It’s hard for a team to win when its performance is riddled with mistakes. It becomes a little easier when its opponent makes even more of them.
Michigan State made plenty of mistakes on Saturday night—blown coverages and unnecessary penalties, to name a few. Still, the Spartans (2–0) beat Boston College football (1–1) 42–40 in a double-overtime nailbiter that saw BC make just as many, if not more, mistakes than its opponent.
“It’s not great to lose, that’s not what I’m saying,” BC head coach Bill O’Brien said. “But I do think there’s a lot to build on.”
The game was messy from the start. Less than two minutes in, after BC went three-and-out on its first drive, Omari Kelly fumbled the punt return, and Owen McGowan scooped it up to give the Eagles another chance.
Four plays later, the Eagles made the exact same mistake—only, the result was a bit more consequential. Turbo Richard caught the ball and ran 15 yards toward the end zone. As he was tackled, though, the ball was swatted out of his hands. He fumbled it at the 1-yard line, and the Spartans gained possession.
“I think we need to run the ball better,” O’Brien said. “I’m not blaming the offensive line, but I’m just saying overall, we have to still be able to run the ball better. We’re not going to be able to throw the ball 55 times—whatever we did—55, 60 times a game. I don’t think that’s a recipe for winning, so we’ve got to figure it out.”
Kelly fumbled again on the Spartans’ next drive, but the ball popped up and flew out of bounds. Michigan State drove up the field and quarterback Aidan Chiles completed an 11-yard touchdown reception to Nick Marsh to go up 6–0 with about a minute to play in the first quarter.
Marsh was covered, but BC’s defenseman could not seem to tackle the 6-foot-3, 203-pound receiver. That trend persisted, as BC’s tackling—or, lack thereof—proved detrimental to the Eagles over the course of the game.
With 7:45 remaining in the first half, blown man coverage from the Spartans left Jaedn Skeete wide open in the endzone. Quarterback Dylan Lonergan hit him with ease, and BC took its first lead of the night.
But on the next drive, the Spartans gained 9 free yards thanks to a personal foul on BC, pushing Michigan State to BC’s 8-yard line. Chiles rainbowed a pass over BC’s defense with ease to a wide-open Michael Masunas, making it a 14–14 game.
When BC got the ball back with 5:35 left in the half, Lonergan and his team took the field looking cool and composed. Richard ran for 9 yards twice in a row, but two incompletions from Lonergan to Skeete set up a 4th-and-12 situation for BC—what would have been a punt.
Luckily for the Eagles, it was then that Michigan State made another crucial mistake.
Jordan Hall slammed into Lonergan after he had already let go of the ball, picking up a roughing-the-passer penalty that handed BC a first down. Lonergan hit Reed Harris with a perfectly placed ball a few plays later. The 14-yard touchdown pass—Lonergan’s third of the game—secured a seven-point lead for the Eagles heading into halftime.
Coming out of the half, though, the Spartans put together a four-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to tie things up.
BC could only muster a field goal in response, as, despite trying to go for it on 4th-and-4, a false start penalty forced the Eagles to kick the ball instead of trying for a touchdown. Although BC regained its lead, those four extra points were crucial in a game that ended as closely as this one did.
With eight minutes remaining, an offside call on BC granted Michigan State a fresh set of downs. More missed tackles from the Eagles certainly didn’t help. On 3rd-and-9, Chiles broke through tackles, picking up 15 yards before anyone could stop him.
“We had the guy tackled a couple times, missed tackles, let the guy break free, avoided the wrong way,” O’Brien said. “We gotta go back to work. That’s kind of what I’m saying—a lot of positives, but then the negatives are why we lost the game.”
It looked like Michigan State scored a touchdown shortly after. But a holding call on Stanton Ramil brought it back, and quarterback pressure on the next snap forced Chiles to throw it out of bounds. Then, a missed block led to a McGowan sack, resulting in a 12-yard loss for Michigan State and helping the Eagles hold them to a field goal.
BC’s mistakes were nearly always followed by mistakes from the Spartans, and vice versa. That balance kept the back-and-forth battle going. It was when that dynamic fell out of whack that BC lost the game.
Luca Lombardo drilled a field goal at the end of regulation to tie the game 27–27 and send the teams into the first overtime, which ended 34–34 after Chiles hit Jay Coyne and Lonergan hit Jeremiah Franklin.
The game was decided when Franklin ran the ball in for an 8-yard touchdown in the second overtime, but Lonergan’s two-point attempt to Lewis Bond was incomplete.
Chiles ran it in 3 yards for a Spartan score, and Kelly, who fumbled on the first punt of the game, caught the ball in the endzone from Chiles for the game-winning two-point conversion.
In the end, the Spartans came full circle on their mistakes. BC’s had caught up to them.
“They did a better job at having more positive plays than we did,” O’Brien said. “We had a lot of positive plays, but they had more. And in a game like that, that’s why you lose or you win.”
