Boston College Football Head Coach Bill O’Brien Talks Adjustments Ahead of Louisville

The Eagles head coach spoke about what needs to be improved ahead of their clash with the Cardinals.

Kim Rankin | Oct 23, 2024

Boston College Athletics

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Boston College Eagles

After a 21-20 victory over the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers during Week 5, The Boston College Eagles football team exited Alumni Stadium with a 4-1 overall record and just on the cusp of its second AP Poll ranking of the season.

Since then, Boston College has lost two games in a row, both on the road, to the Virginia Cavaliers 24-14 and Virginia Tech Hokies 42-21. Now, the Eagles are looking to push momentum back into their favor when they host the Louisville Cardinals on Friday night as the difficult part of their ACC schedule looms ahead.

Boston College head coach Bill O’Brien spoke about making adjustments and what specifically the team needs to improve on during his weekly appearance on the BC Football Show on Wednesday night.

“We gotta stop turning the ball over and in the end too, we gotta play the run better,” said O’Brien. “But we got to adjust as coaches better too so everybody’s in it together. There’s no finger-pointing or anything like that. We talked to these guys a lot about what we’re about as a program and what we’re looking for in leadership and things like that. We’re working towards getting a lot of things fixed and I think we had a good week this week. So, we’ll be ready to go on Friday.”

The 55-year-old emphasized that turnovers are the biggest thing that the team has to improve on.

“There’s nothing more important than the ball,” said O’Brien. “Possession of the ball is the most important thing and if you can’t posses the ball and you keep giving it to the other team in bad situations… We’ve gotta do a better job of that. That’s why we were down 28-0 in addition to not being able to stop the run. We have to fix those things and I think we worked hard to fix them. We have to show that on Friday night.”

However, that isn’t the only thing that the program needs to work on.

O’Brien also stated that the coaches, including himself, have to be better at changing the game plan up when things don’t work.

“Again, that’s where we have to do a better job playing but also coaching,” said O’Brien. “We have to switch things up and this is me, I’m in charge of the whole thing and so I have excellent knowledge of all three phases of the game and I’ve got to make the adjustments that help the defense, help the offense, and help special teams and I didn’t make enough adjustments. Those adjustments will be made this week and hopefully they’ll work. We gotta stop the run better. If they’re hurting us on this play, we gotta go to a different front, we gotta try something different. We gotta what I call ‘Spin the Dial,’ and so that’s what we’re going to try to do.”

The Eagles and the Cardinals face off on Friday night at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2.