CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. — When Harrison Mevis’ 56-yard field goal cleared the crossbar, sending Missouri’s matchup with Boston College into overtime on the final play of regulation, the Tiger sideline erupted. Some players leapt up and down in celebration, while others ran onto the field to mob Mevis.
Less than 30 minutes later, head coach Eli Drinkwitz slumped behind a table with his head in his hands, waiting for his postgame press conference to begin. Chants of “let’s go Eagles” drifted through Alumni Stadium as Boston College fans who had rushed the field continued to celebrate their team’s 41-34 victory.
A roller-coaster game ended with Missouri in free fall. A Tiger defense that couldn’t get off the field all day surrendered the go-ahead touchdown on the first possession of overtime, and an offense that had to play with a razor thin margin for error as a result couldn’t hold serve. On the first play of overtime, Boston College cornerback Brandon Sebastian came down with a Connor Bazelak pass that was intended for Keke Chism, ending the game and dropping Missouri to 2-2 on the season.
Two weeks after he left Kentucky saying Missouri simply needed to make one more play to pull out a road win, Drinkwitz found himself repeating that same message Saturday.
“Exact same feeling,” Drinkwitz said. “I think we scored with five minutes, maybe six minutes left in the game to go up four, and had multiple third downs to stop them and couldn’t get off the field. And then in overtime, didn’t get a chance to stop them there, and then offense comes up short with a turnover. So, can’t turn the ball over. At the end of the day, that’s the difference in the game, two turnovers.”
While Drinkwitz bemoaned the two giveaways by Missouri’s offense, the Tiger defense once again struggled, particularly to stop the run. Boston College’s experienced offensive line consistently blew Missouri’s defensive front off the line of scrimmage. The Eagles rushed for 275 yards as a team — the third game in a row the Tigers have given up that many yards on the ground. Excluding sacks, Boston College averaged 5.9 yards per carry. Fittingly, its go-ahead touchdown late in the fourth quarter came when Travis Levy carried the ball up the middle and trucked Missouri safety Jaylon Carlies on his way into the end zone.
Asked whether the defensive woes stemmed more from schematic errors or issues in execution, Drinkwitz said he would have to watch film of the game. But he made clear that something has to change.
“We have who we have, and we have to adjust our scheme to make it match,” he said. “We can’t repeatedly give up 275 yards and be successful.”
In the first quarter, Boston College running back Pat Garwo III exploded for a 67-yard touchdown. Aside from that play, however, the Eagles’ offensive attack was mostly a methodical mauling. Boston College had five drives of at least 10 plays, all of which ate up five minutes or more from the game clock. In the third quarter, Boston College ran 29 plays to Missouri’s four. The Eagles held the ball for more than 34 minutes.
Missouri linebacker Blaze Alldredge said the team knew coming into the game that Boston College wanted to run the ball and control the pace of the game. The Tiger defense simply couldn’t get off the field. Boston College moved the chains 11 of 17 third downs and both fourth down attempts. It only punted twice.
“It’s something that we talked about that they liked to do, and really it just comes almost to a mental grind, where we know what they’re doing and they know what we’re doing and it’s going to come down to a battle of the difference of a yard or two,” Alldredge said.
Boston College’s success on the ground forced Missouri defensive coordinator Steve Wilks to load the box with extra defenders. That provided opportunities through the air for Eagles quarterback Dennis Grosel, who started in place of the injured Phil Jurkovec. Grosel completed 18 of 29 passes for 175 yards and two touchdowns. After a play fake, he found wideout Zay Flowers in the back of the end zone for the go-ahead score in overtime. Drinkwitz acknowledged that Missouri’s issues stopping the run put its secondary in a precarious position.
“I mean, you gotta commit more guys to the run,” Drinkwitz said. “It puts you in man-to-man situations, and that last touchdown we had bad eyes. And credit to them, they saw it, made an adjustment in the press box, went tempo and threw it for a touchdown in overtime.”
