Perhaps we needed this season | Syracusefan.com

Perhaps we needed this season

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AAM62

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First year in the HCSS/ACC era resulted in some blowout losses that I care to not discuss in detail. This year shows that we can hang tough with the big boys. Perhaps we needed this season so we can go to recruits and let them know its just a talent issue at this point.
 
Im sorry, I'm really just not seeing it and I really really really want to see it.

We barely beat nova on a gimme missed fg and needed a fake fg in overtime to win. Good team? sure, but its a division lower then us.

Lost to Maryland who hasn't really beaten anyone. Their best win is Iowa (who's best win is pitt, pitiful schedule), they beat James madison, usf (3-5), Indiana (3-5), Iowa (5-2), and Syracuse. Got absolutely decimated by ohio state and wisconsin.

Lost to ND. Yes, a very good team. But we forced 5 turnovers and only committed 1 turnover. Were plus 4 in the turnover category and still lost by 16 points. Thats almost impossible to achieve. Your not supposed to win comfortably when you turn the ball over 4 more times then your opponents.

Louisville is not nearly as good as everyone made them out to be in the beginning of the year. Great defense but they played their true freshman qb against us and we still lost 28-6. Lost by 22 points against a true freshman at home. Not very competitive. Wake forest was able to score 10 points on them. Wake lost 20-10 to the same qb we played against. We should never have lost by 22 points against Louisville. Not sure where this is considered a good loss.

FSU still beat us by 18 and looked like they could have scored on every possession if they really wanted to. FSU was more focused on ND the following week then us. our offense showed some life but I don't really think the game was ever in doubt. NCst even made it look like somewhat of a game, so did wake for a half before getting destroyed. Wake and citadel are the only two teams that lost by more then we did.

Clemson is not the same old Clemson this year, especially without their freshman qb. Kids played their hearts out but our offensive scheme was just atrocious. We kept running to the outside against their speed. It was doomed to fail right from the start. Idk what lester was thinking. By far our best game of the year, but still lost by 10 and once Clemson scored that TD we really had no chance. Our offense was never really a threat to score. We again forced 4 turnovers, but unlike the ND game we turned the ball over 3 times ourselves. We thrive against QB's like Stoudt, was a real surprise how good our defense played against him. He's a below average qb.

I know I'm probably coming off pessimistic in this post, but its all facts. I don't think were really hanging with anyone. Still a long way to go. Freshman look like players though, so I have hopes for the future. Still have no idea if this staff can coach though.
 
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Clev04 said:
Im sorry, I'm really just not seeing it and I really really really want to see it. We barely beat nova on a gimme missed fg and needed a fake fg in overtime to win. Good team? sure, but its a division lower then us. Lost to Maryland who hasn't really beaten anyone. Their best win is Iowa (who's best win is pitt, pitiful schedule), they beat James madison, usf (3-5), Indiana (3-5), Iowa (5-2), and Syracuse. Got absolutely decimated by ohio state and wisconsin. Lost to ND. Yes, a very good team. But we forced 5 turnovers and only committed 1 turnover. Were plus 4 in the turnover category and still lost by 16 points. Thats almost impossible to achieve. Your not supposed to win comfortably when you turn the ball over 4 more times then your opponents. Louisville is not nearly as good as everyone made them out to be in the beginning of the year. Great defense but they played their true freshman qb against us and we still lost 28-6. Lost by 22 points against a true freshman at home. Not very competitive. Wake forest was able to score 10 points on them. Wake lost 20-10 to the same qb we played against. We should never have lost by 22 points against Louisville. Not sure where this is considered a good loss. FSU still beat us by 18 and looked like they could have scored on every possession if they really wanted to. FSU was more focused on ND the following week then us. our offense showed some life but I don't really think the game was ever in doubt. NCst even made it look like somewhat of a game, so did wake for a half before getting destroyed. Wake and citadel are the only two teams that lost by more then we did. Clemson is not the same old Clemson this year, especially without their freshman qb. Kids played their hearts out but our offensive scheme was just atrocious. We kept running to the outside against their speed. It was doomed to fail right from the start. Idk what lester was thinking. By far our best game of the year, but still lost by 10 and once Clemson scored that TD we really had no chance. Our offense was never really a threat to score. We again forced 4 turnovers, but unlike the ND game we turned the ball over 3 times ourselves. We thrive against QB's like Stoudt, was a real surprise how good our defense played against him. He's a below average qb. I know I'm probably coming off pessimistic in this post, but its all facts. I don't think were really hanging with anyone. Still a long way to go. Freshman look like players though, so I have hopes for the future. Still have no idea if this staff can coach though.
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The OP was comparing those not so good losses to the horrific losses against similar competition last season.

I'm not sure it will be that effective with recruits - but it's classic silver lining on an otherwise dark cloud.
 
