Familiar face Jurkovec leads BC vs. surging Irish
Phil Jurkovec was in a pass-at-will offense in high school, two years of a modified run-pass-option offense under Chip Long during his abbreviated Notre Dame career and helmed his first-year Boston College offense to help the Eagles to a 5-3 mark.
And yet the Eagles, who host Jurkovec's old Irish squad Saturday at 3:30 p.m. (ABC), with first-year coach Jeff Hafley might be the most surprising team in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Enough that Irish coach Brian Kelly and Clemson's Dabo Swinney discussed Boston College prior to kickoff of Notre Dame's 47-40, double-overtime win against Clemson that vaulted the Irish to No. 2 in this week's polls and delivered an inside track to an ACC Championship game appearance.
“Coach Hafley has done a great job and you can tell watching this team,” Kelly said. “They play hard, a very gritty, tough team, well-coached. It’s going to be a great challenge for us.
“I know in talking with Coach Swinney in pregame, he even commented about the way this team played them for four quarters and that they’re going to be a great challenge. Getting our team prepared this week, apply our process the way we have will be very, very important and then competing at a high level on the road.”
At the center of that Eagles resurgence is the rangy, strong-armed Jurkovec. He's thrown for 2,083 yards, 15 touchdowns, rushed for three more and thrown just four interceptions in 277 pass attempts.
The 6-foot-5, 226-pound Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, native is more focused on the team's success.
“I think so, just because everybody had us (picked to finish) last. We're 5-3 now,” he said. “It's not great but it's good. We've got to be happy about every win.
“We definitely enjoy it just for a little and then get ready for [the next game] and to play Notre Dame.”
To that end, Jurkovec also knows the challenge at hand this week and admits he still talks to some former teammates here in South Bend.
“I've got some friends back there, guys I keep in touch with for sure,” Jurkovec said after BC's 16-13 win against Syracuse. “It's going to be weird playing against them but we're looking forward to it. I'm excited. We've got to have a great week of preparation because they're a good team. A really good team.”
In his video review of the Eagles, Kelly sees in Jurkovec a player reverting to his high school roots in a positive way – improvising to make plays.
"Phil's in a different type of offense than the one we were asking him to be part of last year, so it's hard. We're not comparing it,” Kelly said. “Remember in high school, he was in a spread offense, truly a spread offense, catch and throw. He was in an RPO offense last year. He is in a play-action, six-man, seven-man protection offense this year. So, it's really hard to compare where he is compared to where he was last year, because they are so dissimilar from an offensive perspective.
“What he's doing this year on film is he's making plays outside the realm of the offense, which he was very accustomed to doing in high school and when he was here as well. Outside the pocket, he's a great scrambler. He can throw on the run. He's got a strong arm. Great size and he's a tough kid. But I would say that the offenses are so dissimilar it's hard to really compare where that progression is, but the one constant is he can make plays outside that the pocket."
