The Tailgate: Florida State - Boston College Athletics (2024)

The narrative surrounding last year's Red Bandanna Game didn't paint the rosiest picture of Boston College's chances against the mighty Florida State Seminoles. FSU was the No. 3 team in the nation and carried front-runner status for both an Atlantic Coast Conference championship and a College Football Playoff appearance when it rolled into Chestnut Hill for a mid-September afternoon, and the Eagles weren't exactly the highest-touted opponent on a schedule that dealt with LSU in the first week of the season.

BC was no slouch, but the 1-1 Eagles lost their season opener to Northern Illinois after a quarterback shuffle yielded little sustained success. A win over Holy Cross had required the last 90 seconds after a two-hour lightning day, and while the Red Bandanna Game offered a natural fuel injection to the roster, experts easily saw FSU walking through Chestnut Hill because of the Eagles' perceived lack of five-star thoroughbreds.

They certainly didn't expect the breakout performance by quarterback Thomas Castellanos and a second half comeback that nearly ended the argument about FSU's College Football Playoff hopes long before the Seminoles finished outside the two-loss Texas and Alabama teams in the year-end rankings.

"We knew they were going to pressure us," the quarterback said after the game. "They have a good front [on the defensive line], and we knew those guys were going to be coming. Just seeing that and being patient and waiting for holes to open up in the passing game, I used that to my advantage."

Castellanos smashed more than 400 yards directly into the teeth of a stingy FSU defense and in the process became the 22nd FBS quarterback in the last three decadesto register at least 305 yards passing and 95 yards rushing against a top-25 opponent. For a quarterback that hadn't been with the team ahead of training camp in August, it was equal parts impressive and revolutionary since the offense hadn't been built around his skill set during the offseason. That his success and ability to grab the No. 1 spot on the depth chart forced BC to adapt on the fly felt virtually unprecedented to a team that didn't include a full-fledged install around his talent, but it left little doubt to the potential screaming from the corners of Alumni Stadium.

It's ironic, then, that FSU hosts BC for the Eagles' season opener in a year when Castellanos is the undisputed top quarterback of a system that's transitioned to new coaching. Having had the full year to scheme and find his groove with the rest of the offense offers a second dose of the unknown to a Seminole roster that can't quite prepare for the same film as last season, but the reputation of the true dual-threat is simultaneously hard-coded to the rest of college football with the memory of BC's Fenway Bowl win over a nationally-ranked Southern Methodist roster.

Castellanos is a known commodity, but he's the centerpiece of an offense nobody knows how to gauge, thereby creating the feeling that Boston is readying to explode with more excitement and electricity. The breakout performance from last year's game against FSU is equally in the rearview mirror and front and center ahead of Saturday, but the only thing guaranteed is that Castellanos and the offense are prepared - wholly prepared - for an opponent already with a loss in hand and its back potentially in the corner of a more dangerous wall.

Here's what to watch for when the Eagles open their season against the defending conference champions:

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Ducard: You traveled the world, now you must journey inwards, to what you really fear. It's inside you. There is no turning back.

Last season ended in flames for a Florida State team that, by all accounts, should have been in the College Football Playoff after finishing the season as an undefeated Power Five conference champion, but the shoo-in status never came to fruition after the selection committee opted for two-loss champions from the Big 12 and SEC instead. One-loss Georgia was likewise omitted, but because the Bulldogs lost the SEC Championship to Alabama, an Orange Bowl matchup against Florida State materialized and subsequently ended in an anticlimactic, 63-3 blowout.

The Week Zero loss to Georgia Tech prolonged the Seminoles' negativevibes, but the significant early-season blow gained less traction after FSU returned home from Dublin's disappointment. They are, after all, still the No. 10 team in the nation because polls aren't updated until after this week's slate of games, and the spotlight intensifying on a team expected to at least appear in the field instead found an ultra-talented team readying for its first home game before a sold-out national television audience.

"If they won or if they lost, I don't know how they're feeling about it," admitted co-captain Drew Kendall, "but they played well. Georgia Tech came out and played a really solid game, but either way, we're going to go down, and we [need] to give it what we got."

It's important to contextualize how FSU lost last week's game against the Yellow Jackets. Sure, the offense didn't breach the 300-yard barrier. That's incredibly true. The defense, though, allowed 336 yards by allowing Georgia Tech to balance 190 yards on the ground against 146 yards passing. From the perspective of a pure scale, that's an average of 6.5 yards per play that significantly altered the time of possession to a 50-50 split and prevented FSU from fully dictating the pace or tempo on either side of the ball.

