Boston College football has adjusted to the new normal arguably better than any other program in the country. As of Friday, the team had administered 792 COVID-19 tests, with only one positive result, which occurred back in the beginning of July.

“Truthfully, when I don’t have my mask on, I don’t feel normal anymore,” head coach Jeff Hafley told reporters following Tuesday’s practice, per BC Athletics. “It’s kind of become part of me now.”

Even though the players are wearing “Splash Shield” helmet attachments, coaches and BC Athletics personnel are covered in masks, and the team is still getting daily temperature checks before they enter the school’s athletic facilities, practice is the one time that everyone can take their mind off the outside world, Hafley said on Packer and Durham Tuesday morning.

The program has earned that opportunity by strictly following its COVID-19 protocol. So while some other ACC teams have had to pause training camp, BC has moved forward, full steam ahead.

“Doing all of the right things off the field is giving us a chance to do them on the field,” Hafley said on Friday. “And so far we’ve been very fortunate to be able to do that.”

BC is practically two weeks into camp, and the team has already started to make up a lot of ground after missing the majority of spring ball.

COVID-19 protocol development: BC has posted three straight rounds of perfect COVID-19 results, including two flawless waves in the past eight days. Hafley praised the team’s protocol, as well as its doctors and trainers, on Friday, emphasizing that continuing to educate players, their parents, and coaches about coronavirus remains important. He mentioned how great university president William P. Leahy, S.J.’s leadership has been, and he’s repeatedly credited the players with their self-discipline, especially off the field.

Hafley made it clear on the ACC Network’s morning talk show that the coaching staff doesn’t constantly check in on guys to make sure that they’re quarantining post-practice. In the rookie head coach’s own words, the players “sacrifice for one another.”

“I had everybody look at the seniors and said, ‘If you don’t want to be here, I’m good with you. Honestly, you’ll still have your scholarship, let’s come back when everything gets better. But if you want to be here, let’s do this right, and let’s do this for each other,’” Hafley said on Packer and Durham Tuesday morning.

Hafley brought up players like Max Richarson and Kobay White, graduate student playmakers who came back for one final year on the Heights to jumpstart a new era of Eagles football.

“The real leadership has to come from the team,” Hafley said. “It’s guys like Max and the other seniors we have, guys like Kobay—it’s coming from them. And when that happens, it becomes real. And I think that’s what we’re seeing right now. The leadership has been really, really good.”

BC could be opening the season at Duke: BC was supposed to kick off the year with a home game against Ohio, which would have been the team’s first contest versus a MAC opponent since 2017. That matchup disappeared from the 10-plus-one schedule as soon as the MAC canceled all fall sports on Aug. 8, becoming the first FBS conference to opt out of the 2020 season. The assumption was that BC would try to find another non-conference opponent for Week 1, but Hafley said on Packer and Durham that the program is still waiting to hear whether or not that will happen. If there’s no replacement, BC will start things off at Duke on Sept. 19. Hafley isn’t too concerned about the schedule as long as there is one.

“If we’re able to in a safe manner, and everybody feels good about it, and the doctors give us the thumbs up, we want to play football,” Hafley said. “Whether it was Clemson 10 times on the schedule or the schedule we have now, I can’t change that. And I can’t get mad about who’s scheduled and how we scheduled. Let’s just go play football, if we’re able to, and do the best we can and see where we stack up in year one.”

It seemed like the 2020 season was a ticking time bomb last week when both the Big Ten and Pac-12 canceled all fall sports. Hafley conceded that he’s sure there was doubt creeping into his players’ minds when the news originally broke.

“And then we flipped it,” he said, via Packer and Durham. “Think about how fortunate we are to still be in the position to play and actually get on the field and go practice.”

It’s quite the transition, but the true freshmen are holding their own: Freshman year of college is never easy, especially for student-athletes who have to leave home earlier than most to start summer training. Factor in the pandemic, virtual classes, and a bubble-like campus atmosphere, and you have a potentially overwhelming environment. Even so, BC’s 24 true freshmen are suiting up every day of camp and learning new schematic concepts, all while adapting to the speed of play at the collegiate level.

“I think they’re doing a really good job,” Hafley told the media on Friday, per BC Athletics. “We’re trying to be there for them the best we can, but we still got to coach them hard. They’ve still got to help us out the best they can because some of them are going to see some action.”

One of those guys could be Taji Johnson. Along with sophomore wide receiver Ethon Williams, Johnson has turned a lot of heads during training camp. The 6-foot-3, Powder Springs, Ga. native has made a number of eye-catching grabs in practice, most notably a contested, one-handed end zone catch in Tuesday’s practice that drew a chorus of cheers from his teammates.

On the other side of the ball, defensive tackle Cam Horsley has started to make a name for himself, too. The Cinnaminson (Riverton, N.J.) product nabbed an interception off a deflected pass on Tuesday. He also blocked a field goal near the end of Friday’s practice.

Phil Jurkovec is growing more comfortable with BC’s offense: Phil Jurkovec told reporters on Tuesday that, before coming to BC, he hadn’t really huddled up since middle school football. He said that the Eagles’ offense is “definitely different” than he’s used to from his time at Notre Dame and Pine-Richland. Back in high school, Jurkovec played in a spread offense with few formations. Now, he’s huddling up, calling longer plays, and working on his footwork and vision to improve on taking snaps under center.

“I feel a lot more comfortable with it now,” Jurkovec said, “And I like being able to control the huddle and the command that this offense gives the quarterback.”

Over the course of the past few weeks, the redshirt sophomore has given the media a glimpse at his relationship with offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Frank Cignetti Jr.—a fun but communicative dynamic that appears to permeate throughout the quarterback room.

“He’s very transparent,” Jurkovec said. “Everything that he’s thinking about, he relays to us. And he gives the quarterbacks a lot of control with the offense, in terms of creating the signals, creating the names of what we want to call everything, and he just talks us through everything. So we really feel like we’re on the same page as him all the time.”

Hafley, who said that Jurkovec weighs 250 pounds in full uniform and has “an NFL arm” on Packer and Durham Tuesday morning, knows how valuable camp has been for the Notre Dame transfer. After all, he only had five spring practices and threw just 18 passes in two years in South Bend, stuck behind Ian Book on the Irish’s quarterback depth chart.

“It’s been a long time since he’s got a lot of reps like this and he needs experience, he needs a lot of different things thrown at him,” Hafley said on Tuesday. “He needs to see it, he needs to make mistakes and fail and correct it. But he’s doing a really good job, we’re throwing a lot at him, and he is picking it up. It’s positive. He’s having fun.”

Although camp is a grind, there’s some variety to BC’s practices: Normally, this point of training camp would be pretty monotonous. This year, however, because spring ball was cut short, BC is still working through situational concepts. First it was 3rd Down, which Hafley sees as “an entirely different game” than 1st and 2nd Down. And now it’s short yardage and red zone work. Although the practices are still just as demanding, there’s something new to look forward to each day, Jurkovec said. Not only that, but guys up and down the roster are making plays.

“I feel like every day, somebody else is stepping up,” Jurkovec said.