action by heading north to Chestnut Hill to take on some guys who used to be dudes.
The man who spawned the phrase “guys being dudes,” Steve Addazio,
hasn’t been Boston College’s coach since he was fired in 2019. His crime: being the second coming of Chan Gailey by having five 7-win seasons in his first six years. But while Gailey was immortalized for his insistence on starting Reggie Ball at all times through [Hendrix]fire and ruin, Addazio simply needed four seconds and seven words to cement his internet fame.
As it happens, the dude himself will be back in Chestnut Hill on Saturday as the TV crew’s color announcer alongside our own Wes Durham. Considering that since his departure BC has since been unable to surpass the highest highs of the Addazio regime (which, yes, would be any of his 7-win seasons), they may well be happy to take him back for a second stint at this point.
Addazio’s replacement at BC already abandoned ship to take an NFL assistant job, so instead Brent Key’s opponent will be one of his old mentors and the eternal Tech coaching candidate himself: Bill O’Brien.
O’Brien was a Tech assistant in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, serving as a graduate assistant and then running backs coach during Key’s entire Tech playing career. This also means O’Brien had the ultimate qualification for a certain subset of Tech boosters (namely, being part of the GT program in any respect during the George O’Leary era), and because he also had a decent two-year run as Penn State’s head coach well over a decade ago, he has automagically entered the conversation each time Tech has found itself hunting for a new football coach.
With luck, this year’s results might be enough to dissuade even those loyalists. After a respectable 7-6 showing (hey that sounds familiar) in O’Brien’s first season, in which they were a tough out against some good teams… BC will enter Saturday’s game with a 1-9 record this year, having lost nine straight games after a season-opening win over Fordham. The losing streak began with a very respectable showing in a 42-40 loss at Michigan State, but their last game, a 45-13 home loss to SMU, is more emblematic of their recent fortunes. The truest disappointment, of course, is that BC’s 0-6 record in ACC play is preventing Florida State from being tied for last in the ACC.
This team isn’t devoid of fun players necessarily. Or at least fun-named players. It’s a bit of a shame that their top running back hasn’t broken out into stardom purely because it’d be fun to see national discourse about Turbo Richard. And it’s hard not to be terrified of the idea of Tech randomly letting someone named (Kaelan) Chudzinski or (Jaedn) Skeete run wild with no warning. But this is still a 1-9 team that hasn’t shown too many signs of life recently and hasn’t had a bye week since mid-September.
This program hasn’t been in the gutter very often. There’s a not-too-distant history of success here, particularly going back to the Matt Ryan and Mark Herzlich era. BC still has more ACC title game appearances than Miami, after all. (But at this point, who doesn’t?) And besides, it could be worse. Take a look at BC men’s basketball: a few years ago they fired their head coach, and that was how I learned that some guy named Jim Christian had been their men’s basketball coach for seven years without me noticing.
Coming off a deflating loss that knocked their season sideways, the Jackets could use a chance to get back on track. On paper, this is a favorable matchup for the good guys, pitting the nation’s #19 scoring offense against the #128 scoring defense and offering an opportunity for Tech’s beleaguered defense to get back on track against a struggling opponent. But in what has been a truly vintage ACC season of utter nonsense results every week, nothing can ever be taken for granted.
