Jeff Hafley's Remarks After Syracuse Game

BC's head coach talks about the quarterback situation, struggles and play of the defense after Saturday's 21-6 loss.

On the quarterback situation, and going with Emmett Morehead

"It wasn't a hard decision when you're when you really watch the film really hard. And you go drive by drive, and you look at it. And if I could have said it was all the quarterbacks fault, then I would have made a different decision. But when you look at it really hard, and it's not the quarterbacks fault, and we're not playing well enough around him. That's why we decided to go with him (Morehead). We feel like he's been practicing really well over the last two weeks. And just like you would rotate another guy in a position, we felt like he was ready. We felt last week he was almost ready, but just not quite there yet. And we thought he could give us a spark. With some of the things we saw him throwing the ball in practice and hitting some of those deep balls, which he did early in the game. So we thought we could take advantage of how he's been practicing."

On when to put in Morehead

"I decided that it was going to go in the third series regardless how we were playing."

On third quarter struggles the past handful of games.

"We missed hits on two runs and we missed two tackles that led to 14 points on plays that we were stopping the whole entire first half is nothing new. And then we hit a low point, and they returned for a touchdown. You know, that's that's what I saw at least in the game. "

On adjusting to the loss of Graham Mobley

"You know, we had some new guys in at linebacker with IGM (Isaiah Graham Mobley) not playing. And you know, we played some too high coverage, some too high coverage, we played out of a one high look to disguise it that way instead of starting in too high and rotating down. So we do that a lot in the game. We mix up too high when I rotate back, rotate down. But just without IGM and some of the new backers in the game. We just wanted our cleats in the ground. So they weren't moving and disguising as much. You know, (Brandon) Sebastian's not in the game. You got some guys some new guys, we just wanted to kind of get him comfortable in that disguising as much."

On putting Grosel in on the final drive

"That was something he'd experienced before. Two minutes situations which, you know, Emmett (Morehead) hadn't played football since his junior year in high school. And he's played 13 or 14 games and his whole career. You know, his senior year got cancelled because of COVID. Obviously, he hadn't had many reps in training camp. So just the guy with the experience in that type of situation, who just felt like, we felt like it was the best just, you know. The best bet was to go with Dennis."

On the play of the defense

"I think they threw about 65 yards and we gave up those two explosive runs which are about a third of their yards on missed tackles. You know, I mean, they're good offense. They're racking up points in yards against everybody that they play. The backs are really good players, the quarterbacks really good runner I don't think they threw to completion in the second half against us. Our defense is playing pretty well guys. I mean, we're giving we're about 14 points on defense in this game, you know, right now in the top 20 in the country in scoring defense, so I really don't care about yards. I care about the explosives and the misfits. I'm proud of the defense and they fought back at the end they gave up 14 points today guess pretty good offense and into really good guys who can run the ball. Now we could have been better and we need to be better but we should we should be able to win games with that."

On the loss of left tackle Tyler Vrabel

"It's a huge loss and you lose your starting left tackle early in the game. No, we need to we need to get better. Figure out who the best guys for that position. Jack (Conley) came in and did a good job. We rotated around a little bit late in the game. And we got to help those guys more. Especially when we have to throw you know what I mean? Also, you're down to possessions and you have to throw, it's hard to block guys one on one we got to help them. So we got to coach better we got to play better, but it was really a shame that we lost Tyler You know not having him and not having Trae (Barry). You know, those are those are two pretty big guys in there that we didn't have a chance to play."


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A.J. Black
A.J. BLACK

Editor and publisher of BC Bulletin.  '06 graduate of Boston College, who has followed the program as long as he can remember. Has been covering the Eagles for the past nine years, giving expert analysis, recruiting news and breakdowns.  Also the host of Locked on Boston College, a daily BC podcast that is part of the Locked On Podcast Network. When he is not writing or producing content on the Eagles, he can be found running, skiing, enjoying craft beers, or spending time with his family. You can follow AJ Black on Twitter @AJBlack_BC and our official site Twitter account is @BulletinBC