Everything Boston College Football Head Coach Bill O’Brien Said on Day 1 of Spring Practice

The Eagles kicked off spring practice on Tuesday.

Boston College Athletics

The Boston College Eagles football team kicked off spring practice on Tuesday. 

After practice, Eagles head coach Bill O’Brien spoke about how the offseason has gone so far, the format of the spring schedule, and what’s he’s seen from the team so far. 

Below is a transcript of everything O’Brien said. 

Q: Grayson [James] showed he can win in this league last year. Just where’s his confidence and compete level coming on the first day?

O’BRIEN: Yeah, Grayson's had a good offseason. He's worked very hard. Very smart guy. I really like the whole quarterback room. Very impressed with those guys in the winter conditioning and when we've had the chance to meet with them. And football IQ is really good in that room. Yeah, Grayson's had a good offseason. Dylan has, Shaker has, and Jacobe has. All four of those guys have done a good job. 

Q: Can you compare year one with the program versus year two, just kind of the changes of it all?

O’BRIEN: Yeah, I was thinking about that today. I think that these guys have a better idea of how we practice, so this day today compared to this day a year ago is definitely, from a tempo standpoint, from an understanding how we do things, drills, all the different things that go into how we practice, I think it was better, but we got a long way to go. But year two is definitely a little bit farther ahead than where we were in year one at this point. 

Q: What's your approach in the offseason personally? How do you tackle it? Like logistically, when you kind of look at the points of emphasis, what do you do? 

O’BRIEN: Well, we divide it up into different parts of the offseason. So, winter conditioning was seven weeks. We conditioned and lifted five days a week with Fitzy [Craig Fitzgerald] and his crew and now we transition into spring practice. So, we have about five weeks of that, 15 practices, and then they take final exams in May, and then we transition into summer conditioning which is another whole deal, and then we transition into training camp. So the year is divided into different segments so that's kind of how I approach it and just try to take it one day at a time. Get better every day. 

Q: With that year under your belt, is there any adjustments you made in how you approach spring ball that's different from last year that you learned? 

O’BRIEN: Yeah, we're doing some different things drill wise. We're always trying to evolve. I mean, I think the structure of practice is pretty much the same because that's what we believe in, right? Going from offense [to] defense to special teams, it's not a game, but you try to make it like a game. Go from this to okay now we have to punt, or we have punt return or kickoff. Today we're doing drills and special teams and things like that, so the foundation of the practice doesn't change. But some of the drills we studied, we researched over the offseason, and we're doing some different things, but the foundation of it stays the same.

Q: No spring game this year. Just any reason why or just sort of that’s how college football is going?

O’BRIEN: Nah, I don't really look at the reasons why other guys are doing it. For me, it's just really several things. Primarily, it's just we're going to practice that day. So it'll be a scrimmage type day. The energy in here on Saturdays last spring, just normal Saturdays with recruits in the building and former players and alums, we had a great energy and so that was a lot better than going into Alumni and having a spring game. So we're going to do that and maybe we'll do some internal stuff relative to videoing and things like that to send out to the public, but I just want to have another 15th practice.

Q: How did these first day of spring practices go for you as far as like an evaluation period? Can you start to make any kind of determinations or are you just kind of feeling everything out?

O’BRIEN: Yeah, I don't think that we you can make any determinations off of day one because it's not real football, right? We're not in pads, we're in helmets and shells. So anything that you're thinking about is just based on the guy knowing his assignment, maybe his level of conditioning which all these guys for this time of the year are in really good condition because they just came off of a winter conditioning program that was pretty challenging. But you're not making any determinations. I told them, in fact, Sunday when we met [that] we have to divide the team up into ones, twos, threes and fours, but there's really no depth chart, right? You see guys that are playing with the threes like Ty Clemons, like he's kind of a starter. He played a lot of football for us last year, right? The greatest example from last year is Jordan McDonald. He was on the scout team. Well, he ended up being our one of our top two running backs last year at the end of the season. So there's no depth chart, right? Just show up, bring some good energy, a good attitude, and try to get better every day. That's what I try to ask these guys to do and that's what they do. They give us great effort.

Q: Back to that no spring game. Would that include balanced scrimmages though? 

O’BRIEN: So every Saturday we'll have a scrimmage. That's what I'm saying. So every Saturday will be a full padded scrimmage, that's exactly what I'm saying. And do it in here, maybe out on the field if it's real nice. It'll be live scrimmage. Yeah, it'll be. I think you were probably at some of our scrimmages last spring. It'll be 100-play scrimmages where we get a lot of evaluation done on these guys. And yeah, it'll be a great opportunity for all these guys to show us what they can do. No doubt.

Q: Seems like you have a lot of depth in the secondary.

O’BRIEN: Yeah, we do. We have a lot of young guys. Feel really good about that. We got a lot of depth at wide receiver. We really have depth everywhere except right now in the spring and inside linebacker, we have some guys out with some offseason surgery so Bam’s out and Owen McGowan's out and Kemori Dixon’s out, but other than that every position has pretty decent depth.