Five Takeaways From Jeff Hafley's Press Conference
Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley spoke with the media on Monday about the upcoming game against Syracuse. His press conference which is typically on Tuesday was moved to Monday because the team is off on Election Day to Vote. Here are some of this key takeaways from his remarks.
Voting is Critical, and Team Supports Players Finding Their Voice. The head coached talked about how he has nurtured his players finding a voice in the political and civic climate of the country. Tuesday, normally a practice day is now an off day for the team. “We talked about the importance of voting,” said Hafley. “I actually brought up the day we didn’t practice and voting is such a big step.” Josh Beekman, the Director of Football Initiatives, is organizing these civic activities.
“We have transportation set up so if anybody wants to go and vote. More importantly, he had a Zoom call for our team to kind of educate them about the candidates and talk to them about the process of voting." Hafley said.
“There is so much more to it than just saying, ‘hey go vote.’ A lot of credit goes to Josh for starting that initiative. I still think there is still more we can and will do moving forward but this is a good start.”
There is an improvement in the pass rush. Jeff Hafley commented on the improvement in the pass rush. Specifically he talked about "caging" a quarterback in, and not allowing them to scramble. He gave high praise to his defensive line coach Vince Oghobaase.
"I constantly talk about generating pass rush, whether it's three, four, five, six to help those guys get going. Overall, if you look at our D line, such big improvement of gap integrity, leverage, and hand placement. If you look at last week and look how much better we did against the run, it starts up front. Staying in their gaps, and those guys being really disciplined."
Another round of negative testing. There has been some who have wondered if BC was at risk of testing positive after playing Clemson (Trevor Lawrence who didn't play tested positive). Hafley announced that yet again the team came back completely negative. That is now over 6200 tests since June with only one positive.
Hafley felt "sick to his stomach" losing to Clemson. For all the talk about moral victories, Hafley made it clear that is not acceptable. He mentioned the Clemson game and said:
"A lot of players noticed that we are coming, and we talked to a lot of our guys about what we’re going to be and what it’s going to look like. We gave them a glimpse, was it good enough? No, we lost the game. But I think they see that we are coming. I think they see on both sides, the schemes that we’re playing, and even early on in this process that we can hang with the best team in the country. That excites them, and we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about that. I’ll take that, and I’ll run with that the best that we can."
Syracuse's offense is challenging, and Hafley doesn't see that style going away. There was a lot of talk about Syracuse's blistering pace of play. Hafley stressed the importance of fundamentals and technique. He also mentioned that it can be advantageous for an opposing team if it isn't working as offenses can get off the field in 35 seconds. He also mentioned that Cignetti usually tries to stick with a slower tempo, but when the offense starts clicking or they need points, the Eagles have the ability to crank it up too.
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