There’s no mercy in college football, especially not in the ACC. Just look at Georgia Tech: 3-9 last season as the league’s bottom dweller, the Yellow Jackets return for 2020 with the toughest schedule in the conference, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI).
Boston College doesn’t have it easy, either. With a new head coach, limited spring ball, and probably the weirdest offseason in the sport’s history, the Eagles are back on campus gearing up for a 10-game slate that includes the ACC’s divisional frontrunners, Clemson and North Carolina. As far as FPI is concerned, BC now has the fourth-hardest schedule in the conference. How will the Eagles fare? I’ll break down each of their 2020 opponents, one by one.
Friday the 13th is no joke. Just ask Steve Addazio.
The former Boston College head coach suffered one of the most nightmarish losses of his seven-year Eagles tenure on that very day last year.
In Week 3 of what ended up being the former Boston College head coach’s final season in Chestnut Hill, the Eagles were embarrassed by Les Miles and Kansas—a program that hadn’t beaten a Power Five team on the road since 2008. A program that had lost 48 straight such games and had posted a 19-91 record over the course of the decade. A program that, as of 2015, carried just 39 scholarship players.
A 21-point underdog, Kansas pulled off a shocking 48-24 victory in Alumni Stadium. It was one of the few bright moments of Miles’ first season in Lawrence, but it wasn’t necessarily a fluke. After all, the Jayhawks lost a one-score game to West Virginia the next week, came one minute and 11 seconds from beating No. 15 Texas for just the second time since 1938, topped Texas Tech (albeit a weak Red Raiders team), and entered the fourth quarter on the road with a lead over an Iowa State squad that spent two weeks of the 2019 season ranked inside the AP Poll.
Kansas is projected to drop nine spots in SP+ (from 104th to 113th), yet Miles is bringing in the nation’s 50th-best recruiting class—a group rated 20 spots higher than the Jayhawks’ 2019 class. Finishing anywhere but last in the Big 12 will be a success for Kansas, which has rounded out the league’s cellar 10 of the past 11 years. Standings aside, Miles is bound for a few upsets.
BC better hope that it’s not on the losing end of one of them again.
When is BC playing?
Saturday, Sept. 19, TBA
Where is BC playing?
David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, Lawrence, Kansas
Series History
Last year’s Sept. 13 matchup was the first-ever meeting between BC and Kansas. It left a pretty awful taste in the mouths of Eagles fans. “Ugly” is the word that comes to mind when describing a game that featured 1,014 total yards of offense and 16 penalties. You have to hand it to the Jayhawks, though. Quarterback Carter Stanley bounced back from throwing a pick on Kansas’ second play from scrimmage to finish 20-of-27 for 238 yards and three touchdown passes. The Jayhawks dissected BC’s defense, stringing together five scoring drives of 78 yards or more. One stuck out more than the rest: With 40 seconds left in the first half, Khalil Herbert exposed a BC run blitz, scampering 82 yards as the Eagles’ secondary unknowingly ran with the Jayhawk receivers before realizing the play call and then missing a pair of open-field tackles.
Kansas’ 2019 Record: 3-9 (1-8), 10th Big 12
Breaking down the Jayhawks
Offense: Pooka Williams Jr. is still the heartbeat of the Kansas offense. The shifty running back is heading into year three after seeing an uptick in carries this past season. He served a seven-month suspension from team-related activities for a domestic battery charge, which culminated in Williams missing out on the Jayhawks’ season opener. Still, the 5-foot-10 tailback went on to rack up 203 rushing attempts and 27 catches out of the backfield in the final 11 games of the year. Miles, who is known for running old school ground-and-pound offenses, heavily relied on Williams down the stretch.
There wasn’t a 1B option at running back after Khalil Herbert—now a Hokie—decided to leave the program and maintain his redshirt status following Kansas’ Week 4 loss to West Virginia. Williams tallied 19 or more carries in six of the Jayhawks’ last eight games of the regular season. He’ll be back for more in 2020, as will Kansas’ top-two leading wideouts, Andrew Parchment and Stephon Robinson Jr. Parchment and Robinson combined for 1,558 receiving yards and 15 touchdowns last year, in other words, 37% of the Jayhawks’ scoring.
The wide receiving corps also returns Kwamie Lassiter II, who reeled in 34 balls for 352 yards and a score in 2019. If Kansas comes up with a worthy quarterback to replace Stanley—who, despite his inconsistencies, wound up posting a 24 touchdown, 11 interception ratio last season as a fifth-year senior—it will likely outperform its offensive SP+ projection (96th). That’s a big “if,” though. Former JUCO transfer Thomas MacVittie could win the job, however, it’ll probably be an open competition between the six quarterbacks listed on the roster. Arguably more concerning is the Jayhawks’ offensive line. Kansas has to fill the shoes of three starters up front, namely offensive tackle Hakeem Adeniji, who was scooped up by the Cincinnati Bengals in the sixth round of this year’s NFL Draft.
