Boston College Football: Did They Improve in 2020?

Boston College completed their 2020 regular season, finishing the year at 6-5. The Eagles were one of only a handful of teams to actually play 11 games, and one of a few to play nine games in a row. We have said Jeff Hafley took the team in the right direction, but do the statistics bear that out. To get one perspective we used the FPI system on ESPN to analyze the year and compared it to 2019.

ESPN uses FPI to rank teams. Per ESPN "FPI represents how many points above or below average a team is. Projected results are based on 20,000 simulations of the rest of the season using FPI, results to date, and the remaining schedule. Ratings and projections update daily. FPI data from seasons prior to 2019 may not be complete."

This season the Eagles ranked 56th, up from 62 last year. Here are how their wins and losses ended up. The FPI ranking of each team is in parenthesis.

Wins
Louisville (36)
Pittsburgh (40)
Georgia Tech (88)
Duke (98)
Syracuse (101)
Texas State (115)

Losses
Clemson (3)
Notre Dame (6)
UNC (24)
Virginia Tech (31)
Virginia (58)

Analysis: Looking at the teams wins and losses, Boston College won all the games they should have won. On top of that there were no huge upsets for Jeff Hafley's squad, but on the flip side there were no upsets either. Though to be fair the Eagles hung with almost every team on their schedule, the same could not be said for teams in year's past.

There were five 50/50 matchups and they ended up winning three of them. In terms of improvement over last season, Steve Addazio's best win in 2019 was over Virginia Tech who was ranked 48th on FPI, and his worst loss was to Kansas (106). That means that using this system, Jeff Hafley had two better wins, and no losses that came even close to what happened in 2019.

Using the FPI you can see that the Eagles took a step in the right direction in 2020. Clearly there is still room for growth, but even in a tough year Boston College took a step forward this year.