Instant Analysis: Maryland-Boston College

In the shadows of New England’s “other” football team, Boston College boss Jeff Jagodzinski has quietly yet unmistakably done the best coaching job this side of Bill Belichick. Saturday evening in Chestnut Hill, Mass., the man they call “Jags” was rewarded for his performance in 2008, as the Eagles confounded the college football cognoscenti.

Yes, Boston College was favored to beat Maryland in today’s ACC regular-season finale, but just a few weeks earlier, few pundits (this one included) were thinking that the BC boys were going to defend their ACC Atlantic Division title. This toppling of Ralph Friedgen’s Terps achieved that very goal, and so--in a shocking development from a wide-open ACC that turned logic on its head all season long—the 2008 ACC title tilt will be exactly as it was in 2007. Boston College will take the Atlantic banner into battle against Coastal king Virginia Tech. One year’s joust in Jacksonville will become this year’s tussle in Tampa. The fact that the Hokies reclaimed their division is one thing; BC’s ability to defend its own half of the ACC is far more remarkable.

For starters—and that’s meant quite literally—a fellow named Matt Ryan (you might have heard of him) no longer played college football for Boston College this season. That was just a slightly significant loss for Jagodzinski and his staff. Chris Crane filled in admirably under center, as the BC braintrust prepared him thoroughly through the first 11 games of the season. But in that eleventh game against Wake Forest, Crane got knocked out with an injury, forcing Dominique Davis to fill in. Predictably, Davis struggled, but the quality of Jagodzinski’s coaching came into focus when his untested second-stringer was able to stare down late-game pressure and direct the Eagles to their only offensive touchdown of the afternoon. Davis’s dynamic drive took down the Demon Deacons, enabling the Eagles to claim the Atlantic today against Maryland.

Need more proof of the football acumen of Mr. Jagodzinski? Given a week to really prepare Davis for this donnybrook against a solid defense from College Park, Jagodzinski was able to coax a turnover-free performance from Davis, who performed extremely well in a pressure-cooker situation. Not spectacular but certainly solid, Davis enabled the other side of the ball to excel, as coordinator Frank Spaziani—one of two Tom O’Brien assistants who stayed with Jags in New England—watched his defense pluck a pair of game-changing interceptions, one of them a pick-six from Robert Francois that sealed the win with 1:42 left in the fourth quarter. Like almost every other team in the ACC (Georgia Tech being the lone exception), Boston College won’t light up the scoreboard. But in a league filled with evenly-matched teams, the Eagles were consistently able to outlast and outwit their foes. Jeff Jagodzinski and his team certainly qualify as gritty and gutsy survivors. Now they’ll travel to Tampa to see if they can win the conference crown Virginia Tech took from them the year before.