Putting BC’s 1-6 start in context as Bill O’Brien flounders in year two at Chestnut Hill

For the second straight week, you’re seeing the 2025 Boston College Eagles (1-6, 0-4) compared to the 2012 Boston College Eagles (2-10, 1-7).

In 2012, Frank Spaziani was in his fourth season as head football coach after spending a decade as the team’s defensive coordinator under two different regimes. He was a fan favorite coming into the job, and the expectation was for “Spaz” to keep the good times rolling with BC in the midst of one of the longest bowl-eligibility streaks in the country (12 straight from 1999 to 2010).

Every year on the job, things got worse and worse for Spaziani. He went from 8-5 in 2009, to 7-6 in 2010, to 4-8 in 2011, to an abysmal 2-10 in 2012. All the while, he was unable to recruit, and the program was left much worse-off than when he had inherited it four years prior. A truly sad outcome for a once beloved figure on the BC sidelines.

For current head football coach Bill O’Brien, we’ve skipped the semi-slow decline.

After a 7-6 season in 2024 that saw his program sneak into the AP Top 25 early in the year for the first time since 2018, fans felt fantastic about the foundation the former NFL head coach was laying down at Chestnut Hill. He helped elevate the best remaining players from the Jeff Hafley Era to the point of a handful of Eagles being drafted in the spring, with a few more receiving training camp invites across the NFL. His team had started that season 4-1 with their lone loss in that stretch being a three-point loss on the road at No. 6 Missouri. And after a three-game losing streak in the middle of the year, O’Brien weathered the storm and had his team finish out the regular season with a respectable 3-1 record, with the one loss in that stretch being a game in which his Eagles put a score into No. 14 SMU. They ended their season with a 20-15 loss to Nebraska in the Pinstripe Bowl with their best players on offense and defense opting not to play as they prepared for the draft.

It wasn’t an amazing season, by any means. But you could see the seeds of something special brewing. Sure the 2025 schedule was going to be much more difficult, but year two of the O’Brien program was going to be another step forward.

…until it wasn’t.

Bill O'Brien
CHESTNUT HILL, MA - OCTOBER 18: Bill O'Brien of the Boston College Eagles huddles with his players during the college football game between UConn Huskies and Boston College Eagles on October 18, 2025, at Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, MA. Photo credit M. Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

After Saturday’s Week 8 loss to UConn, falling to the Huskies 38-23 at Alumni Stadium, O’Brien has his Eagles with a 1-6 record for the first time since Spaziani’s final year at the helm.

After leading 20-17 at the half, BC was outscored by UConn 21-3 in the second half. Seventh-year quarterback Joe Fagnano carved up the Eagles for 362 passing yards and 4 touchdowns, and BC’s defense was unable to stop a nose bleed for the third straight week.

Early in the season, O’Brien routinely talked about how close his team was to breaking out. During the postgame on Saturday, he was asked what changed.

“I don't know - if I knew, I'd be able to fix it,” said O’Brien, once again clinging to confusion as his postgame refrain. “I can't fix it. I don't know what it is. I'm gonna keep trying.

“I'm not - anybody that knows me knows I'm a fighter. I'm not a quitter. I've never quit anything in my life. So I'm gonna keep fighting. I've got to do a better job of trying to figure it out. Watch the tape. Put guys in different spots. We did that today. I thought some guys - you know, we talked about Grayson [James] already. I thought the O-line did a lot of good things today. A lot of youth on defense, you know? They'll learn from it. But yeah, I've got to do a better job.”

Back in 2012, Spaziani got back in the win column after a 1-6 start for his second-and-final win of that season, beating a bad Maryland team that would go on to finish their season 4-8.

Unfortunately for O’Brien, his Week 9 opponent won’t be that easy. His team heads down to Louisville (5-1, 2-1) to take on a Cardinals team fresh off a 24-21 road upset of No. 2 Miami (5-1, 1-1). At the time of publishing, Louisville is not ranked in the AP Top 25. But by the time you read this, they probably will be.

The Cardinals rank fifth in the ACC in passing yards per game (282.2) and sixth in points per game (34.0). They also have the league’s best defense, allowing the least amount of yards per game (274.0) while ranking as the ACC’s sixth best team in points allowed per game (21.0).

That’s a bad combination for BC, who is allowing the most points per game in the conference (33.9) to go along with the fourth-most yards allowed per game (397.3). And on offense, only four ACC teams have gained less yards per game (372.6).

They can’t stop anybody, and they can’t get anything going. They’ll take that recipe on the road to try and beat a team that just came away with the best win of the weekend in college football. And as of publishing, you can get BC as an underdog at a number as high as +23.5 - the longest odds they've had, by far, on any opening line in 2025.

“I've been in great situations where we've won a lot of games, won a lot in a row, [and] I've been in bad situations,” O’Brien said Saturday. “I've been doing this for 33 years, so I've been in both. That's called coaching. That's the journey of coaching. And right now, we're not in a great situation, and we'll just keep fighting to get out of it.”

If the Eagles fall to 1-7 on Saturday in Louisville, KY, it will be the first time the program has started with a record that bad since 1989. That team would go on to finish 2-9 under BC legend Jack Bicknell, who was long-past his prime after famously coaching Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie to a 1985 Cotton Bowl win over Houston.

2-9 led to 4-7 the following season, which inevitably got a legend fired.

2-10 in 2012 got a once-beloved former defensive coordinator fired.

Would a one-win season where the Eagles go winless against FBS competition give Boston College no choice but to oust the former Texans head coach set to make $5.5 million a year over the next three seasons?

Shockingly, I’m told no.

As I’ve written here a few times - BC remains committed to giving O’Brien a five-year runway to get this program headed in the right direction, and knew full well that this particular season was going to be a difficult one with the schedule they had in front of them (which gets more difficult by the week) and the players they were losing to graduation.

That all sounds great on paper as we sit here on October 19. But when you’re staring at only the second 11-loss season in the 91-year history of the program come November 29, are you going to be able to, in good conscience, stick to that five-year plan?

What does a 1-11 season where your only win came against a bad FCS team do to you in recruiting? What’s the motivation for big money donors to hand over checks to pay for talent in the transfer portal? Why should season ticket holders, who only bought the package to ensure their seats for the Notre Dame (5-2) game on November 1, be willing to re-up for 2026 when the only “marquee” home game is against a down Florida State (3-4, 0-4) program?

Bill O'Brien
Boston, MA - October 11: Boston College head coach Bill O'Brien looks down in the third quarter on October 11, 2025. Photo credit Barry Chin/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

These are questions Boston College has to be ready to answer.

With the gauntlet of games they have over the next five weeks, 1-11 isn’t just possible.

It’s probable.

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Featured Image Photo Credit: M. Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images