Halfmooncuse said:
I don't know. Seems like getting wooped in a fight and saying "did ya see how hard i hit his fist with my face?"
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Naw. It's not a fight. It's a game that has stats and scores all of which are quantifiable.

And some on this board had a hard time stomaching the horrible blowouts last season. You have to give the team credit for closing the gap some, with way more injuries and a crazy OC drama and cycling through QB's.
 
Though patience is at a premium, we are still in the midst of a rebuild.

Pretty much looking for tangible improvement from this years team vs week 1 of this years team and i think we can see that with the defense. Up next is the offense but hopefully getting past the murderers row of defenses (Clemson, Lville, and ND) will allow them to catch up and we can go bowling once again.
 
TheCusian said:
The OP was comparing those not so good losses to the horrific losses against similar competition last season.

I'm not sure it will be that effective with recruits - but it's classic silver lining on an otherwise dark cloud.
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Im aware, and Im saying I just don't see that silver lining. FSU isn't nearly as good as they were last year, I think everyone can agree with that. But at no point during that game did it really look like we were going to win. FSU moved the ball at will and won very comfortably. Now I know they beat wake forest by 37 points, but even the first half was in doubt at 13-3. We were down 24-6 at half. NCST had FSU for nearly 3 quarters of the game before FSU took over. We didn't put a scare in them at all.

ND is a very good team, but at no point was that game really in doubt either. We were +4 in the turnover department and still lost by 16 points. In what world is that considered progress? Take away all those turnovers and they may have thrown 50 on us. My point is when you force 5 turnovers in one game and only give the ball away once, you should probably keep it within double digits.

In the end, when you look at Clemson or Florida State from last year, they were dominant teams. This year they have been pedestrian. Its like in college basketball when everyone says there are a lot of good teams but no excellent teams. Thats what college football is this year. There are a lot of really good teams but no dominant teams. Last years Clemson and FSU teams would be the best team this year. Clemson lost their 2 best WR's, RB, and QB, not to mention they were missing their best QB when we played them the other night. They put 17 points up on BC and 16 points on us. Not exactly a dominant offense like they were last year when they put up 40 points a game. This year they are only avg 32 points a game and Cole stout has only accounted for 2 of those td's and one of them was against us. Watson on the other hand has accounted for 15 of those tds. Obviously I can't tell you how many times Clemson scored while stout was on the field (running backs) but clearly he holds their offense back. They are completely different teams this year. So we are taking teams that aren't as good and comparing them to last years games. Im trying to show that some of the performances this year are actually quite similar.
 
tep624 said:
There's a difference between 38-20 and 16-6 and 59-3 and 49-14, whether you guys want to see it or not. The gap is closing between the teams that outclassed us last season.
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Read my post and please tell me how it is much different?

Stout has accounted for 2 td's all year. Not exactly an offensive juggernaut with him at QB. Cole Stout has attempted 181 passes to Watsons 112 and only has 2td and 4 int to watsons 12 td (15 including 3 rushing td to stoudt's 0) and 2 int. His only td's are against us and South carolina st who they hung 70 on.

Lousiville was another blowout really. Lost by 22 to a true freshman QB that we should have feasted on. Florida international scored the least amount of points against lousiville this year, 3. Guess who is second with 6 points? Thats right, its syracuse. We lost worse to lousiville then wake forest did. The kids second career start and they score 28 points on our defense and we manage 6.
 
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Winston had his best game of the year against us, guy was 30 of 36 (83.3%), 317 yards, 3td's and 0 Interceptions with a 184.8 rating.

He only had 5 games worse then that last year. My point with that, FSU is a completely different team this year. You can't compare last years score to this years score. They were a juggernaut last year, not so much this year.

They have scored over 40 points twice (2 of 7) this year. They scored over 40 12 times last year.

They held 12 opponents under 20 last year, this year only 3 out of 7 games.

So again, an 18 point win needs to be looked at differently. These are not the same teams, so they are not comparable.
 
What I'm trying to say is the coaches can recruit a guy and say "we were this close and with you we win." Recruits only look at the recent performance and make judgments from there.
 
AAM62 said:
What I'm trying to say is the coaches can recruit a guy and say "we were this close and with you we win." Recruits only look at the recent performance and make judgments from there.
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It's not much but it's something. I doubt recruits are going to think "yeah, but Stoudt is terrible, or FSU was playing vanilla". You're just trying to sell that you're getting more competitive with those schools and we're moving in the right direction. It's much better to sell that then to have 59-3, 56-0, 49-14 on the current season's resume when you're talking to potential recruits.

Throw it out the window if you don't make a bowl game though. Because you just wrote a story with a worse ending.
 
