Everything Boston College Football Head Coach Bill O'Brien Said Ahead of Bye Week
The Boston College Eagles football team is heading into its first bye week of the season with a 4-2 overall record and an 1-1 record in ACC play.
On Wednesday, Eagles head coach Bill O'Brien spoke about what he's focusing on during the off week and where he believes the team is at in the halfway mark of the season.
Below is a transcript of everything O'Brien said.
Q: Six games in. Is that a strategically favorable spot for the bye, and are you using this time to kind of look at the whole season and not just Virginia?
O’BRIEN: Yeah, no, that's a good, about halfway through is always good for a bye. You never want it too early, you don't want it too late. Halfway is good. You have enough information out there on yourself that you can really study and see where you need to get better, things like that. So I think it also allows you to maybe heal up a little bit, some of the guys that have been playing a lot, and it gives you a chance to work your younger guys too in some of these practices. So it's, yeah, it's definitely good to have it six games. And what was your next question?
Q: Are you just reviewing the whole season, or just concentrating on Virginia?
O’BRIEN: No, we're reviewing the whole season. We did a little Virginia Tech today, but really, more about us, more about us during the bye week.
Q: More along those lines, what are the points of emphasis going forward?
O’BRIEN: I mean, look, I'm not going to get into all the specifics of it, but I mean, there's obvious things, right? You got to do a better job of taking care of the ball, got to improve certain areas in all three phases, you know, whether it's coverage units, return units, something schematically, some things technique wise, there's a lot that you're working on. I'm not going to list all the emphasis points, but there's a lot to get better. It's all about getting better.
Q: This defense, your defense, has just as many interceptions at the halfway point this year than they had the entire year last year. For you, what has kind of been your point of emphasis with this defense, with Tim and with Ray, like the anatomy that has created that on the defensive side?
O’BRIEN: There's nothing more important than the ball so we try to, we work turnover drills every day, whether it's strip drills or interception drills. So we're working that every single day. Sometimes that's year to year, that's the way the ball bounces right. I can remember in 1998 at Georgia Tech, when I was there, I think we returned like, eight fumbles or interceptions for touchdowns we were 10-2 and then the following year didn't really have any of those. So, you know, it's kind of year to year, but you always want to emphasize it and I'm not saying it's luck, but it's gone our way so far this year, for the most part. We need to continue to do that.
Q: If I could just throw a quick follow up in here too. I know you mentioned that the Georgia Tech team, but I feel like they [turnovers] always come up as a point of emphasis for ways to change momentum, build momentum, create things. Is that kind of true? Like, is that true? Where turnovers really do help kind of keep the ball rolling in your favor.
O’BRIEN: No doubt. I mean, anytime you can take the ball away, it's a huge thing, there's no doubt about it. I mean, you can see it in some of the games that we've had, the wins that we've had, those turnovers have been huge. They can shorten the field, they can get the crowd into it. If it's a home game there's a lot of different things that can create momentum. Football is a game of momentum at times and that's why it's so important for us to do a better job of taking care of the ball. We have to take care of the ball. You look back at our two losses, a lot of those were, you could pinpoint the turnover. So we got to do a better job of that.
Q: Coach, especially before the season, you've talked a lot about the idea of letting Tommy be Tommy, letting him play instinctively. Do you like where him and the offense is in that regard, in terms of balancing those off schedule instinctive plays with consistent on schedule reads?
O’BRIEN: I think he's done a good job. I think there's things we can do better. That's part of the reason why you work so hard during the bye week as a coaching staff to try to figure out what we can do better, whether it's Tommy, the receivers, the line, the tight ends, the running backs, you know, whoever it is, there's areas to improve, no doubt about it, and hopefully we've been able to do that. Tommy's a very instinctive player, like I said in the past, never going to take that away from him and he just has to do a great job of taking care of the football and making good decisions for the team and we need to continue to improve things that we're doing around them.
Q: I was just kind of wondering about a question I kind of brought up after the game on Saturday, just in terms of establishing whether you guys are going to be kind of a team that flows more through the run game, or if it's going to be kind of different game-to-game. And sort of was pointing out the differences between the game in terms of how many times you guys are rushing the ball between Florida State and then a game like you guys just played, and kind of where things are at in that respect?
O’BRIEN: Every game is different. I mean, we're definitely a game plan offense. I mean, we try to be balanced. We try to think of the best things that we can do to take advantage of what the defense is doing. Sometimes it doesn't work. We got to adjust. But we're a game plan offense. We always strive for balance, running, pass, but in the end, we're always going to try to do what we believe is the best thing for us to try to win. So you know, we look at each game. Everybody's different. Everybody has different strengths and weaknesses and we try to take advantage of the weaknesses the best we can, and if it's not working, we've got to adjust, and that's what we try to do in every game.
