Eagles must get it moving, via Crane

Boston College has a week off to fix the things that went wrong in its 19-16 loss to Georgia Tech Saturday. It might take longer than that.

It is not simply a matter of Xs and Os. It is a matter of leadership, direction. Right now, the Eagles don't have a dominant voice on offense or defense.

A year ago, it was Matt Ryan. The quarterback was so good and such a presence that it was his team, as much if not more than it was coach Jeff Jagodzinski's.

If something went wrong, Ryan - along with a core group of fifth-year seniors who had worked hard to establish a reputation of being Top-20 worthy - would find a way to fix it.

This year, the leader on offense is quarterback Chris Crane. But as we saw Saturday, Crane is still in on-the-job training mode, which is not unusual for a signal-caller starting only the third game of his college career.

Crane had a bad game. Poor decisions, poor execution. But as Jagodzinski said, it was more than the QB. It was the running backs, who could do very little against what may be only an average Yellow Jacket defense. It was receivers running wrong routes. It was blown assignments on defense.

"We were in there all the way," said linebacker Mark Herzlich, one of the more vocal leaders on defense. "[but] we didn't capitalize when we needed to capitalize. On offense we didn't put the ball in the end zone and on defense one of our goals was not give up big plays and we did."

The Eagles can recover, but they need to beat Central Florida in two weeks and Rhode Island in three weeks. Beating Central Florida will be a challenge, although handling URI should be a given.

After that, the Eagles get back to the Atlantic Coast Conference. No monsters lurk this season. Everyone appears beatable, with BC's toughest tests appearing to be Wake Forest and Florida State, both on the road.

The key on offense clearly is Crane. He will have two more games to establish an identity before it gets more difficult. As offensive coordinator Steve Logan said, "After that we will know where we are at [with Crane]."

If the Eagles are 3-1 coming out of September, Crane likely will have done enough to keep his starting position. If their record is anything other than that, though, there could be a chaotic situation on offense, with even more intense on-the-job training at QB, where Dominique Davis awaits a chance, as does rising freshman Justin Tuggle.

But if either of those two end up playing, the Eagles are likely to suffer more setbacks. Until someone emerges as a team leader - and that very well still could be Crane - there will be more questions than answers.