 Media Credit: Heights File Photo THEN: Jamie Silva walks off the field for the final time in BC uniform after the Champs Sports Bowl.
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A rookie safety waits for the kickoff. He is ready. He has spent five years competing in an overachieving, perennially-underrated defense, and he is ready for this: the Big Time. It is Saturday, August 16, 2008, and he is playing in the Georgia Dome, not Alumni Stadium. He is playing against a real team, and he is here to prove that he is the real thing, that he deserves to be one of the 53 Chosen Ones.
The ball sails through the air, and the safety tells himself, Go. He sprints downfield. Another player is in his way, so the safety nudges him aside.
Seconds later, he finds himself suspended in the air, then thrown down onto the turf, flat on his back, staring up at the lovely domed ceiling.
"That," Jamie Silva says, "was my welcome to the NFL moment."
Boston College truly fell in love with a ratty-haired, dumpster-diving, free-spirited defensive back in the fall of 2007. By then, Jamie Silva had been around for a while, but only when the Eagles debuted a second-ranked squad with a ravenous defense that would eventually finish in the top 25 in total yards allowed did he truly become somebody.
Under then-defensive coordinator Frank Spaziani, Silva established himself as the leader of a ferocious secondary. He was a ball hawk, an automatic pick-threat, stuffed into a meager 5-foot-11, 210-pound frame. He led the team with a school-record eight interceptions, averaging 18.4 yards per return. He also garnered a team-high 125 tackles - to put it in perspective, that's almost 30 more than Mark Herzlich tallied that year - and 80 of those were unassisted.
Silva may have been small, but he was fierce. And when he went undrafted in April 2008, he realized he would have to prove his worth the same way he did in Chestnut Hill.
"I knew [free agency] was going to be the route I'd have to go," Silva says. "When I got to BC, the boosters and stuff didn't know, or care, who I was. They only cared about the four or five-star guys, and I was the lowest recruit." He pauses. "Whatever. I didn't care. I knew I'd just have to show them on the field. If I get the opportunity to get out on the field and earn my time, I feel like I can stay."
Spring Break
