Boston College QB Phil Jurkovec displays confidence from Pine-Richland days

Jeff Hafley could have sent anyone to the airport to pick up the quarterback and his family. Surely, there was other important business on Chestnut Hill that needed the attention of Boston College’s new head coach.

But Hafley wanted to greet this visitor himself.

This was Phil Jurkovec, one of the nation’s best high school quarterbacks when he left Pine-Richland in 2018.

This was an opportunity for Hafley to cement the game’s most important position for the next three seasons.

One day, when he was only a few weeks into his new job, Hafley looked up to see offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti enter his office with urgent news:

Jurkovec, disillusioned after two years at Notre Dame, had entered the NCAA transfer portal. He was a free agent.

“We have to watch this kid,” Cignetti told his boss.

“And we did,” said Hafley, who a decade earlier had served on the same Pitt staff with Cignetti and Dave Wannstedt.

“We watched his high school tape, which was really, really good.”

How good? Pine-Richland averaged 47.1 points and won the 2017 PIAA championship in Jurkovec’s third season as starting quarterback.

After greeting the family at the airport (“I was all fired up to see how big he was,” Hafley said of the 6-foot-5, 226-pound quarterback), the coach didn’t need to do much recruiting.

Jurkovec, who wanted to enroll somewhere in time for the winter semester, spent hours talking ball with Cignetti, quickly committed and was declared eligible by the NCAA. Now, he’s the ACC’s problem, specifically Pitt’s on Saturday when the Panthers (3-1, 2-1) visit the Eagles (2-1, 1-1) at Alumni Stadium.

Pine-Richland coach Eric Kasperowicz, a former Pitt safety, said about “10-15 schools” contacted him when Jurkovec’s name appeared in the portal, including Pitt and Penn State.

Jurkovec spoke to Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi, who had landed Arizona State transfer quarterback Joey Yellen only days earlier. Penn State didn’t have an available scholarship and wanted Jurkovec to initially enroll as a walkon, Kasperowicz said.

“It was pretty clear what school wanted me the most,” Jurkovec said of BC.

Jurkovec is too mature for mixed emotions, but he did say of his past, “I was a Pitt fan. I really enjoyed them growing up.”

He said Narduzzi offered him a scholarship as a sophomore in high school and every interaction he’s had with the Pitt coach has been positive.

Jurkovec even had a recent conversation with Cignetti about Pitt’s 45-44 loss to Cincinnati in 2009. Cignetti was Pitt’s offensive coordinator that day. Jurkovec called it “one of (his) most heartbreaking losses as a kid

But Jurkovec said he rooted for two teams as a kid – Pitt and Notre Dame.

“Whenever it came down to it, I went to Notre Dame off of the brand name, off of everything I thought it would be,” he said.

He was a backup for two seasons, and he said his “confidence waned.”

“I wasn’t feeling the same. I wasn’t as comfortable.”

It’s different at Boston College, where the redshirt sophomore unseated former starting quarterback Dennis Grosel, who helped defeat Pitt last season.

“We did have competition, and Phil took the lead and didn’t look back,” Hafley said.

After three games, Jurkovec is second in the ACC with a 68.4 completion percentage and third — behind Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence and Pitt’s Kenny Pickett — in passing yards per game (274.3).

“As games go by, as practices go on, as time goes on, confidence grows,” he said.

Narduzzi said: “He’s confident like he was in high school.”

Jurkovec said Cignetti has “really flipped football for me, made it fun again. The way it’s supposed to be.”

Maybe the way it was when he was a seventh grader and the starting quarterback for Pine-Richland Middle School. That’s when Kasperowicz said he first met Jurkovec.

“We heard about him in youth football coming up that he was a big, fast, strong kid,” he said. “Not even sure he could play quarterback, but he had all the physical traits.”

Kasperowicz thought about moving him to the varsity as a freshman but decided against it.

“We had Ben DiNucci (future Pitt quarterback, now with the Dallas Cowboys), so there was no need,” he said. “Plus, Phil’s class was loaded. He could have started on defense in the state championship game in 2014.

“He was equally as good on defense then, but we made a conscious decision to keep him down with his teammates to develop and continue to grow with them.”

There was no holding Jurkovec back as a sophomore, but it wasn’t just his physical stature and strength that made him successsful.

“No. 1, without a doubt, was his competitiveness, his refusal to lose, his drive to be the best at whatever he does,” Kasperowicz said. “That’s not just on the football field, that’s in the weight room, that’s playing pickup basketball.

“Everybody knew Phil was going to be great or Phil was going to work as hard as he could to be great, and everybody else wanted to raise their level up to Phil’s.”

Jurkovec said it will be strange Saturday playing against former WPIAL opponents, especially Pitt safety Damar Hamlin.

“I have a little bit of payback because they beat us when I played Damar (and Central Catholic in 2015). It will be fun trying to get the win on them,” he said.

The former Pitt fan called Boston “a very cool city because of how many good sports teams there are.”

But with one disclaimer:

“They try to say it’s the city of champions,” he said, “but it’s not really the city of champions. Pittsburgh always will be.”