Jeff Hafley 'really excited' about this Boston College team, its returning production

2022 was a difficult season for the Boston College Eagles, going just 3-9 while dealing with injury issues. Now, expectations are low for the 2023 season but head coach Jeff Hafley is still really excited about the Eagles this year.

As Hafley explained, he feels like Boston College’s returning production is going to help the Eagles to bounce back in 2023.

“Yeah, look at the production,” Jeff Hafley said. “We returned more production I think than most teams in the ACC and maybe in the country. At the end of the year, 37 out of the 44 in our two-deep were first and second-year players. Were some ready to play? Maybe not. Some were thrown into fire as true freshmen, and they got a little taste of it.”

At the same time that Boston College returns a lot of production, a few key players also moved on. That includes quarterback Phil Jurkovec and star receiver Zay Flowers. Jurkovec is now the quarterback at Pitt while Flowers is in the NFL.

“They went through some really hard times. Then all of a sudden you get a team that’s 28-point underdogs that goes into Raleigh as 28-point underdogs. No one thinks we can win the game. We go down I think 14 within the first three minutes. Emmett [Morehead] rallies us back and throws a touchdown to another freshman in Joe Griffin, and we win the game that no one thought we could win,” Hafley said.

“So you can ask these guys. There’s excitement, and there’s energy, and our guys are getting older. That’s how we have to win at BC. Most of our guys are still underclassmen. We got a lot of juniors and seniors and we brought in some transfers. The attitude, the effort, I think it’s contagious.”

For Hafley and Boston College, this season is an exciting opportunity, but he knows that the team still needs to go out and earn everything they have.

“We’re not going to sit up here and talk about how good we are going to be. We have to go play and go to training camp next week, and it’s probably as excited as I have been since I have been a head coach to get into a training camp, but we have to go prove it, and we have to get better,” Hafley said.

“I really like this team. I like the players, and I think they’re just as excited as I am.”

Boston College opens its 2023 season at home against Northern Illinois before welcoming FCS Holy Cross.

Jeff Hafley and the hot seat

According to CBS Sports, Jeff Hafley is starting to feel his seat getting warmer.

Hafley has been Boston College’s head coach since the start of the 2020 season. That was, obviously, a difficult situation for any head coach to walk into. Despite the challenges the pandemic represented, Hafley still led the Eagles to two six-win seasons. However, a three-win 2023 season now has his chair warming.