The headline is obvious.
Boston College lost 42-40 in a double overtime thriller at Michigan State (2-0) on Saturday night, dropping the Eagles to 1-1 to start their 2025 campaign.
And in typical BC fashion, you can point to three self-inflicted wounds that ultimately led to the Spartans walking away with a victory:
- At the 11:16 mark in the first quarter, running back Turbo Richard took a pass in the flats from quarterback Dylan Lonergan 15 yards to the 1-inch line. As he fell forward for what would have been a touchdown to put the Eagles up 6-0, he fumbled into the end zone. The Spartans recovered, a touchback was called, and Michigan State was given the ball on their own 20. 11 plays and 80 yards later, and MSU was up 7-0 instead.
- In their first two possessions of the second quarter, Boston College saw Lonergan finding pass catchers in the end zone, giving the Eagles a 14-7 lead with 7:30 remaining in the first half. With an Eagles sideline playing with the confidence of a team that knew they should be up 21-7, all the momentum was tilted towards BC. But on the ensuing kickoff, the Spartans were given life via bad kick coverage, as MSU wide receiver Alante Brown took BC’s kickoff 63 yards to the Boston College 33-yard line. Four plays later, it was a 14-14 ballgame.
- After winning the toss heading into overtime, Boston College had the luxury of going second in the college OT format. With Michigan State scoring on the first possession and electing to kick the extra point, the Spartans were up 34-27 with the Eagles getting their chance to match-or-best MSU on possession No. 2. Semi-conventional wisdom says that when you have the chance to go-for-2-and-the-win in this scenario, you do it. Head coach Bill O’Brien didn’t, and the Eagles tied the game at 34-34 to send the action into a second overtime.
Seven plays later, the Spartans were walking away with a 42-40 victory.
From now until the end of time, BC’s margin of error will be as thin as it gets. It’s always going to come down to two or three plays for the Eagles in games against good competition. That’s just the reality of the situation for this program. They weren’t able to capitalize on a few key opportunities on Saturday night, and they’ll head into ACC play in Week 3 at .500 because of it.
While all of that is in support of the obvious headline coming out of East Lansing, the storyline for BC fans should be much more glass-half-full than you’d probably realize after reading the first 400 words of this story.
That’s because their sophomore quarterback in Lonergan had, for my money, the best game under center for BC since Matt Ryan left Chestnut Hill after the 2007 season (apologies to Thomas Castellanos, Anthony Brown, Tyler Murphy and Chris Crane).
In his first career start against an FBS opponent, the Alabama transfer was 34 of 45 for 390 yards and 4 touchdowns. And despite the hostile environment in front of 75,000+, Lonergan looked unfazed in the pocket, as evidenced by his 0 interceptions on the night.
Had the Eagles come away with a victory, it’s a game BC fans would have looked back on as the moment they knew they had their guy.
And as far as I’m concerned, they still should.
“Look, he's a hell of a player, right?” O’Brien said postgame when I asked him about his 21-year-old starting QB. “We got a lot to build on. We have a lot to fix, but to come out on the road and play, I think, a really good team playing tough. It hurts to lose like that.
“Give Michigan State a lot of credit. They're very well coached. They got a lot of good players, and they did a great job. They played a little bit better than us, but we have a lot to build on. We got a lot of things that are positive, and that we got to really clean up the negative things. But a lot to build on.”
Before Saturday night, Lonergan’s lone college start had come just one week prior - a 66-10 rout of FCS Fordham at Alumni Stadium in front of an announced crowd of around 41,000 (I think it was far less than that).
Before the win against Fordham, Lonergan’s only game action at the collegiate level had been garbage time snaps as the quarterback at Alabama. While the four-star recruit from Snellville, GA was in attendance for some of the biggest games in college football over the past two seasons, it was merely as a spectator in uniform.
Michigan State is not the Michigan State of old. I get it. But playing in front of that massive sea of green on a Saturday night in primetime on NBC is no easy task for a kid making his first real big boy start on a new team.
I asked the young QB postgame how he was able to stay poised in the spotlight.
“It was definitely loud when we got out there,” said Lonergan. “But just try to, you know, stay in the moment, trust my teammates, who did a great job all game. And yeah, just take it one play at a time.”
Let’s not start a Heisman campaign just yet. But with Lonergan’s pedigree and a performance like this one on his resume so soon into his BC career, there’s a chance this kid could get a pro sports town to keep a closer eye on the Eagles than it has in years.
O’Brien has said it over and over again since taking over the BC job early last year, “Boston loves a winner.” And if BC can get this level of play from Lonergan as this season rolls along, home games later in the season against Clemson (1-1), Notre Dame (0-1) and SMU (1-1) go from auto-losses to marquee matchups on the Boston sports scene.
Win two of those games, and I promise you Boston will start to take notice heading into 2026.
Up next - a sneaky tough game for Boston College in Week 3, as they head to the west coast for a late night matchup against ACC “rival” Stanford (0-2).
Yes, you read that correctly. For those who don’t follow college sports closely, both Stanford and Cal are in their second seasons as members of the ACC.
I know, it’s weird. And I hate it.
The part I hate most? I’ve been told by multiple sources that despite pleas from O’Brien to allow his Eagles a Thursday departure, Boston College will not be allowing the football team to travel out to Palo Alto until Friday. That’s less time for BC to adjust their collective bodyclock, making it much more likely their 7:30 p.m PT kickoff will feel a lot more like a 10:30 p.m. ET kickoff.
For a program that has specialized in shooting themselves in the foot for the better part of 20 years, this obvious travel snafu has the potential to turn a would-be road win into a game that’s too close for comfort.
But let’s cross that bridge when we get there.
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