McKenzie makes first start as Eagles open at Cincinnati
Mason McKenzie makes his first start behind center this afternoon at Cincinnati, with Bill O'Brien calling plays himself for the first time at BC and a near-total roster overhaul on the other sideline.
McKenzie's 'gunslinger mentality' gets its first live test
Mason McKenzie takes his first meaningful snap in a Boston College uniform this afternoon at Cincinnati, and he isn't hiding what kind of quarterback he intends to be. "You have to have a gunslinger mentality," McKenzie told SI's Boston College site this week. "No matter what the position is, everybody's gonna have a bad play in a game, and you got to move on from that... you make a bad decision, you throw a pick, just go out there and keep slinging." It's a long way from where he was in January, sitting in the transfer portal out of Division II Saginaw Valley State. "It feels like just yesterday when I came in," he said. "It was a long six months of getting ready, getting prepared, but I think we're ready to go."
Bill O'Brien is adding his own wrinkle: for the first time at BC, he's calling the offensive plays himself, a job he's held before with the Patriots and Alabama, Boston.com reported this week. "They've really embraced what we're trying to teach, and they've come into each meeting prepared and ready to go," O'Brien said of McKenzie and backups Grayson Wilson and Femi Babalola. That trust matters against a Cincinnati defense whose own coach has already done his homework — Scott Satterfield spent part of his game-week preview calling McKenzie "a talented player" who "can really run," pointing to the 942 yards and 10 touchdowns that made him GLIAC Player of the Year last season.
The quarterback McKenzie replaced is watching from New Jersey. Dylan Lonergan, who started 9 games at BC last season before entering the portal, was named Rutgers' starting quarterback on August 24 — and Rutgers is BC's Week 2 opponent, arriving at Alumni Stadium on September 11. McKenzie has to get through Cincinnati first, but the reunion is already circled.
Last season ended on a 22-point statement at Syracuse
The last 4 games of last season went the wrong way for Boston College — a loss at Louisville, defeats to Notre Dame and SMU at home, and a heartbreaker against Georgia Tech — before the Eagles closed it out right. On November 29, BC beat Syracuse 34-12 on the road to finish last season on a high note, the kind of result a program likes having in its pocket heading into an offseason with a new quarterback and a rewritten depth chart.
That Syracuse win is also the last live look anyone has at this team, since the 2026 schedule opens with nothing played yet this fall. It isn't nothing, though — a 22-point road win to end last season, with McKenzie not yet the guy but most of the pieces around him unchanged, is a reasonable version of the BC that shows up this afternoon.
Cincinnati brings a nearly all-new team of its own to Nippert
Scott Satterfield is entering his 4th season at Cincinnati, and the roster he's fielding Saturday barely resembles the one that finished last season on a five-game skid after starting 7-1. The Bearcats bring in 51 newcomers — 26 transfers and 25 true freshmen — along with new coordinators on both sides of the ball, the kind of overhaul that makes a Week 1 scouting report mostly a guess for both sides.
The one piece Satterfield trusts is at quarterback. JC French IV, a Georgia Southern transfer who left as that program's all-time leading passer, threw for 2,989 yards and 30 touchdowns last season and is expected to make his first start at Historic Nippert Stadium, per 247Sports' summer preview. Behind him the backfield has turned over completely too, with transfers Gi'Bran Payne (Notre Dame), Zylan Perry (Louisiana) and Cole Tabb (Stanford) joining incumbent Zion Johnson in a four-man rotation.
This is also a series with some mileage on it, even if nobody under 25 remembers the last chapter. Boston College and Cincinnati have split their first 8 meetings 4-4, with the Bearcats taking the most recent one 38-6 in the 2019 Birmingham Bowl, and Cincinnati has won 24 straight home openers, per the Leader-Telegram. The Eagles didn't wait around to find out how the rematch looks on paper — BCFootball posted the equipment trucks rolling out this week: "Packed up and on the road for game 1."
Cincinnati opened a 7.5-point favorite for kickoff this afternoon
Boston College is an underdog this afternoon at Cincinnati, with the line opened at Cincinnati -7.5 and the total set at 51.5 — our own numbers, not any single book's. It's also a familiar spot for the Eagles: BC went 1-4 on the road in each of the last two seasons, and cleaning that up has been one of O'Brien's talking points all fall camp, per Boston.com.
There's a quick turnaround on the other side of it regardless of how this afternoon goes. Rutgers comes to Alumni Stadium Friday night vs. Rutgers, with Lonergan lined up to face the program that developed him — a game already circled well before this one kicks off.