The Boston College Eagles football team suffered its second loss of the season to the Stanford Cardinal 30-20 late Saturday night.
After the game, Eagles head coach Bill O’Brien spoke about what he saw from his team and what needs to improve.
Below is a transcript of everything O’Brien said.
Q: Up 17-6 there at the end of the half, chance to make it 20 or 24. What’d you see in that last few minutes and just sort of take me through that.
O’BRIEN: Yeah, 17-6, I don’t know. I have to go movie the film. There’s a lot to movie. We had the ball. We had our chances. We came away with field goals instead of touchdowns or turn the ball over on the one-yard line. We have to go back and we have to figure it out. We’re not a very good football team right today. So hopefully we can get better and we can work hard to improve during the bye week. I’m not going to go through, like, I don’t even know exactly what you’re talking about.
Q: Any thought to going for it on fourth down there late instead of the punt?
O’BRIEN: I did. We went for it on 4th-and-Goal from the 1. That was the one time we went for it. On that fourth down, I think there was seven minutes to go in the game. Is that right? Little over seven minutes to go. Yep. Yeah, no. It wasn’t a distance that I think was conducive to going for it at that point in time. Felt like we could get the ball back which I was wrong. So you can write that I was wrong and I should have gone for it.
Q: What’s the key to finding consistency offensively?
O’BRIEN: I have no idea. I have no clue. I’m trying hard to figure it out.
Q: Dylan threw his first interception today. Just wondering what kind of you talked about with him after he threw. It looked like maybe it brought him back down to earth a little bit after a great start to his career.
O’BRIEN: Brought him back down to earth? He threw an interception and moved onto the next play. He didn’t need to be brought back down to earth. He’s a very good kid. He’s an awesome kid. He’s a consistent kid. He did not need to be brought back down to earth. I can promise you that. Like I said, we’re not a good football team right today, so print that, write that. We’re going to work hard to be better, hopefully we improve. We got a long way to go.
Q: You’ve mentioned in the off season that this team kind of needs to learn how to not lose before they learn how to win. Is this just one of those games and kind of, as a coaching staff, where do you kind of go from here?
O’BRIEN: I thought, this is such coach speak [and] I hate even saying it, but I just told the team, we’re all in it together. There’s no finger pointing. The coaches, we were terrible tonight. We got to coach better. It starts with us, starts with me. That will lead to better play. We got to figure a lot of things out. We got to figure out how to stop the run. We got to figure out how to run the ball, and you’re exactly right. I mean, we have a chance to go up in the game. We fumble the ball. Even if we get stopped there, it’s still a 99-yard drive that they have to perform, right? So we got them backed up, but we don’t. So it’s a touch back and then we fumble a snap. There was a bad snap, then we throw an interception. Just a lot of tips, some false starts, batted balls, can’t stop the run, don’t fit the gaps correctly, just really some bad football. So that’s coaching. And we got a good coaching staff. I believe in the coaching staff, but we did not do a good job tonight and we have to do a much better job coaching.
Q: Just comment on the explosive plays Stanford was able to get off those two turnovers deep in Stanford territory.
O’BRIEN: Yeah, it was terrible. The one run we gave up, then the bootleg where we cut a guy loose. It was just bad communication. It didn’t fit the run right. And it was kind of a problem during the week. We took care of it. I felt like we had a good practice on Wednesday and Thursday on that type of run, but showed up again. So yeah, we got a long way to go, but you’re right. Hard to explain, but we got to coach it better. We got to figure out what we can do. There’s a lot of season left. I told the team, I’ll tell you exactly what I told the team- Everybody’s got a choice. You want to be here. You don’t want to be here. Make your choice. We’re only in the third game of the second year of our program. Our program. And so far it’s basically been a little bit up and down, .500 football. And so we’re going to work hard to get it better and see where it goes.
Q: Obviously a unique type of road trip for you guys. One that a lot of guys probably haven’t made that type of trip before. Not to give you a spot to make excuses, I know you probably won’t, but just talk about how that is something that is hard to balance with the body clock and that weird travel. For some of these guys, they haven’t really done that yet in their career.
O’BRIEN: I thought we handled it well, though. I understand the question. I really did. I thought we handled it the right way. We got off the plane, we went to San Jose State, we had a really good walk through and felt good about it, got to bed after dinner, went right to bed. I don’t think that’s any excuse whatsoever for what we saw on the field tonight. And again, I’ll say this, it’s not like in these games that we lose, I don’t think we’ve ever really been blown out. And so that’s why Mac’s question about bad football, we have to coach it better. We got to eliminate bad football so we can win close games because we’re going to be in a lot of close games. And so far, we can’t win on the road. We haven’t won on the road since Florida State and we got a long way to go. We just keep fighting and it’s the only choice we have to keep working and figure things out. And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to keep working and keep working hard to try to figure it out.
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