Boston College Football at Syracuse: An Overview of the Matchup and All Time Series

Here is everything there is to know about the BC-Syracuse football matchup on Saturday, which marks the program's 2025 season finale.

Nov 9, 2024; Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA; Boston College Eagles running back Jordan McDonald (24) runs against the Syracuse Orange during the second half at Alumni Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brian Fluharty-Imagn Images | Brian Fluharty-Imagn Images

The statistical comparison between the Boston College Eagles (1-10, 0-7 ACC) football team and the Syracuse Orange (3-8, 1-6), who will square off on Saturday at 3 p.m. to determine the last-place team in the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2025, are somewhat identical this year—similar, but not impressive, to say the least.

The Orange’s offensive ranks are - 

Overall: 347.8 yards per game (96th in FBS)
Passing: 231.1 yards per game (66th)
Rushing: 116.7 yards per game (119th)
Scoring: 20.9 points per game (115th)

BC’s are -

Overall: 378.9 yards per game (77th in FBS)
Passing: 278.7 yards per game (20th)
Rushing: 100.2 yards per game (129th)
Scoring: 24.6 points per game (88th)

Offensively, the Eagles possess an edge over Syracuse because of their passing offense, but the difference between the 96th-ranked offense in the nation and the 77th-ranked is merely decided by 31 yards of total offense per outing.

With that being said, the Orange looked the worst they have all season this past weekend in a 70-7, blowout loss on the road to Notre Dame, in which head coach Fran Brown called on true freshman quarterback Joseph Filardi to make his first collegiate start.

Filardi went 14-of-26 passing for 83 yards, tossed three interceptions and was sacked four times.

BC, on the other hand, had arguably its best offensive performance of the season—apart from its Week-One victory over Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) Fordham—a week prior to this past Saturday in a 36-34 home loss to No. 16 Georgia Tech.

Redshirt-sophomore quarterback Dylan Lonergan looked like his first-couple-of-weeks self, passing for 362 yards on a completion rate of 65.0 percent and two touchdowns. The game could have easily ended in favor of the Eagles, who blew an 11-point lead going into the fourth quarter.

On defense, meanwhile, both Syracuse and BC are among the lowest tier of FBS teams in practically every statistical defensive category.

The Eagles’ defensive ranks are - 

Overall: 449.5 yards per game (131st in FBS)
Passing: 273.0 yards per game (132nd)
Rushing: 176.5 yards per game (108th)
Scoring: 34.6 points per game (126th)
Turnover margin: -9 (123rd)

The Orange’s are:

Overall: 427.5 yards per game (121st in FBS)
Passing: 248.9 yards per game (114th)
Rushing: 178.5 yards per game (113th)
Scoring: 35.0 (129th)
Turnover margin: -13 (134th)

According to FanDuel, BC opens the week as 3.5-point favorites on the road.

Next stop the 315#NEXTLEVEL | 🦅 pic.twitter.com/rzH7NAtS0g

— Boston College Football (@BCFootball) November 24, 2025

Another similarity between the programs is that both have a second-year head coach at the helm—Bill O’Brien for the Eagles and Fran Brown for the Orange—albeit the two could not have more different resumes.

Brown was just a defensive backs coach at Georgia for two seasons (2022-23) prior to joining Syracuse’s coaching staff and came from Rutgers beforehand as a defensive backs coach from 2020-21.

Brown had stints at Baylor, Temple and Paul VI High School in Haddonfield, N.J., as well, so his sudden rise to the apex of a Power-Four football program was an unlikely trajectory. Thanks to his recruiting prowess, though, Brown was able to deliver a 10-win season to the program in his first year, but the same cannot be said about his second, quite obviously.

O’Brien has been around the college- and professional-football landscape for over three decades now.

He served as the head coach of the Houston Texans from 2014-20 and Penn State from 2012-13, including as offensive coordinator during the peak of Tom Brady’s career in Foxborough, Mass., for the New England Patriots—O’Brien went from the wide receivers coach in 2008 to the quarterbacks coach from 2009-10, and served as the offensive coordinator in 2011.

O’Brien came back to the Patriots in 2023 as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, and he additionally served as the offensive coordinator at Alabama from 2021-22, helping turn Bryce Young, the Carolina Panthers starting quarterback now, into a Heisman-Trophy winner.

Before he was hired by BC Athletics Director Blake James on Feb. 9, 2024, he was set on becoming the next offensive coordinator at Ohio State.

Saturday’s season-finale contest will mark the second of O’Brien’s BC tenure against the Orange, and the same goes for Brown on the other side. As the only two true Northeast programs in the ACC, there has always been a rivalry-esque feel to matchups between the schools, particularly in football.

Syracuse holds a 24-34 lead in the all-time series, but the Eagles have triumphed in their last two games against the Orange heading into the 19th total matchup in the 21st century. 

In its last meeting, BC defeated the Orange, 37-31, in Chestnut Hill, Mass., on Nov. 9, 2024, which snapped a three-game losing streak and improved the Eagles’ record to 5-4 overall and 2-3 in the conference. The Orange fell to 6-3 and 3-3 in the ACC with the loss.

That contest featured a heavy BC rushing attack—senior running back Kye Robichaux and then-junior running back Jordan McDonald, currently a senior, combined for 335 rushing yards while McDonald scored four times on the ground—and a fierce Syracuse passing offense.

Senior quarterback Kyle McCord generated 392 yards and two scores through the air on 31-for-48 passing and redshirt-junior tight end Oronde Gadsden II caught nine of those passes for 114 yards and a touchdown, leading the pass-catching corps in the defeat.

The identity of the Eagles’ offensive scheme in 2025 primarily runs through the passing game thanks to redshirt-senior Lewis Bond, who carries the lead for most receptions in the country with 81 and just broke BC’s program record for career receptions and single-season receptions, both of which were held by Zay Flowers of the Baltimore Ravens.

With one game remaining in his career in the maroon and gold, Bond has 206 catches and counting.

The Orange have been forced to cycle through multiple starting quarterbacks after Notre Dame transfer Steve Angeli tore his Achilles tendon in Syracuse’s win against Clemson in Week Four. 

Before that, Angeli had completed 62.8 percent of his passes for 1,317 yards and 10 touchdowns with only two interceptions. Angeli, a junior, still leads the Orange in passing despite not playing since Sept. 20, when the Orange had a 3-1 record, which shows how vital he was to the program’s overall success.

Brown said that the future of the role belongs to Angeli, but there is always a chance that he transfers out of the program over the 2025-26 offseason.

The same is probably true of Lonergan for the Eagles, who has manufactured 2,017 passing yards, 12 touchdowns and five interceptions this year—even amid his midseason benching, when O’Brien elected to start redshirt-senior quarterback Grayson James in BC’s losses to UConn and SMU, which ultimately did not work out as fruitfully as O’Brien would have wanted.