2011 Virginia Tech Hokies Football: Va. Tech vs Boston College

If you want a competitive football game to watch this weekend, you have come to the wrong place. Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Virginia, has already witnessed one loss by the hometown Virginia Tech Hokies this season. It’s very safe to say that a second setback by the Gobblers is not likely to emerge in week eight of the college football season.

The Boston College Eagles fought the Hokies on even terms in a pair of ACC Championship Game slugfests in 2007 and 2008. When former BC coach Jeff Jagodzinski took over for Tom O’Brien, he squeezed the most out of the Eagles’ available stockpile of talent, guiding the Jesuit school in New England to twin showdowns against coach Frank Beamer’s Hokies, the class of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Those games both ended in defeat for Boston College, but the program still gained stature and respect across the national college football community.

The same can definitely not be said for the Eagles at the present time. Everything that Jagodzinski built has collapsed since his stormy departure, in which he interviewed for a job with the New York Jets and dared athletic director Gene DeFilippo to fire him. DeFilippo had publicly said that he’d fire Jagodzinski if the coach did interview for an NFL gig, and while Jagodzinski might have thought that his boss was bluffing, DeFilippo wasn’t. Frank Spaziani, the team’s popular and highly respected defensive coordinator, stepped in to coach the team in 2009, and in the two and a half years that he’s been on the job in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, it has become painfully clear that Spaziani is cut out for life as a defensive coordinator… not as a head coach. In his third season, Spaziani has looked on helplessly while the Eagles have fallen to the bottom of the ACC, below Duke and Virginia. The Eagles have only a home win over a Football Championship Subdivision team (Massachusetts), and they’ve lost home games to Duke, Wake Forest, and a 2-4 Northwestern side.

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The Eagles simply have no offense at all – they reside in the bottom 16 percent of the nation in points scored – and cannot give any sort of relief to a defense that has to stay on the field far too long in every game Boston College plays. BC boasts one of the very best individual players in college football, all-world linebacker Luke Kuechly, who already has 99 tackles to his credit through six games. However, Kuechly isn’t getting any help, and moreover, he’s making a number of those tackles only after opposing teams gain an appreciable amount of real estate. This just isn’t the Boston College program that won bowl games on a regular basis when O’Brien coached the team in the pre-Jagodzinski years. It’s hard to imagine how BC will scare Virginia Tech, if only because BC doesn’t have a lot of ammunition to offer.

As poor as Boston College has been, though, the other reason why this game smells like a blowout is that Virginia Tech is figuring out how to play offense. The Hokies scuffled through September, but have posted a pair of “38s” in October, lighting up the scoreboard against Miami and Wake Forest. Logan Thomas still isn’t a crisp passer, but he’s making big plays in the vertical passing game while running the ball with evident confidence. The light hasn’t turned all the way on, but it is slowly getting brighter for the Hokies’ first-year quarterback. If Thomas continues to improve at a steady and consistent pace, it’s hard to see how the Hokies will be denied in their quest to return to the ACC Championship Game. Boston College could only wish that it can play Virginia Tech on that stage… not this weekend.

Virginia Tech Hokies vs Boston College Eagles Football Preview