Rutgers’ second opponent in the 2026 season will be Boston College, and the man on the sideline for the Eagles will be Bill O’Brien.
O’Brien’s path has taken him through some of the biggest jobs in football. He was the head coach of the Houston Texans from 2014 to 2020 and led Penn State from 2012 to 2013.
Before arriving at BC, he worked as offensive coordinator at Alabama and with the New England Patriots. When the Patriots moved on from longtime head coach Bill Belichick after the 2023 season, O’Brien was not kept on.
His rise to the Penn State job in 2012 came at a difficult moment for the program, which had just gone through a sexual abuse scandal. O’Brien stepped in and delivered immediately, going 8-4 in his first season and earning ESPN’s National Coach of the Year award.
He and Greg Schiano have only crossed paths once as assistant coaches, and there isn’t much of a coaching-tree connection to compare. O’Brien was at Georgia Tech from 1995-2000, while Schiano was at Miami in 1999-2000.
Their only meeting came in the 2000 Gator Bowl, a 28-13 Miami win. Miami was still in the Big East then.
There’s also a strange overlap between the two men’s careers and the Penn State scandal. O’Brien got his first head coaching opportunity because of it, while Schiano was hurt by the same controversy when Tennessee passed on him for its head job in 2017 after a social media campaign tied him to the Paterno-Sandusky regime. The irony is hard to miss: O’Brien was the one brought in to clean up the mess at Penn State.
By the time he got that chance, O’Brien had already spent 14 years as a college assistant. He was still in that role when the Patriots hired him, and he stayed there from 2007-2011. Penn State in 2012 was his first head coaching job.
Now 56 and turning 57 in October, O’Brien’s record as a head coach has been solid. He went 15-9 at Penn State before moving to Houston, where he went 52-44 from 2014 to 2019 and won the AFC South four times. The Texans started 2020 0-4, and that was enough for him to be fired.
His route to Chestnut Hill in 2024 also had a Belichick-like twist. O’Brien was hired by Ohio State, but like Belichick with the Jets, he left less than a month later and never coached a practice or game there before taking the BC job.
The results at Boston College have been mixed. In two seasons, O’Brien is 9-16 after replacing Jeff Hafley, who went 22-26 in four years.
The 2024 team finished 7-5 in the regular season and then lost to Nebraska, 20-15, in the Pinstripe Bowl. The 2025 season went the other way fast, with the Eagles finishing 2-10 overall and 1-7 in the ACC.
Their two wins came against Fordham and Syracuse, and they were separated by 10 straight losses.
Even so, O’Brien’s résumé is still the kind that commands attention. He has won at the college level, found success in the NFL, and worked under Nick Saban at Alabama and Belichick in the NFL.
Whether he can restore Boston College to what it once was remains unanswered. It has been 42 years since Doug Flutie connected with Gerard Phelan to beat Miami.
Rutgers will see BC in game two of its 2026 schedule, coming off a road trip to Cincinnati, a team described as always competitive and tough. September 11 in Chestnut Hill is 59 days away.
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