"You've got to prepare for all things," said FSU head coach Mike Norvell. "We'll have our thoughts on what we might see, but you've got to be able to adapt and react to what shows up. That's a part of it when you play in Week Zero and your first opponent is playing in their first game, especially with a brand new staff. It's a very talented staff with some talented players to be able work with, so we're excited for the week of preparation and doing everything we can to put our guys in the best position to go have success this week."

Alfred: I assume that as you're taking on the underworld, this symbol is a personal to protect those you care about from reprisals.
Bruce: You're thinking about Rachel?
Alfred: Actually, sir, I was thinking of myself.

Time of possession and balancing offensive output is a key fundamental to watch under any circ*mstance, but new BC head coach Bill O'Brien stems from a coaching tree grown from the seeds of complementary football while his team was at its best when it tore through defenses with its own brand of balance. Of the six regular season wins last year, five were within a stone's throw of a hard-nosed rushing attack or a precision-timed passing game, and in each circ*mstance, BC dictated pace by creating perfect ratios in its play-calling.

That doesn't mean running one pass for every two throws, but it does focus on the evening of production between the different phases. Against Holy Cross, for example, the Eagles evenly spaced 400 yards between the rushing and passing games before being forced into a 2:1 passing-to-rushing yardage by Florida State's halftime lead. The Virginia game two weeks after FSU came within 20 yards of an even split between the 203 yards rushing and 186 yards passing, and the Georgia Tech game likewise fell within 50 yards of an even rush-pass divide.

In fact, the only time BC didn't evenly split its output on offense in a win was in the Army game, but Mother Nature opted to dump a monsoon on West Point for that game - so nobody was throwing the football.

"We get better by meeting and talking about what we want to do," O'Brien said during August's local media day. "Then we get better by walkthroughs, and we get better by practice repetitions. These guys have done that. They've worked really hard. I think we're a better football team than we were at the end of spring, and now it's going to be a lot of fine tuning and making sure we try to stay as healthy as possible."

Bruce: Have you told anyone I'm coming back?
Alfred: Well, I just couldn't figure the legal ramifications of bringing you back from the dead.

Historic BC teams were at their best when defenses complemented offensive pace with a stout ability to stop opponents in their tracks. The teams dating back to the 2000s and the Big East era always managed to find a key turnover or sack when they needed to get off the field, yet arguably the greatest defense in college football history couldn't produce a bowl berth during the much-maligned 2015 season. As time marched forward, even the offensive-minded teams of the early 2020s found ways to score points and win games as long as they had a defensive effort capable of evening time of possession clocks.

O'Brien's resume is primarily built around his offensive prowess, but his full understanding of complementary football has BC's defensive hilt operating at a high premium ahead of the 2024 season. The 2023 season averaged over 380 yards allowed per game, and while the team had its moments, the lack of collective sacks or pressures on an opposing defense allowed too many schemes to break contaminants and free their production against the line of scrimmage or point of attack.

"[Our coaches] are technicians," said defensive back Max Tucker during training camp. "[Secondary coach Ray Brown] hones in on our technique, but he's also a motivator. He can get us going before practice, during practice. He makes sure the energy stays up. He's an energetic guy himself, so he brings the energy and helps us stay energized as well."

It's generally accepted that sacks are more exclusive to defensive linemen or linebackers. Modern thinking, though, extends well beyond the ability to bull-rush an offensive line or pressure some gap in the blocking scheme, and it contains parts of a BC mentality that's intertwined and interlinked into different areas. Defensive backs need to prevent receivers from getting open so their pass rush can bomb the backfield, and quarterbacks can't have the time or energy to operate an indemnified backfield.

Stop the receivers, and the quarterback fails. Stop the run, and the passing game has to become one-dimensional. Stop the offensive line, and nobody will have any time or space to do anything. It's all connected.

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Who leads the offense behind Thomas Castellanos?

Castellanos is a true double threat, and where he chooses to direct the passes is a matter of conjecture with the number of targets working against the top team defense throughout training camp. Lewis Bond and Dino Tomlin are the most obvious options as returnees. Kamari Morales, Jayden McGowan and Jerand Bradley are highly-valued incoming transfers. Jaedn Skeete is a young and emerging playmaker. Kye Robichaux and Treshaun Ward are in the backfield as runners.

By my count, that's nine different players who can touch the football on offense.

Which running back takes the lead?

Speaking of Robichaux, conversation about his production feels generally quiet given his under-the-radar breakout during last season. He started the year among the fourth string before injuries forced him into a lead role, and he rewarded BC with big game performances against Holy Cross and Georgia Tech. He spotted multiple fourth down conversions, including during the FSU game, and like Castellanos, he wasn't part of the game plan during those early snaps.

Giving him top shelf preparation therefore creates more opportunities for a true north-south bruiser, and pairing him with Ward and a young stable of backs gives BC different-branded spark plugs in its running room. Nearly everyone can get outside the tackle box on designed runs to their blocking scheme while simultaneously barreling through the line of scrimmage.

