Bryce Steele, Boston College Defense Confident About Potential Heading Into 2025 Season
In this story:
Best defense in the Atlantic Coast Conference? Not good enough.
Best defense in the nation? According to Boston College football linebacker Bryce Steele, that is what the Eagles’ goal for the season is.
“[We want to be the best] extremely bad,” Steele said. “We talk about this everyday in the meeting room. We want to be the best defense not just in the ACC, but in the country.”
Through six days of fall training camp, BC’s defense has set the tone. They are keen on setting the record straight—that Boston College football’s defense is no joke in 2025.
Steele, who returned to action in 2024 after a cancer battle (thymoma) which forced him to miss the entire 2023 season, is in the company of an impressive group of defensive players which the Eagles possess on their 2025 roster.
KP Price, a hard-hitting safety who has registered countless pass break-ups in fall camp and was one of BC’s top tacklers in 2024, and Daveon “Bam” Crouch, a linebacker with a robust blend of speed, size and awareness, make up the leadership of the defensive core, but Steele is right behind them in those efforts.
All of the time that Steele missed from the football field as he resiliently fought through an aggressive tumor on the inside of his chest is in the past now. His focus is being with his teammates—his ‘brothers’—and making sure that every single player is locked in on a singular goal.
“And obviously that takes preparation,” Steele said. “So coming out day after day, and practicing hard, giving 110 percent effort each and every day, you know, trying to outwork your opponent. That’s something that all the guys have bought into and everyone’s doing continuously each and every day.”
It took Steele an entire odyssey to get to this point.
He dropped down in weight by roughly 50 pounds during his cancer battle, but his positive mentality never abandoned him.
Steele gives the utmost credit to BC’s strength and conditioning coach Craig Fitzgerald, who BC head coach Bill O’Brien has called the best strength and conditioning coach in the country, for helping him get back into game-ready shape.
“Given my health history and everything, that was really what I put a huge emphasis on this past summer—getting ready to be in game shape,” Steele said. “Doing extra stuff with [Fitzgerald], even after team workouts, has been extremely beneficial to me in this training camp. … Just taking care of my body off the field, recovery, eating right, putting the right stuff in my body, sleeping, obviously.”
Steele said that the main point of emphasis for the defense in the offseason was preparing for the upcoming year by watching more film. Film, according to Steele, is like a gateway into real-game situations, and Steele hopes to be prepared for live games from both a mental and physical standpoint.
“We've been watching film all summer,” Steele said. “We've been studying our playbook since, really, the winter. This is our third time kind of relearning the playbook and everything.”
Most of all, the reps that BC’s defense is receiving from the Eagles’ offense in fall training camp is an invaluable exercise to prepare for the upcoming 2025 campaign.
Steele said the defense is lucky that both potential starting quarterbacks, Grayson James and Dylan Lonergan, are able to test the defense from various angles and zones on the field.
“Both guys playing quarterback, Grayson and Dylan, have been giving us great looks from a defense perspective,” Steele said. “You know, it's tough because, I mean, they're both good at everything. [They can] run, throw the ball, [they’re] smart, intelligent players, and it's just making the defense better as a whole.”
Steele thinks that BC has a number of tough opponents on the schedule, so combining all of these factors into one and practicing them in a regiment is what will give the Eagles the best chance to vie for an ACC Championship.
Linebacker Bryce Steele on the defense’s goals:
— Graham Dietz (@graham_dietz) August 6, 2025
“[We want to be the best] extremely bad. We talk about this everyday in the meeting room. We want to be the best defense not just in the ACC, but in the country. … That’s something that all the guys have bought into.” pic.twitter.com/MI2ti0hhVE
While the defense has shown its grit through fall camp so far—via massive hits, interceptions, PBUs and composed tackling—statistics in the offseason are not a measure of success at the end of the day.
Steele doesn’t spend a minute thinking about his personal statistics, either.
“I'm not going to sit here and talk about statistics or anything, you know,” Steele said. “I really just want to go out, give my all each and every day, be the best teammate that I can possibly be, you know, bring guys along, coach up the younger guys and just try to get one percent better every day. That's really my emphasis.”
Graham Dietz is a 2025 graduate of Boston College and subsequently joined Boston College On SI. He previously served as an editor for The Heights, the independent student newspaper, from fall 2021, including as Sports Editor from 2022-23. Graham works for The Boston Globe as a sports correspondent, covering high school football, girls' basketball, and baseball. He was also a beat writer for the Chatham Anglers of the Cape Cod Baseball League in the summer of 2023.
Follow graham_dietz