I think it was about five seconds after the game ended Saturday when BC fans started thinking about the eerie parallels to 2004. For those who have blocked it out of their memories, let’s recap.
-- BC wins on the road at Temple the week before Thanksgiving. Although the team won, they lost their starting QB with a broken hand.
-- They face Syracuse the following week at home with a redshirt freshman QB making his first start. Win and onto a guaranteed BCS game.
As we know, BC squandered the opportunity. Syracuse dominated the game from the start and BC was left wondering what happened.
Now just because hopes were dashed in 2004 doesn’t mean anything this time around. In fact, I’d like to point out a few critical differences between this game and that one.
-- This is not the final hurdle. Even if we beat Maryland, there is still the ACC championship game the following week. This team has a lot of work to do and probably won’t fall into the trap of looking ahead to the bowl game like the 2004 guys did.
-- This team has been in more of these pressure situations than their peers on the 2004 team. We were a clear middle-class program in 2004 and none of the guys had ever been in a BC game with real stakes. In fact they performed best when they had nothing to lose (Notre Dame, West Virginia). When the pressure was on, things were different. This group of guys has been in these types of games for five years. They haven’t won them all, but they certainly understand the pressure and focus involved in this game.
-- The defense is much better. 2004 had some standouts, but as a group this defense is much better than the group we fielded in 2004.
-- We have a different head coach and offensive coordinator. I always felt the guy most guilty of looking ahead in 2004 was TOB. The team came out flat and unprepared. I don’t think that will happen this week.
There are a million scenarios in play Saturday. Don’t let 2004 loom too large. If anything it should help keep everyone that much more focuses on the task at hand.
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9 comments:
After the game, that's the first thing I thought! Unlike 2004, the defense should pull us through!
Go Eagles!
And who was that redshirt freshman QB in 2004? None other than Matt Ryan.
I have seen a lot of criticism of Davis but you need to put this in perspective. Sure, there are some good freshman QB's in college football, but they started from Day 1 and were able to ease into college football by playing some patsies. Davis has to come off the bench in the most pressure-packed scenario possible: a battle for the division title.
BC has a very, very difficult situation to deal with now. It is what it is. A redshirt freshman is just not going to be as good as the starter. Thus, the players around Davis need to step up their play and we need a lot of luck to beat a tough Maryland team.
Let's plead for the local alumni who live so close to do what they can to attend this game. Davis and Company need all the support they can get.
I'm not that concerned about Davis. He looked good when he was in during the UCF game, I didn't understand why he wasn't doing anything this weekend until the last drive.
Well it looks like some of you got what you wanted, Crane is out and the pup is you're starter. I wish it didn't have to happen this way of course. I don't think anyone really did either. But face it our team has been working four years for this moment, and when they could of quit, they kept at it. This is something special.
Another difference: Tom O'Brien isn't coaching this team. Those teams of the early 2000s were the Sisyphus' of BC - never able to get the rock up the hill.
I think Jags knows how to motivate these guys and get them ready to play better than O'Brien did.
Has anyone wondered by CBSportsline has us in the Orange Bowl against CINN? They must just be looking at the record and the teams we'd have to beat without knowing the adversity this team will have to collectively overcome. It will be very difficult.
Yeah chicagofire, your so right!
I absolutely hate it when the media supports BC and thinks well of us. I sure wish they had penciled us into the pizza.com Mississippi Bowl.
[end sarcasm]
cfire: all bowl projections are purely knee-jerk reactions. If BC was penciled in for Boise, fans would bitch about no respect; if we get an optimistic nod for the Orange, we get clowns like you bemoaning what, optimistic BC press?
I'll take over-exuberant optimism to general press apathy that always befalls this team in our underrated early season rankings any day.
At the end of the day, all that matters is Maryland on Sat.: let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The key difference, as somone else pointed out, unlike 2004 we have no Hen on the sideline and have a real coach.
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