Sitting at 4-5 and 2-4 in the Atlantic Coast Conference leading up to its Week 11 road matchup against Notre Dame, Boston College football is continuing to play with a “go 1-0 each week” mantra.

“The mentality is the same thing,” safety Marcus Upton said on Tuesday. “Just go 1-0. Just go in there to fight, compete, just get ready to play. This is just a game, a regular game on the schedule. It’s got a lot of [history] to it, but we just gotta go out there and just play our game, you know, just do us.”

With that being said, there is still bowl eligibility to play for despite the fact that two of the Eagles’ final three opponents are ranked inside the top 10 nationally — the No. 3 Fighting Irish and No. 7 Miami.

And then there is Syracuse, which matches up with BC pretty evenly.

So what exactly do fans want to see in these final three games, which marks the three-year endpoint of Bill O’Brien’s tenure in Chestnut Hill, Mass.?

Here are a few things.

1. Putting up a Fight Against the Big Ones

The Eagles head into this week as a 29.5-point underdog, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, and odds are — no pun intended — that there will be a similar line for their season finale against the Hurricanes, which is also a road matchup.

While the expectation is that both Notre Dame and Miami will blow BC out, supporters of the program would probably consider it a win if the Eagles are able to keep these two games close, which would at least make for entertaining television.

Will it actually happen? That’s tough to determine considering the raucous atmosphere of these places, particularly in South Bend, Ind., compared to Miami, Fla., and the massive College Football Playoff implications that are on the line.

But it would certainly give the fans something to cheer for, and while O’Brien denied that BC is looking at this week as an opportunity to “spoil” the Fighting Irish’s season, that is exactly what the Eagles could do if they pull off the unthinkable.

At the end of the day, it’s just 11 players on one side of the field against 11 on the opposite side.

“It's the team that makes the least amount of mistakes,” O’Brien said. “It's the team that takes advantage of the other team's bad football. It's blocking out the noise, right? Making sure that you can focus on one play at a time. I know those are all cliches, but that's really something that we preach every day. It's, you know, every play is a story unto itself, and we really try to preach that and teach that.”

It also helps a great deal in recruiting if BC can put up a fight against these blue-chip programs, and with signing day right around the corner, including the transfer-portal opening, that will likely be something O’Brien has thought about.

2. Playing Clean, Mistake-Free Football

This is one that will be essential during this final stretch, and that’s because of how the Eagles’ remaining opponents fare in this area, particularly their next one.

Notre Dame is the least-penalized team in the country with only 31 total penalties this year for 287 yards, compared to BC’s 72 penalties for 610 yards, which ranks 117th in the nation.

In their Week 10 loss to Florida State, the Eagles were only penalized six times, but they were coming off a two-week stretch between Georgia Tech and Duke in which they collected 25 total penalties, which was simply brutal.

Playing clean football doesn’t just entail penalty-free football, either.

BC still needs to do a much better job in terms of finishing tackles and preventing teams from scoring in the red zone, which has set the Eagles back most of all as of late.

Both the Seminoles and the Blue Devils took advantage of this in a major way, going a combined 12-for-12 on red-zone scoring conversions, meaning any time those teams got inside of BC’s 25-yard line, they either notched a field goal or a touchdown.

Both Miami and Notre Dame rank inside the top 55 in red-zone offense, so this will be even more pertinent over the next few weeks, and it’s something O’Brien has been preaching to his players in terms of what the Eagles need to correct.

3. An Offense With a Plan

Good play-calling is a trait which should come rather naturally to O’Brien, who has served as an offensive coordinator at both the professional and collegiate level.

But even he has admitted multiple times this year that his play-calling was not conducive to winning games.

O’Brien’s approach in this realm has revolved heavily around changing the game plan depending on what the other team’s defense shows on tape, and not necessarily playing to BC’s strengths in a consistent manner.

But several times this season, he has been unable to adjust in the middle of games after different looks are thrown at him, which is a serious problem.

For instance, BC’s final drive against FSU saw it run four pass plays in a row from the Seminoles’ 35-yard line with over a minute left, two timeouts, and down by just a touchdown.

In that game, sophomore running back Bo MacCormack III had been averaging 6.6 yards per carry, but not a single play was drawn up to feed him the ball, and the plays that were run instead ultimately resulted in a turnover on downs.

“[We] didn't score in the fourth quarter, which is not good. Had some chances, drove the ball at the end. You know, just didn't quite connect on some plays, and it was frustrating,” O’Brien had to say of how that ended.

Sticking to the offense’s strengths by utilizing the run game in different ways will be the Eagles' bread and butter in this closing stretch, because it also helps BC control the clock and opens up options in the passing game by disguising the run in play-action.

It’s just a matter of what the Eagles can do to sustain their drives, which will be the most difficult part.