The 2024 season for Boston College came to a close on Saturday at Yankee Stadium, with the Eagles falling to the Nebraska Cornhuskers 20-15 in the 2024 Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl.
With that loss, head football coach Bill O’Brien ends his first season at the helm in Chestnut Hill with a record of 7-6, finishing just above .500 after starting the season 4-1.
Despite the ho-hum record, there’s a lot more to this story.
As the month of November came to a close, BC was on the upswing.
They won three of their last four games to close out the regular season - all of which coming against ACC competition - helping them dig out of a mid-season three-game losing streak to conference rivals that had O’Brien’s rookie season at the Heights looking like it was headed sideways.
The Eagles righted the ship, showing that O’Brien’s newfound culture of toughness for the program was resonating with a group of players that had gotten away from that mindset under former head coach Jeff Hafley.
But with four weeks between their regular season finale against Pitt and Saturday’s Pinstripe Bowl in the Bronx, it was a lot to ask of O’Brien and his group to carry November’s momentum for almost a full month, especially when that month included all the madness that now surrounds college football - NIL, transfer portal, National Signing Day, you know the drill at this point.
On top of it all, consensus First Team All-American defensive end Donovan Ezeiruaku and All-ACC tackle Ozzy Trapilo opted out of their team’s bowl game to avoid injury in preparation for the 2025 NFL Draft - an understandable decision for both players, albeit disappointing for Eagles fans.
In losing anchors like Ezeiruaku and Trapilo on either side of the football, the chances of carrying that momentum became even slimmer.
And that was felt in a big way through three quarters on Saturday, as BC fell behind Nebraska 20-2 heading into the final frame.
But that Billy O toughness shined through in the fourth, as BC scored 13 unanswered in a comeback effort, making it a one-score game with 4:18 remaining after a blocked punt led to a 2-yard touchdown run by running back Jordan McDonald.
If you tweeted out The Undertaker gif after that score, you were well-within your right to do so.
Unfortunately for the Eagles, not having their best player on defense was too much to overcome on Nebraska’s final drive, as heralded freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola was able to effectively run out the clock and secure the bowl game victory for the Cornhuskers.
While O’Brien’s disappointment at the postgame podium was visible, he made it a point to talk about his team’s resiliency.
“I thought those guys fought, man,” said O’Brien. “I got a lot of respect for this football team. I think we have a bright future at Boston College.
“You know, today didn’t go the way we wanted it to go. But you know, really, today could’ve gone - could’ve got really ugly. You know, it really, really could’ve, because Nebraska, you know, they did a good job. But our guys hung in there. They fought, and you know I have nothing but good things [to say]. Very proud of our effort today.”
In the lead up to their bowl game, O’Brien mentioned that he saw it as an opportunity to preview what his team will look like in 2025.
And despite this preview yielding a losing effort, O’Brien is encouraged heading into year two on the job.
“Look, there’s a lot to improve on, right?” said O’Brien. “I mean, we lost. But there’s a lot of things to build on. You know, I was very pleased with how some of those guys played. You know, you look on offense and you see, you know - like I already mentioned the offensive lineman that played [in place of Trapilo]. But then you got, obviously, Jordan McDonald will be back, and you got Turbo Richard will be back, and you know Lewis Bond will be back, and Reed Harris will be back, and Jeremiah Franklin will be back.
“You go on defense and you look at, you know, a lot of those guys. You know, Bam Crouch - I thought he played a really good game. You know, Bryce Steele. You know, the DBs, the three safeties - K.P. Price, Carter Davis, Omar Thornton, Ashton McShane, Max Tucker. There’s a lot of guys coming back, and we’re adding to those guys with some of the new guys that will be here, whether it’s the freshman class or a couple of guys from the portal. So, and the D-line, you know, a lot of those guys are coming back - [Quintayvious] Hutchins, you know, Owen Stoudmire, George Rooks, Sed McConnell, Kwan Williams got injured there at the end, but you know, very tough, tough player. So I’m very encouraged with the guys that are coming back, looking forward to working with them.”
Whether O’Brien likes his roster or not in the coming years, one thing he should seriously consider is self-imposing a ban on his team playing in the Pinstripe Bowl.
Saturday’s loss at Yankee Stadium drops the Eagles to 0-3 all-time in the Bronx-based bowl game, with each game being a one-score loss to a Big Ten team.
In 2014, it was a 31-30 loss to Penn State. In 2017, it was a 27-20 loss to Iowa. And in 2024, it’s a five-point loss to a Nebraska team who entered the day as a 4-point favorite at BetMGM.
With seven wins in his first season, the hope around the BC program is O’Brien will have the Eagles winning between eight and nine games a season in the near future, putting the program in position to receive invites to more prestigious bowl games moving forward.
And in a perfect world, O’Brien will build this program to a level where the Eagles are competing to win the ACC, ultimately leading to an automatic bid in the expanded College Football Playoff.
In this brave new world of college football where teams like Indiana are grabbing the 10-seed, those playoff aspirations for an O’Brien-led program are less of a pipe dream than one would think.