Oh yeah.
You heard me right.
The 2024 Boston College Eagles football team, the same program that just got their first top-25 ranking in 6 years (and lost it this weekend), could actually realistically make the College Football Playoff. Now that the CFP is expanded to 12 teams and the ACC Champion is basically guaranteed a spot, we can start to take a harder look at what it would actually take for the Eagles to get there.
First off, the team looks way better than a lot fans expected. Part of that early season success has been the lack of quality of their competition, to be fair, as the top-10 win over Florida State in Week 1 no longer holds much gravitas. The Seminoles have started their season 0-3 with losses to Georgia Tech and Memphis, and have fully dropped off of the national radar. But Mizzou is a legitimate top-10 team as far as we can tell, and BC hung around in that game far longer than many of the experts predicted that they would. The Eagles have looked good in the trenches, especially dominating time of possession when they’re on offense and riding the dynamic playmaking of Thomas Castellanos to some improbable scores.
Though I have to be clear here: I believe that Boston College can make the CFP, but I don’t believe that they are one of the best 12 teams in the nation. It’s extremely clear from Saturday’s performance that they still have a lot to work on before we’re ready to call them a true playoff contender. But I believe that BC’s path to the CFP is possible. Do you want to know why?
Their regular season schedule is extremely manageable. There is not a single game on there that they can’t win. The two scariest games on the calendar coming into the season were Week 1 vs FSU and Week 3 vs Mizzou, which as I just mentioned are already over and they performed about as well as we could’ve hoped. Their remaining slate includes two decent but very beatable out-of-conference opponents, followed by a series of ACC opponents that range from good to mediocre.
According to ESPN’s FPI, which is a decent neutral barometer for expectations, these are the odds that BC will win each of their remaining games:
- 9/21 vs Michigan State: 79%
- 9/28 vs Western Kentucky: 92%
- 10/5 @ Virginia: 74%
- 10/17 @ Virginia Tech: 57%
- 10/25 vs Louisville: 47%
- 11/9 vs Syracuse: 80%
- 11/16 @ SMU: 50%
- 11/23 vs UNC: 75%
- 11/30 vs Pitt: 74%
Whoa. These analytics really like BC.
Some of these, based on recent experience, don’t really feel accurate, though. An 80% chance to win against Syracuse? We always play them close. 92% against Western Kentucky? That’s a solid G5 program, those odds feel too high. But maybe that’s just the old BC fan in me. The BC fan who has seen in recent years Steve Addazio and Jeff Hafley coach their teams into inexplicable losses against UConn, Northern Illinois, almost Holy Cross, and whoever else happened to be a bad ACC team in a given year. So maybe we need to shift our thinking. Bill O’Brien has ushered in a new era. An era of discipline and not playing down to your opponent.
So if we are to buy into the new BoB culture and take these FPI projections at face value, then it becomes obvious what BC’s path is to the CFP. They are solidly favored in four remaining ACC games, and are considered a legitimate threat to win the other three against Virginia Tech, Louisville, and SMU. If they can pull off all of those wins, or even just six out of seven, that should be enough to get them into the ACC Championship Game. And from there… the CFP.
Yes, it’s still a longshot. The odds that BC drops an unexpected stinker against one or two ACC opponents seems pretty likely. It’s still a new coaching regime and a thin roster at a lot of positions. But as it stands right now, every game on their schedule is winnable, and we can follow them through this journey as far as it takes us.