Defense: Even if the Jayhawks’ offense makes strides in 2020, its defense could keep the team below the four-win mark for the 11th year in a row. In 2019, Kansas ranked last in the Big 12 in scoring defense (36.1 points allowed per game), second-to-last in total defense (475.2 yards per game), last in sacks (17), and last in opponent 3rd Down conversion rate (52.3%). The Jayhawks struggled to force turnovers, too. Kansas picked off just six passes in 2019—tied with Iowa State for the fewest in the league—and only recovered two fumbles. Every other FBS team in the country last year scooped up at least four fumbles. Just think about that for a second. To top it all off, Kansas is returning a mere seven of its top-17 tacklers from 2019.
The secondary was the unit’s strongest asset last year, as the Jayhawks ranked seventh in the conference in passing defense, holding six of its 10 Power Five opponents to fewer than 275 passing yards. That’s not necessarily a small feat in the Big 12, a conference that’s just about as pass-happy as it gets. Kansas’ backend was anchored by cornerback Hasan Defense, who logged a team-leading eight pass deflections as well as the Jayhawks’ lone pick-six, and safety Mike Lee, who piled up 72 total tackles, more than any other player on the defense. Fortunately for Miles, his 2020 recruiting class did help replenish the secondary—the Jayhawks’ top-two recruits are three-star defensive backs: Duece Mayberry and Jacobee Bryant. Deuce’s older brother, Kyle, started six games at corner last year, and junior safety Davon Ferguson (42 solo tackles and one forced fumble in 2019) is a nice foundational piece.
Now, of course, when a safety is a team’s leading tackler that often says quite a lot about its inability to stop the run. That proved to be the case with Kansas last year. The Jayhawks conceded 225.7 yards per game on the ground in 2019, the most in the Big 12 by far, the most of any Power Five program, and the seventh-most in the entire FBS. Defensive coordinator D.J. Eliot will be tasked with replacing three of Kansas’ four starting D-Linemen. There aren’t a whole lot of reinforcements to choose from, although former JUCO transfers Reuben Lewis and Caleb Sampson are two guys to keep an eye on. The Jayhawks are, however, much better off at the linebacker position, where both Gavin Potter and Kyron Johnson combined for 111 total tackles last year.
Special Teams: Kyle Thompson is a stud. The 6-foot-4 El Cajon, Calif. native ranked 19th in the nation in punting this past season, averaging 44.5 yards per boot. The big-footed Thompson, who dropped a 73-yard punt against Baylor, was named to the Ray Guy Award midseason watch list and then was an All-Big 12 Honorable Mention—one year after earning Second Team honors. The problem was, the Jayhawks had the fourth-worst punt return defense in the country. Kansas gave up an average of 15.2 yards per return, making Thompson’s net punting average (39.07 per punt) look significantly worse than it should have been.
While the Jayhawks are more than set at punter, their kicking situation isn’t ideal. Kansas was dead last in the conference in field goal accuracy in 2019—they were the only team in the Big 12 to convert less than 60% of their attempts. Liam Jones was inconsistent to say the least. During what was his junior season, Jones took all but one of the Jayhawks’ field goal attempts and knocked in just 11-of-18. He was pretty automatic inside 40 yards (10-of-12), but beyond that he was erratic (1-of-6), not to mention the four extra points he shanked, a tale all too familiar for BC fans. Jones could get a shot at redemption in 2020, or the Jayhawks could go with redshirt freshman Jacob Borcila, who missed his only kick last year before redshirting the season.
Numbers to Know
49 — Williams shed a tackle on 49% of rushing attempts when up against eight or more defenders in the box. No running back in college football notched a higher rate than that last year, according to Pro Football Focus College.
28.8 — Parchment is the highest-volume returning wide receiver in the Big 12, according to Football Outsiders contributor Parker Fleming, as the former JUCO transfer accounted for 28.8% of the Jayhawks’ target shares in 2019.
56 — Kansas allowed 56 touchdowns last year, eight more than any other team in the conference. Oklahoma was next with 48, but the Sooners played two more games than the bowl-starved Jayhawks.
ESPN FPI: The database gives BC a 65.8% chance of beating the Jayhawks in Week 3. Remember, though, FPI projected that last year’s Eagles had a 92.9% chance of topping Kansas, which was coming off an embarrassing 12-7 home loss to Coastal Carolina.
Outlook: Just like last season, BC should beat Kansas. With one of the best offensive lines in the country and a running back like David Bailey, the Eagles have what it takes to beat up on the Jayhawks’ defense, regardless of who’s under center. That said, offense wasn’t the problem for BC last time around. Another defensive collapse, and things could get interesting in Lawrence.