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Clev04 said:
Im aware, and Im saying I just don't see that silver lining. FSU isn't nearly as good as they were last year, I think everyone can agree with that. But at no point during that game did it really look like we were going to win. FSU moved the ball at will and won very comfortably. Now I know they beat wake forest by 37 points, but even the first half was in doubt at 13-3. We were down 24-6 at half. NCST had FSU for nearly 3 quarters of the game before FSU took over. We didn't put a scare in them at all.

ND is a very good team, but at no point was that game really in doubt either. We were +4 in the turnover department and still lost by 16 points. In what world is that considered progress? Take away all those turnovers and they may have thrown 50 on us. My point is when you force 5 turnovers in one game and only give the ball away once, you should probably keep it within double digits.

In the end, when you look at Clemson or Florida State from last year, they were dominant teams. This year they have been pedestrian. Its like in college basketball when everyone says there are a lot of good teams but no excellent teams. Thats what college football is this year. There are a lot of really good teams but no dominant teams. Last years Clemson and FSU teams would be the best team this year. Clemson lost their 2 best WR's, RB, and QB, not to mention they were missing their best QB when we played them the other night. They put 17 points up on BC and 16 points on us. Not exactly a dominant offense like they were last year when they put up 40 points a game. This year they are only avg 32 points a game and Cole stout has only accounted for 2 of those td's and one of them was against us. Watson on the other hand has accounted for 15 of those tds. Obviously I can't tell you how many times Clemson scored while stout was on the field (running backs) but clearly he holds their offense back. They are completely different teams this year. So we are taking teams that aren't as good and comparing them to last years games. Im trying to show that some of the performances this year are actually quite similar.
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You're looking at direct comparisons. Need to look at scores. We're not getting clobbered by 35-40+ like last season. We got waxed by Northwestern and Gtech last year! Where on the schedule are direct comparisons to those losses?
 
This is a useless exercise. However, one thing seems certain and that is that the opponents we have played thus far in 2014 are much better than the ones we played at the same point last year. Needless to say, we played with many more important injuries and without our starting QB.
  1. Penn State 2013 - Nova 2014
  2. Northwestern 2013 - Central Michigan 2014
  3. Wagner 2013 - Maryland 2014
  4. Tulane 2013 - Notre Dame 2014
  5. Clemson 2013 - Louisville 2014
  6. NC State 2013 - Florida State 2014
  7. Georgia Tech 2013 - Wake Forest 2014
  8. Wake Forest 2013 - Clemson 2014
Thus far in 2014 Wake Forest and Clemson are the only common foes with this time last year.

Nova is better than Tulane
CMU is better than Wagner
Louisville is better than Georgia Tech
Notre Dame is better than Penn State
FSU is better than Northwestern
Maryland is better than NC State

FWIW - We beat Wake by a greater margin and we gave FSU a run for their money.

I think those who do see the improvement are missing the forest for the trees.
 
I did not need this season. I see a lot of talent on the field and a lot of talent on the sidelines but not enough wins. Another season of "almost" ...
 
Clev04 said:
Im sorry, I'm really just not seeing it and I really really really want to see it.

We barely beat nova on a gimme missed fg and needed a fake fg in overtime to win. Good team? sure, but its a division lower then us.

Lost to Maryland who hasn't really beaten anyone. Their best win is Iowa (who's best win is pitt, pitiful schedule), they beat James madison, usf (3-5), Indiana (3-5), Iowa (5-2), and Syracuse. Got absolutely decimated by ohio state and wisconsin.

Lost to ND. Yes, a very good team. But we forced 5 turnovers and only committed 1 turnover. Were plus 4 in the turnover category and still lost by 16 points. Thats almost impossible to achieve. Your not supposed to win comfortably when you turn the ball over 4 more times then your opponents.

Louisville is not nearly as good as everyone made them out to be in the beginning of the year. Great defense but they played their true freshman qb against us and we still lost 28-6. Lost by 22 points against a true freshman at home. Not very competitive. Wake forest was able to score 10 points on them. Wake lost 20-10 to the same qb we played against. We should never have lost by 22 points against Louisville. Not sure where this is considered a good loss.

FSU still beat us by 18 and looked like they could have scored on every possession if they really wanted to. FSU was more focused on ND the following week then us. our offense showed some life but I don't really think the game was ever in doubt. NCst even made it look like somewhat of a game, so did wake for a half before getting destroyed. Wake and citadel are the only two teams that lost by more then we did.

Clemson is not the same old Clemson this year, especially without their freshman qb. Kids played their hearts out but our offensive scheme was just atrocious. We kept running to the outside against their speed. It was doomed to fail right from the start. Idk what lester was thinking. By far our best game of the year, but still lost by 10 and once Clemson scored that TD we really had no chance. Our offense was never really a threat to score. We again forced 4 turnovers, but unlike the ND game we turned the ball over 3 times ourselves. We thrive against QB's like Stoudt, was a real surprise how good our defense played against him. He's a below average qb.

