Boston College Eagles: Offense shines, defense falters in loss to Louisville

The Boston College Eagles have a young defense still learning the ropes and it showed in Saturday’s road loss to the Louisville Cardinals.

The offense of the Boston College Eagles came to play on Saturday in a conference game with Louisville.

Even with redshirt Junior Anthony Brown leaving the game early in the second quarter with an apparent knee injury, the offense rolled up 563 yards and 39 points.

It’s just too bad the defense has a propensity for giving up big plays in 2019.

They settled down in the second half, allowing only 13 points, but it wasn’t enough as the Eagles (3-3, 1-2) lost 41-39 at Louisville. The Cardinals secured the victory with a 41-yard field goal by Blanton Creque with 1:02 left.

Aaron Boumerhi had given Boston College the lead with 3:32 left by booting a 45-yard field goal of his own.

Big plays were the story for both teams, a problem Boston College’s defense has dealt with regularly in 2019.

After encouraging signs in the victory against Rutgers and a tough loss to Wake Forest, the defense reverted back to shades of the Kansas game. The Eagles allowed 12 plays of 20 yards or more against Louisville. Javian Hawkins ran for 172 yards, averaging 6.9 yards per carry. And three players averaged 20 yards per reception, led by Seth Dawkins. Dawkins finished with 170 receiving yards, averaging 28.3 yards per catch.

The Eagles allowed over 400 yards in the first half and 664 total.

Boston College on offense nearly had enough firepower and might have done the trick had Brown not gone down with the injury.