Former Penn State head coach [autotag]Bill O’Brien[/autotag] is back in college football as a head coach this season, and he may have just recorded the biggest win of his college coaching career. In his debut as head coach of Boston College, O’Brien led the Eagles to a 28-13 victory on the road against Florida State. While the Seminoles still held a top-10 ranking in the major polls, that was only because the rankings had not been updated following Week 0, when Florida State opened the season with a loss to Georgia Tech in Ireland. Still, this will officially go down in the books as the highest-ranked team O’Brien has defeated as a head coach.
The win by Boston College is the first for the program over a top-10 team since topping USC in 2014. The win was a massive one for the Boston College program and O’Brien, but it is just one game. Boston College has a lot of work to do to truly becoming a team to reckon with in the ACC this season.
Or perhaps we just witnessed O’Brien taking advantage of an opportunity like never before.
Boston College’s win is actually Florida State’s second loss in conference play. It is rare to see the defending conference champion already down 0-2 in the conference standings on September 3. And Florida State’s schedule doesn’t get any easier with games against Clemson and Miami still to come in conference play. Florida State’s playoff path just became that much more difficult as well, as the Seminoles also still have to play Notre Dame in South Bend later this season.
Boston College, somehow, has a conference schedule that does not include games against Clemson or Miami. We could very well be on our way to seeing O’Brien coaching his team for a chance to win the ACC, and that could end up leading to a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff as a result.
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves thinking about a potential College Football Playoff matchup between Penn State and Boston College just yet, as much fun as that would be to witness. We have a long way to go.
O’Brien took over the head coaching job at Boston College after initially agreeing to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State in January. But things moved quickly on the coaching carousel and O’Brien didn’t hesitate to accept an opportunity to return to the New England area, where he had come to be known as a coordinator for the New England Patriots. O’Brien replaced Jeff Hafley, who accepted a job with the Green Bay Packers as a defensive coordinator.
Next up for O’Brien and Boston College will be a home game against an FCS opponent, Duquesne. Then the Eagles hit the road once more to visit Missouri.
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