I know I'm probably coming off pessimistic in this post, but its all facts. I don't think were really hanging with anyone. Still a long way to go. Freshman look like players though, so I have hopes for the future. Still have no idea if this staff can coach though.
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You fail to mention Clemson d is probably the best in College Football (def top 5) and we had a freshman qb playing infront of 81,500!

Not sure how you know FSU was focused on ND...

Im not sure this is totally all facts
 
CanadianSU said:
You fail to mention Clemson d is probably the best in College Football (def top 5) and we had a freshman qb playing infront of 81,500!

Not sure how you know FSU was focused on ND...

Im not sure this is totally all facts
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Okay? They have a great defense. That's why we were only plus one in turnovers and not more when we forced 4 turnovers. But being a great defense and not a great offense means that the game won't be a blowout. Meaning the game will be closer then it should be. Read the other stats on both FSU and Clemson. They weren't going to be blow outs. There not the same teams as last year
 
TheCusian said:
You're looking at direct comparisons. Need to look at scores. We're not getting clobbered by 35-40+ like last season. We got waxed by Northwestern and Gtech last year! Where on the schedule are direct comparisons to those losses?
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Wasn't to the extent but losing by 22 to Louisville and a true freshman at home and losing by 14 to Maryland at home? They are not a very good team and that game was over by halftime. The final score really didnt show the entirety of the game. The final score was never in doubt.
 
Clev04 said:
Wasn't to the extent but losing by 22 to Louisville and a true freshman at home and losing by 14 to Maryland at home? They are not a very good team and that game was over by halftime. The final score really didnt show the entirety of the game. The final score was never in doubt.
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See: Crusty's post above.

We've played better teams closer. Still sucks to lose, but for whatever reason we are not getting blown out despite playing our third string and a 1/3 of our starters hurt or out of position at some point.
 
Crusty said:
Ok you're right everything sucks.
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I'm not saying that, but you can't take teams that are completely different from last years teams and say because we didn't lose by so much that it's a moral victory. That's absurd. These are completely different teams. As evidenced by the stats I wrote about FSU and Clemson. The only 2 games FSU didn't score over 40 last year was auburn in the championship game and Florida (37 against Florida was the most they gave up all year). This year they have only scored over 40 twice. Clemson played a QB that has accounted for a combined 2 TD's both passing and no running on 75 more attempts then Watson who was injured. Watson has 15 total TD's (12 passing, 3 rushing). These teams are not nearly as good as they were last year, that's my point. You can't say because these games were closer, were better. These games were going to be closer because these teams are not as talented as they were last year.
 
TheCusian said:
See: Crusty's post above.

We've played better teams closer. Still sucks to lose, but for whatever reason we are not getting blown out despite playing our third string and a 1/3 of our starters hurt or out of position at some point.
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And these arnt the same teams we played last year either!!!! What don't you understand about that. We are 3-5 with a 1 point win against nova due to a botched field goal. Our closest loss is 10 points to a team that had a qb with 2 TD's and 4 ints on the year. Not a juggernaut at all.
 
TheCusian said:
See: Crusty's post above.

We've played better teams closer. Still sucks to lose, but for whatever reason we are not getting blown out despite playing our third string and a 1/3 of our starters hurt or out of position at some point.
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Louisville started a true freshman and it was there 3rd biggest blowout of the year. Wake and NC state both played them closer 10 points and 12 points respectively.
 
AAM62 said:
First year in the HCSS/ACC era resulted in some blowout losses that I care to not discuss in detail. This year shows that we can hang tough with the big boys. Perhaps we needed this season so we can go to recruits and let them know its just a talent issue at this point.
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no
 
Clev04 said:
I'm not saying that, but you can't take teams that are completely different from last years teams and say because we didn't lose by so much that it's a moral victory. That's absurd. These are completely different teams. As evidenced by the stats I wrote about FSU and Clemson. The only 2 games FSU didn't score over 40 last year was auburn in the championship game and Florida (37 against Florida was the most they gave up all year). This year they have only scored over 40 twice. Clemson played a QB that has accounted for a combined 2 TD's both passing and no running on 75 more attempts then Watson who was injured. Watson has 15 total TD's (12 passing, 3 rushing). These teams are not nearly as good as they were last year, that's my point. You can't say because these games were closer, were better. These games were going to be closer because these teams are not as talented as they were last year.
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Read my post above. The comparison between the competition this year and last year is not even close. This team is the walking wounded and have hung in there tough. By the end of the season barring any more inuries, we will be better in all defensive categories and not so different in offensive stats. If I am correct, they will have done it against much better competition. Take two aspirin and post me at the end of the season.
 
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