Q: You mentioned the young guys and working with them this week, the guys who normally don't get the love during the regular game week. So what are you doing with them at this point? Are you kind of just teaching them emphasis for college football or what is it that you're doing with them in these times when you have the bye week?
O’BRIEN: I mean, some of it's still, they're freshmen, no doubt that it's still teaching them the difference between college and high school. No doubt about it. A lot of its technique work, individual work, group work, position work, unit work, offense, defense, and then we scrimmage. A lot of the guys last Sunday, and we'll probably do it again tomorrow, have a 50 play scrimmage for the guys that haven't played a lot of football. Now, that's not just freshmen, that's a lot of different guys. I think there's a really bright future here at BC. There's a lot of good young players here that people haven't really heard a whole lot about and so I think we try to take periods of these practices here during the bye week, to really work with those guys and it's been good. Been very productive.
Q: Seems like Kamari and Jeremiah are getting more and more comfortable. Can you describe the chemistry Tommy’s done with them and how the tight ends fit into your offense.
O’BRIEN: Yeah, those guys, they do a great job. I mean, they're very solid players, they're very smart, they complement each other very well. Tommy definitely has a connection with those guys, you can see it in the last couple weeks here, last couple games. It's been good. I mean we have a history, a pretty good history, with tight ends in this offense, if you go back and look, and so we always want multiple tight ends, good tight ends that we can use in the run and the pass.
Q: Just want to ask you about, kind of what you talked about before with striking a balance between what you're trying to do now, winning now, and also laying the groundwork for the future. How do you go about doing that?
O’BRIEN: Yeah, I mean, we talk every day about what we believe the culture of the program [is] and we want that to be. I mean, that's something we talk about every day that we incorporate into our study of opponents, or the way we handle ourselves off the field, whatever it might be. So that's what we do every day and we talked about that yesterday for a while, hard work, discipline, good teammates, humility, guys that care about the right things, like getting a great degree from BC in accommodation of playing great football, improvement, trying to get better every day, understanding what Boston College can do for them in their lives, go to class, get back to the community. No team in the country does more in the community than we do. There might be teams that do as much, but nobody does more. Our guys do an unbelievable job in the community. So that's what BC’s all about. So, we talk about those things every day in conjunction with getting ready for opponents.
Q: Obviously, you guys have sort of rotated through running backs per game so far this season, but with Turbo making his first start Saturday against Virginia, is that something you expect sort of going forward, or will the running back assignments sort of be based on matchup?
O’BRIEN: I would never look at, even though he was in there for the first play of the game, obviously that's a package that we have. You can say he's the starter. Obviously, there's a lot of running backs that have played for us right, Kye Robichaux, Treshaun Ward, Datrell Jones has seen time, Jordan McDonald has seen time. So we have a good room of running backs, and we try to use them differently and try to take advantage of their skill sets and things like that. So you'll see multiple running backs the rest of the season.
Q: Coach, I just wanted to kind of ask about, in terms of your message to the team and this kind of applies to the differences between the NFL and coaching a college team. In the NFL, you can get into the playoffs with eight or nine wins, right? And it's kind of random what can happen when you're in the playoffs and college football's a little different. People react really strongly to multiple losses, rankings can explode, or whatever it may be, based on two losses in a season, and the margin of error is kind of very tight for that. I'm just kind of wondering how you continue to kind of set a goal for the team when there's only so many teams that, for instance, get into the College Football Playoff and how you set guidelines for what a goal is at the end of the season when wins, wins and losses are obviously super important.
O’BRIEN: Yeah, we don't look at it that way at all. We don't look at it that way at all. We think about the process of how can we get better today. A process of improvement, the process of one play at a time, the process of what we're trying to do as a program whether it's a play, a technique, a scheme, we try very hard not to focus on results. And if you start focusing on results, you start thinking about you’re 4-2, how do we get to the playoff? That might be one of the craziest things that I've ever heard of. So we don't think about [it] that way at all. We think about how to get better today, how to get better tomorrow. Coaches, players, the trainers, the equipment people, the strength staff, the recruiting staff, the operations staff, every part of this, equipment staff, every part of this program is about a process. How are we going to get better today? And I think if we do that and we understand, hey, look, it's day by day. It's play to play. It's one play at a time.’ Don't think about those things that you just brought up. We don't have those type of goals. We think about, hey how can we get better today, each and every day, and each and every drill, every play, every scheme that we run, every type of recruit that we recruit every type of recruiting strategy, our operation strategy, our equipment strategy, our medical strategy, that's what we think about, that we feel like. We have a strong belief that if we can perfect the process, that maybe in the end we'll be where we want to be, but we don't think about, we don't set goals like that.