How many trucks get Storrowed this weekend?

Answer: Too many. Trucks don't go on Storrow Drive. There are signs explaining the height limits, and social media posts have gotten more and more entertaining through the years. Bottom line: if you're moving to the city this week, don't bring a moving truck on Storrow Drive or Soldiers Field Road unless you want to go viral among the locals.

Also, if there's a better term for a truck getting stuck on an underpass, I don't want to know what it is. "Storrowed" is such a piece of my vernacular. It's great. I recommend it for publication in the dictionary.

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Meteorology 101

Had this game been a standard Saturday kickoff, midday temperatures would have screamed north of 95 degrees with humidity leaking into oppressive percentages. Since it's a Monday night start time, kickoff temperatures are only going to hit 90 degrees with a chance of Florida thunderstorms.

Those five degrees make all the difference, or so I'm told.

All joking aside, conditions are a Florida brand of brutal, so managing the muggy and soupy conditions of the Panhandle is a big piece of playing September football.

It's paramount for players to cater their bodies to the conditions with proper hydration, and anyone heading to Florida for the game should take note of the heat and humidity. I'm a notorious cold weather person, so I'm officially lodging requests to have Florida State send us some heat to New England when it's February and wind chills are dipping into those below-zero areas.

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I honestly have no idea.

This was a first for me.

Bill O'Brien is one of football's most creative coaches. His success within the game is built on an ability to adapt a scheme to the personnel that he inherits and molds into his type of game. No scheme is therefore alike, and that he's coached and maximized talent at the professional and collegiate level makes him one of the more astute students of a game that he's coached for 30-plus years.

O'Brien stocked his coaching staff with people who are familiar with the BC program, and even the returning coaches are difficult to pinpoint how any one area of the scheme is going to appear on Monday night.It's impossible to predict this team based on its practice sessions and intrasquad scrimmages. Florida State, even, only has the one game in its back pocket. For the first time in my life, I have no idea what to expect.

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I swore I'd never complain about time's interminable clock. Time was time, I said, and it's impossible to complain about it flying or slowing down when logic says that a second isn't any faster or slower than any other second. At some point, I taught myself to enjoy experiences because the present tense stays in the present at any point in time. It doesn't change and doesn't get any faster or slower.

Then my three year old graduated from daycare, and I completely forgot everything I thought I knew.

I wasn't expecting to get emotional about everything. She was older, but that's expected since time moves on. Seeing the picture of the little girl in sweatpants and boots, though, murdered my soul because she's now this incredible human who can pick out her own dress. Neither my wife nor I could tie a ponytail in her short hair when she started daycare. We're now experts, and the girl who barely babbled doesn't stop talking about her friends, her daycare aunties, her real auntie, her mom, and her dad.

That last part killed me the most. We sat together on Wednesday morning and drew pictures together with her crayons and milk when she unprompted and unexpectedly handed me the paper as a gift, after which she hugged my arm and said, "I really love you, Daddy."

Boom. Done. Tears. My wife blithered. I blubbered. I spent the night with my younger daughter and saw a similar situation from someone approaching her second birthday. In that moment, I sure did wish I could stop time in its place and enjoy it a little longer.

Then came the night and my little one's molars erupted through her gums in the middle of the night. Our two girls threw some full-blown fisticuffs before our older daughter threw a complete meltdown as we left the end of a playground session. By the time we went to sleep, my wife and I had that thousand-yard stare associated with parents steamrolled by their children.

Thus, the yin and yang balanced each other out.

Life is good.

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You always hope for the best when you put something out and try to make the best music you can make, but you can't control what happens after that. -Chris Stapleton

I remember sitting in the second deck of Alumni Stadium after Matt Ryan threw a fourth quarter interception in the 2007 matchup against Florida State. Tropical weather churned away from New England but left us with enough bad weather to force us into those rubber fishing suits as Geno Hayes returned the pick for a touchdown. It was six days after Jonathan Papelbon struck out Seth Smith with a high cheese fastball to clinch a second World Series victory for the Red Sox and less than 10 days after Ryan's comeback made Lane Stadium go silent.

Game plans and schemes don't determine the outcome of any one particular game. Whatever happens is in the execution against another team, and on Saturday, the prediction machine finally stops for a Boston College team that's entering its new era.

It seriously doesn't get better than that.

Boston College and No. 10 Florida State are scheduled to kick off at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, September 2, 2024 from Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee, Florida. The game can be seen on national television via ESPN with online streaming available through the network's family of Internet and mobile device apps. The game can be heard on radio via the Boston College Sports Network, locally in Boston via WEEI 93.7 FM with streaming audio via the Audacy app and Satellite options on SiriusXM channel 106.