Boston College’s margin for error is almost gone, and Saturday’s 31-24 loss to Florida State made that crystal clear.
The Eagles are now 4-5 overall and 2-4 in the ACC, still hanging around the bowl picture but watching the path narrow by the week. This one felt especially costly because Florida State arrived in Chestnut Hill in the middle of a coaching change, with interim coach Rick Stockstill stepping in after Mike Norvell was fired. Boston College had a chance to take advantage at Alumni Stadium and couldn’t finish the job.
Safety KP Price didn’t hide how it felt afterward.
“It was,” said Price, sporting a 2023 Fenway Bowl T-shirt. “It is what it is. It definitely hurt, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to get up and go back at it tomorrow.”
Boston College actually came out with purpose after its rough outing at Duke. The defense held Florida State to just 23 first-quarter yards, and the Eagles turned that into a 10-0 lead. Bo MacCormack powered in from 6 yards out, Luca Lombardo added a 48-yard field goal, and BC owned the ball for more than 12 minutes in the opening quarter.
“It’s always important to start out fast,” MacCormack said. “I think we had a better start today than we had in the past. We just have to continue what we were doing earlier in the game and sustain that.”
Florida State answered in the second quarter when Ashton Daniels scored on a 4-yard run. Boston College responded right back, as Mason McKenzie found Nedrick Boldin Jr. down the left sideline for a 29-yard touchdown and a 17-7 lead with 9:24 left before halftime.
But the Seminoles kept chipping away. Amari Thomas punched in a 20-yard touchdown run to trim the margin to 17-14, and then came the play that flipped the half: on fourth-and-goal from the 1, Florida State ran a fake field goal, with holder Carter Jula flipping the ball over his shoulder to 5-foot-9 senior kicker Gabe Panikowski, who walked in untouched for a touchdown and a 21-17 halftime lead.
“That was brutal by us,” O’Brien said. “Terrible.”
McKenzie briefly left in the third quarter with an injury, but returned and finished 15 of 27 for 166 yards, two touchdowns and one interception. In his absence, freshman backup Grayson Wilson threw an interception, and Boston College also got a turnover when Max Tucker tipped a Daniels pass to Marcus Upton.
The Eagles then grabbed the lead again with some trickery of their own. A snow globe “Ring Around The Rosie” huddle led to a 2-yard underhand touchdown toss from McKenzie to Javarius Green, putting BC ahead 24-21 with 4:11 left in the third.
“When it’s a gimmick kind of play, you feel like you kind of have to make it work because it gives a lot of life to the team,” MacCormack said.
That turned out to be Boston College’s last touchdown of the day. Florida State leaned on its ground game, finished with 202 rushing yards and kept coming. Panikowski tied it with a 22-yard field goal, then Thomas delivered the knockout blow with an 11-yard touchdown run that capped a 14-play, 90-yard march and ate up 8 minutes, 16 seconds.
The Eagles got one last chance after moving past midfield, but Dawson Pough couldn’t come down with McKenzie’s fourth-and-15 throw into Florida State territory with 1:28 left.
O’Brien said he would have gone for 2 if BC had scored, though the point never came into play.
“We just didn’t make enough plays,” O’Brien said. “Give Florida State credit.
They made more plays than we did. They did some good things.
We did some good things, but not enough.”
Now Boston College heads into a brutal finish: at Notre Dame on Saturday, home against Syracuse on Nov. 21, and then at Miami on Nov. 28.
“I have absolutely no control over the schedule at Boston College,” O’Brien said. “We just try to do the best we can. It’s going to be a really difficult row to hoe.”
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