Optimism Abounds As Boston College Ushers In New Era

Steve Addazio has his work cut out for him.

The man hired in December to resurrect Boston College football fortunes has a tough road ahead to restore the Eagles’ previous winning ways and get fans back on board.

Don’t be too hard on the BC faithful though. After all, their program has suffered two straight losing seasons, and has gone winless against ranked teams for the last four years.

It’s hard to believe this is a program that not too long ago had Matt Ryan leading it to a No. 2 ranking in the BCS standings. But, the Eagles have gone from an 11-win team in 2007 to a program that suffered one of its worst seasons in its history in 2012 going 2-10.

Addazio, who is pretty much unproven having spent just two seasons as a head coach at Temple, inherits what appears to be a colossal rebuilding project given the fact that BC has won fewer and fewer games in each of the past five seasons.

No doubt it’s going to take Addazio time.

The good news is in just over a month on the job, he seems to have reinvigorated not only BC’s fans, but its players and everyone associated with the program in Chestnut Hill thanks to his passion and enthusiasm. When all is said and done, Addazio may be the perfect man for the job. He had success at Temple and was part of a pair of national championships under Urban Meyer at Florida where he became widely regarded as one of the nation’s top assistants.

Now, the man, who was 13-11 at Temple, wants to be a part of something special at Boston College. Doing that, however, won’t be easy.

Addazio isn’t the most creative offensive mind out there. His Owl teams featured a run-heavy offense and drew criticism for not exactly mixing things up calling the plays at Florida when he was coordinating the Gators’ offense.

There are plenty of concerns Addazio must address this spring.

Former coach Frank Spaziani Boston College 2012 team was poor at running the football and stopping the run as the Eagles ranked last in the ACC in rushing and 11th in run defense. Addazio will need to count on a lot of underclassmen to turn things around. Although he will hope veterans like quarterback Chase Rettig and running back Andre Williams shine. Rettig had a 3,000-yard season with 17 touchdowns in the fall and Williams was the Eagles’ leading rusher. Helping generate points will be the return of one of the best kickers in the ACC in Nate Freese, who hit 18-of-20 field goal tries in 2012.

To say the least, the defense will greatly miss ACC-leading tackler Nick Clancy, a linebacker who will take his talents to the NFL after earning first-team all-conference honors last season. Addazio is expected to build the defense around senior linebackers Steele Divitto and Kevin Pierre-Louis and up-and-coming defensive back star Sean Sylvia.

BC is Addazio’s dream job and he’s dreaming big talking about returning the program to some of the glory years it has enjoyed in the past. At the very least, he will be a hit with many due to his enthusiasm, energy and raucous pregame speeches.

Eventually the honeymoon, however, will end and he’ll be required to do better than Spaziani’s 21-29 record or he’ll suffer the same fate.

Doug Griffiths is a member of the Football Writers Association of America and the US Basketball Writers Association. Doug is a columnist/writer for RantSports. Follow him on Twitter @ISLgriffiths and Facebook.