For most of the afternoon, Missouri’s offense kept the team in the game. After Boston College opened the second half with a pair of scoring drives to take a 10-point lead, the Tigers responded with consecutive touchdown drives. Star tailback Tyler Badie totaled 106 yards and two scores, and Bazelak completed 30 of 41 passes for 303 yards and a touchdown. He came up clutch when Missouri got the ball back on its own 25-yard line with 25 seconds to play in regulation, completing four passes for 36 yards and putting Mevis in position to tie the game.
But Bazelak’s two interceptions, both coming when he uncharacteristically tried to force the ball downfield, proved costly. A sullen Bazelak said after the game that he knew the Tigers needed a touchdown when they got the ball in overtime, and that the team planned to go for two points and the win if it scored one, so he was eager to get the ball in the end zone. He lobbed a pass for Chism, who led the way with seven catches on the day, but Sebastian came down with it.
“I was just giving (Chism) a chance,” Bazelak said. “Big guy, so go up and get it. But they made a good play on it.”
Both Bazelak and Drinkwitz admitted that Missouri’s porous defense has put extra pressure on the offense so far this season, but neither was interested in using that as an excuse for Saturday’s loss. With his team once again falling one play and seven points short on the road, Drinkwitz put the blame on himself.
“It is what it is,” Drinkwitz said. “Our job is to score. Our job is to score points. Our job is to score as many points as it takes to win the game and not turn the ball over, and we didn’t do that today, and ultimately, that’s where it’s at. That’s on me as the offensive coordinator and the head football coach to get this all corrected.”
Mevis comes up clutch
Through his first 13 college games, Mevis had already developed a reputation for reliability. But Saturday’s game-tying field goal at the end of regulation has to be his most clutch kick yet.
Not only did the field goal come under the most pressure-packed circumstances possible, with Missouri needing the three points to stay alive, it also represented a career-long kick for Mevis. Drinkwitz said Missouri would have sent Mevis onto the field from the 44-yard line if necessary, which would have meant a 61-yard kick, but on Missouri’s final offensive snap, Bazelak hit Barrett Banister on a quick out route that gained five yards.
Those yards proved pivotal, as Mevis’ kick barely snuck inside the right upright and cleared the crossbar with a few feet to spare. Even though most of the fans in attendance held their breath as the ball traveled through the air, Mevis said he knew as soon as he kicked it that the field goal would be good.
“Usually I’m the first one to know whether it’s good or not, kind of based off contact,” he said. “And so I kind of felt that, and I knew I had made it.”
Drinkwitz's clock management raises eyebrows
At the end of both the first and second halves, Drinkwitz made curious use of his team’s timeouts. Late in the first half, Alldredge and Martez Manuel combined to sack Grosel, forcing Boston College to settle for a field goal. Rather than using his final timeout to stop the clock with about 35 seconds to play before the break and give his offense a chance to answer, Drinkwitz allowed Eagles coach Jeff Hafley to let the play clock wind down and kick with just 10 seconds on the game clock. In his postgame press conference, Hafley questioned the decision.
"Truthfully, I thought he would have called timeout,” Hafley said. “Remember at the end of the half, there was 40 seconds left? I waited and we kicked a field goal so they wouldn’t have any time. I thought he was going to use a timeout there, because then he would have had about 34, 35 seconds left at the end of the half with that explosive offense. You saw what they did with 20 seconds, right?"
As Boston College neared the end zone and the clock ticked toward the end of regulation, Drinkwitz once again opted not to stop the clock. He then used one of Missouri’s two timeouts after Boston College had already called a timeout of its own, presumably because the coaching staff didn’t like its defensive alignment. The Eagles wound up scoring the go-ahead touchdown with 25 seconds left.
Drinkwitz’s strategy didn’t end up costing Missouri. He noted that he wanted to keep at least one timeout in the event that his team had to score quickly, and that did help the Tigers get into field goal range before time expired.
“(Hafley) started calling his (timeouts) and we had a four-point lead, so I just kind of felt like if they scored I needed to have a timeout just in case I needed to kick a field goal,” Drinkwitz explained, “which is how it played out.”
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