New Eagles Football Coach*

There’ll be a new leader on the gridiron come fall: The Boston College football team recently welcomed the former Ohio State University co-defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley as its new head coach.

“Jeff’s shown throughout his coaching career he is a tremendous leader with high integrity and a gift for teaching,” Director of Athletics Martin Jarmond said of Hafley’s hiring as the new Gregory P. Barber ’69 and Family Head Coach. “His passion, leadership, and ability to recruit and develop student-athletes make him the right fit to lead Boston College to greater heights, on and off the field.”

A finalist for the Frank Broyles Award and the 247Sports Defensive Coordinator of the Year, Hafley was one of the architects of an Ohio State Buckeye defense that ranked first nationally in yards allowed per play and red-zone defense; second in total defense and passing yards allowed; and third in scoring defense and sacks. 

“I want to compete, and I want to win. I want to get better, and I want this to be a Top 25 program,” Hafley said in his introduction ceremony at BC. “That’s real. That’s the truth, and it can be. I want there to be magical moments and magical seasons like you guys have seen with Doug [Flutie] and Matt [Ryan].”

Hafley will be the thirty sixth head coach of Boston College football, succeeding Steve Addazio, who spent seven years leading the Eagles before he was let go in December. Hafley coached eleven seasons in collegiate football (at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the University of Albany, the University of Pittsburgh, and Rutgers University) before moving to the NFL in 2012. During coaching stints with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Cleveland Browns, and San Francisco 49ers, he built a reputation for turning teams around. To wit: The 49ers ranked twenty seventh in the league in passing defense in 2015, the year before Hafley joined the team as defensive backs coach. Under his leadership, the passing defense jumped to fourteenth in 2016 and eleventh in 2018. Similarly, during Hafley’s one season at Ohio State, the school rocketed from seventy second to first in yards allowed per play. 

A native of Montvale, New Jersey, Hafley played four seasons as a wide receiver at Siena College from 1997 to 2000, graduating cum laude in 2001 with a degree in history. He earned his master’s degree from Albany in 2003, and comes to Chestnut Hill with his wife, Gina, and two daughters, Hope and Leah.