Boston College Defense Improves But Still Has Long Way To Go

Better effort against Rutgers, but still needs to get better for upcoming games

One of the biggest question marks going into Saturday's game against Rutgers was the play of the defense. Just the week before, they were gashed by a Kansas offense that really hadn't shown much before to the tune of 48 points and 350 yards on the ground. Against Rutgers you had to wonder if they could stop a team that had been notoriously poor on the offensive side of the ball. Did we see that on Saturday, well depends on who you ask. Steve Addazio felt positive about their play:

But was the defense good enough? Let's start with the positives. Last week against Kansas, Khalil Herbert and Pooka Williams gashed BC for 350 yards on the ground an incredible 7.3 yards per carry. Against the Scarlet Knights, BC clamped down, holding Rutgers to 76 yards or 2.9 yards per carry. A lot of the credit for this drastically improved play has to go to the defensive line and linebackers who played much better than last Friday. The other positive was the two takeaways, which proved to be the difference maker in this game. Addazio's defense has lived and died by the turnover and they had two against Rutgers. 

Now on to the not so good....

Artur Sitkowski a backup quarterback who last year threw for 1158 yards 4 touchdowns and 18 interceptions looked strong against the Eagles. A career 49% thrower, Sitkowski completed 69% of his passes, while averaging 9.2 yards per attempt a marked doubling of his career average of 4.2. 

Of course the number that I look at that still concerns me are the sacks. Or lack there of. For the second straight game BC had zero sacks, and did not consistently get pressure on the quarterback all game. This is going to be a major problem when they start facing better competition starting this weekend with Jamie Newman and Wake Forest. If Newman has all the time in the world to make his reads he is going to pick apart this defense and have a lot of success. 

Explosive plays should be another piece of data that needs to be examined. It proved to be a killer against Kansas as the Jayhawks racked up 9 explosive plays of 20 yards or more against the Eagles. The numbers don't show a huge improvement against Rutgers as they allowed 6 plays of that length. Better, but against a weaker offense you should want to see a marked change. If last week's slight improvement was just due to a poorer opposing offense Boston College could be in big trouble as Wake Forest is 12th in the country in plays of 20 yards or more. 

As the stats show, the defense did improve, but probably not to the level it needed to especially against a bad offense like Rutgers. This week the level of opponent takes an exponential leap as Wake Forest, and their 11th ranked offense come to town. BC is going to need to take a huge leap in terms of their defensive play or it could be a rough game on Saturday.