Boston College comes to town this Saturday for homecoming. Routinely, home teams like to have a “cupcake” to assure the crowd goes home happy. BC is coming off a solid victory over NC State, 45-24 where AJ Dillon ran wild. The pack doesn’t have the most stout of teams this year and really didn’t put up much of an effort up in Chestnut Hill. Clemson is not NC State.
Historically, BC is not very good against ranked opponents, going 2-30 against Top 5 ranked opponents in their history. BC has not beaten an opponent ranked in the top five since they beat Notre Dame in 2002. In the last meeting between these two teams, Clemson beat a gritty BC team 27-7 and held AJ Dillon to 16 carries for 39 yards. Dillon is the weapon Clemson needs to stop. He is 2nd in the nation in rushing yards and leads the ACC. Dillon ran over NCState to the tune of 223 yards, 118 against Louisville, 162 against Wake Forest, 154 against Rutgers. His running mate, big RB David Bailey also had 181 yards against NCState, who went into the game as the “statistically best” run defense in the ACC. Course, taking a look at NCST’s schedule, three of their first four games were against cupcakes. When reading numbers like this, why is Clemson still a 34.5 favorite? QB Anthony Brown was lost for the season two weeks ago and the reins have been turned over to sophomore Dennis Grosel, who didn’t exactly set the world on fire against State. In his last two starts, Gorsel is 15-39, 214 yards, 3 TDs and 1 INT. Scared yet? One stat of note is that BC leads the nation with 0.43 sacks allowed per game. What does this mean for the Clemson Tigers?
Clemson comes into the game ranked 4th in the nation after having beat an offense minded Louisville pretty handily 45-10. The score could have been much worse, but in his usual Dabo fashion, backups played a LOT and not just when the score was lopsided. Despite throwing two interceptions in the first quarter, Trevor Lawrence worked out the kinks and was solid the rest of the way. Travis Etienne had a breakout game and the defense does what it does, holding a very potent Louisville offense under 300 total yards for the game, something they have done to every opponent this year. Face it, Brent Venables knows how to prepare for a team. Now I don’t make $2.2 million a year to coach the Clemson defense, but what’s going to happen is Coach V will put 8 men in the box and dare BC to throw the ball. BC is putting up a LOT of yards on the ground. Their offensive line is very good and they have two good backs.
Statistical comparisons of interest:ClemsonBoston CollegeFirst downs per game 17th (174)25th (168)Rushing yards per game10th (247)6th (278)Passing yards per game47th (257)82nd (216)3rd down conversion %38th (43.0). 29th (44.5)Points10th (40.0)35 (34.6)
First downs allowed per game 4th (91)80th (149)Rushing yards allowed per game25th (111.9)81st (172.4)Passing yards allowed per game3rd (144.1)121st (288.0)3rd down defense %13th (30.3)110th (44.9)Points allowed8th (12.0)74th (28.10)
After looking at the statistics, Clemson is a big favorite for a reason. BC averaging 216 yards through the air is a mirage. Grosel is not a threat and while the BC OL is pretty good, the passing game will be their undoing. Lawrence and the offense will have its way with the BC defense, and the Clemson defense will be tested on the ground but being one dimensional doesn’t work against this Clemson defense.
Clemson 48 Boston College 14
