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Pete Thamel, ESPN
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. — Bill O’Brien was officially introduced as the new head football coach at Boston College on Thursday in a move that athletic director Blake James called a “monumental step.”
BC hasn’t won eight games in a season since 2009, and the hiring of a veteran NFL and college coach like O’Brien offers a harbinger of optimism moving forward. The over-arching theme of the day was a return home for O’Brien, who grew up in the area and has a deep family history at Boston College.
“I went into coaching in 1993 when I got out of Brown,” O’Brien said. “I went into coaching (starting) at Brown, and I always dreamed about being the head coach at Boston College.”
O’Brien’s hire resonates both locally and nationally to the commitment of Boston College to bring in a coach with such a significant pedigree.
Thursday’s news conference, which was packed with family members, former players and an outsized contingent of local media, stressed local ties, as O’Brien’s arrival at Boston College is a homecoming. He grew up in nearby Andover, graduated high school from St. John’s Prep in nearby Danvers and played at Brown in nearby Providence.
Amid a roll call of family members — and getting choked up when thanking his wife, Colleen — O’Brien expressed gratitude that his coaching journey brought him back to a job he’d always wanted.
“My career has taken some twists and turns and taken me down roads I never could have imagined,” he said. “But as I stand here today, I couldn’t be more grateful that the road has finally taken me back home to Boston College.”
O’Brien comes to BC with two successful head coaching stints on his resume, as he capably guided Penn State through the grisly years in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky sexual assault scandal. He also reached the NFL playoffs four times as the head coach of the Houston Texans.
He’s also served as offensive coordinator at Alabama and with the New England Patriots.
O’Brien moved back to the Boston area last year for the job with the Patriots. When he took the offensive coordinator job at Ohio State last month, his family planned to stay in the area, so when the Boston College job came open soon after, it marked a significant opportunity.
“I’m still kind of pinching myself,” Colleen O’Brien, who graduated from BC in 1992, told ESPN. “It doesn’t seem real. The past 10 days were kind of in a whirlwind, but we’ve talked about this place a lot, about this job a lot. And just to see it finally come to fruition, it’s pretty amazing.”
One son, Michael, is a college baseball player at nearby Tufts. Their other son, Jack, has a rare genetic brain malformation known as lissencephaly, which requires significant medical care. Part of the reason that the O’Brien family wasn’t following Bill to Columbus was to stay close to nearby Boston Children’s Hospital for the quality of the care available for Jack.
Bill O’Brien thanked Ohio State coach Ryan Day in his remarks, appreciating his “patience and understanding” in him wanting to return home. The Buckeyes have since hired Chip Kelly as their new offensive coordinator.
O’Brien went 15-9 in his two seasons at Penn State, 2012 and 2013, calmly guiding the school and program through the lowest moment in school history. With the Texans, O’Brien went 52-48 during his tenure from 2014 to 2020, including four playoff bids in the five seasons between 2015 and 2019. He won playoff games in both 2016 and 2019.
His tenure at Boston College comes at an interesting moment for the school and athletic department. BC has 31 Division I sports and has seen only middling success in both football and men’s basketball over the past 15 years.
The O’Brien hire looms as a harbinger of commitment from the school, which has upped the staff salary and support pool for O’Brien. One of the signs of those deeper pockets appeared after O’Brien’s news conference on Thursday, when longtime friend and strength coach Craig Fitzgerald shook hands and said hello to the assembled.
BC hired Fitzgerald from Florida in the days after O’Brien’s hire.
O’Brien said Fitzgerald was instrumental in “helping to keep that program together” at Penn State and has been appreciative of the financial commitment BC has given him to put together a strong staff. He said that BC officials are “making things happen” so far. “We believe in toughness, hard work,” O’Brien said. “We believe in lifting weights. We believe in the science, but we know on the football field, we have to move people, especially up front. We have to tackle people. We have to sometimes run people over.”
James said the school’s investment into football has been led by president Father William P. Leahy.
“It’s an investment that we’re continuing to make, to move up more and more,” James said. “At the same time, it’s consistent with who we are as an institution. So I don’t know where we would fall in the league, but I know Bill feels good about it, and if my coach feels good about it, I feel good about it. And again, we appreciate the institution helping us get to that point.”
O’Brien inherits a solid roster coming off a 7-6 season. That includes returning quarterback Thomas Castellanos — O’Brien has taken to calling him “Tommy” — and a strong offensive line let by veterans Ozzy Trapilo and Drew Kendall.
O’Brien said the program’s identity will be on the offensive and defensive lines and they’ll try and channel past generations of BC football, which was known for dominant line play.
“We will not be out-toughed,” O’Brien said. “We will not be out-competed.”