Dino Babers is..

[CousCuse]

The decision to go for two after Tucker’s run was good IMO. The defense was having trouble after the 1st quarter and getting points to stay ahead of a strong offense is always the right move

The problem was Dino went against that decision making and made a worse decision with the FG try in the 4th. He basically said I have confidence in my defense which didn’t make any sense

Yes, he at heart is an offensive minded coach and needs to lean on that instead of the defense to win. Whites defense is a huge upgrade over Ward, but it's still not some lock down D, stay on the offensive Dino and let the Chips fall where they may.

 

[Alsacs]

This isn't a shot at you but that's in no way accurate. If SU kicks the xp there the game will undoubtedly play out differently then it did. Would SU have won, maybe but there's no way of knowing exactly what would have happened

If we kick the XP it’s 28-26.
Wake gets that TD in the 4th they go up 32-28 they could have gone for 2 and gone up 34-28.
Now maybe they are little more aggressive in their last possession after the Pena fumble but it’s doubtful they play that much different.
They ran the ball on first and second to force us to use TOs and they were aggressive on 3rd down but we defended it well.

I don’t see how going for 2 when we did made any sense. We had another quarter to play you don’t chase points that early:

If we don’t go for 2 we could have won 35-34 in regulation.

 

[Alsacs]

The decision to go for two after Tucker’s run was good IMO. The defense was having trouble after the 1st quarter and getting points to stay ahead of a strong offense is always the right move

The problem was Dino went against that decision making and made a worse decision with the FG try in the 4th. He basically said I have confidence in my defense which didn’t make any sense

I agree on the second part but on the first part you don’t go for before the 4th quarter unless you are down 16 or 24 or you go up 5.
Up 1 you kick the XP for the exact reason it came back to bite us. If we score another TD up 2 rather 1 makes the ballgame a two score game.

 

[Evan Miller]

We were down 2 starters just today, and lost another one already this season, Davis.

Everyone has lost players. Teams have lost their starting QB for year for goodness sakes. This is not going to be the injury excuse year following the covid excuse year, is it?

Once again, every FBS team dealt with covid in 2020. Every single one. Most did not finish 1-10.

No free pass. Injuries happen. Part of football, unfortunately. Rough sport.

 

[Evan Miller]

This is strange logic and it’s trumpeted here a lot. We aren’t a favorite in any of those games. At best they’re coin flips. Now I’m no mathematician but….

It doesn’t matter though. He wins just one more and he’s back for sure. 3-9 he probably survives anyway.

Babers road the flukiest season in history and a misappropriated system to financial glory. Good for him though. Many many others have made more being worse.

It is strange logic. Go talk to every one of these ACC fan bases. They all have Syracuse circled as likely win. It's like some folks here live in some alternate reality. Every single game listed there...Cuse will be the underdog.

 

[Evan Miller]

Th

If we kick the extra point instead of going for two and failing, we win by 1.

The decision to take the penalty, followed by rushing 3 made absolutely zero sense to me. If you’re trying to push them out of FG range, you don’t rush 3. What was the point?

That decision cost Cuse the game. You do not go for 2 until 4th Q. Never!!! The rule in FB is you never chase points until the 4th Q. Resist temptation to go for 2. Store away the old 3x5 "points card" until final 15 minutes. Just kick the XP.

If that XP was kicked in 3rd Q...game never goes to OT. One point win. Which is all you need. Be ahead by one point. Brutal mistake.

 

[syrBossHogg]

I agree on the second part but on the first part you don’t go for before the 4th quarter unless you are down 16 or 24 or you go up 5.
Up 1 you kick the XP for the exact reason it came back to bite us. If we score another TD up 2 rather 1 makes the ballgame a two score game.

But it was only 2 mins away from the 4th quarter, doesn’t make a huge difference IMO.

It looks like a worse decision because the least likely scenario happened in the defense holding WF to no points until late in the game.

 

[Alsacs]

But it was only 2 mins away from the 4th quarter, doesn’t make a huge difference IMO.

It looks like a worse decision because the least likely scenario happened in the defense holding WF to no points until late in the game.

I wouldn’t have gone for 2 early in the 4th either. Until you have to go for 2 don’t go for it.
Remember the Pinstripe Bowl against Kansas State we went for 2 early and that allowed K-State to only be down 8 rather than 9.

Up 1 you should only go for 2 really when their is only going to be a couple of possessions left.
I hate going for 2 up 1 early as I stated I want the ability to go up 2 possessions.

 

[OrangeDW]

This is strange logic and it’s trumpeted here a lot. We aren’t a favorite in any of those games. At best they’re coin flips. Now I’m no mathematician but….

It doesn’t matter though. He wins just one more and he’s back for sure. 3-9 he probably survives anyway.

Babers road the flukiest season in history and a misappropriated system to financial glory. Good for him though. Many many others have made more being worse.

There was nothing fluky about it. We had the best QB in the league.

We were a bad call away from beating Clemson away, and the refs blowing the whistle when Dungey was in the grasp for 10 seconds against Pitt away from being 11-1 in the regular season.

QB is everything. We’ve got a pretty good one and we’re all of a sudden competitive again. Without Shrader in there we’re 2-4 and coming off two double digit losses in a row and expecting to lose out. Instead we’re complaining about how we should be 5-1 or 6-0 and talking about if we can get to a bowl.

 

[Nicknack]

Dino is... over his head unfortunately and makes costly decisions at times. Anyone defending his decision to go for 2 is also a bad decision maker.

 

[qdawgg]

Everyone has lost players. Teams have lost their starting QB for year for goodness sakes. This is not going to be the injury excuse year following the covid excuse year, is it?

Once again, every FBS team dealt with covid in 2020. Every single one. Most did not finish 1-10.

No free pass. Injuries happen. Part of football, unfortunately. Rough sport.

We’ve used the injury excuse almost every year. Last year was just convenient to have something new to use. It’s funny how when other teams backup Qb’s beat us but we also talk about our injuries.

 

[syrBossHogg]

I wouldn’t have gone for 2 early in the 4th either. Until you have to go for 2 don’t go for it.
Remember the Pinstripe Bowl against Kansas State we went for 2 early and that allowed K-State to only be down 8 rather than 9.

Up 1 you should only go for 2 really when their is only going to be a couple of possessions left.
I hate going for 2 up 1 early as I stated I want the ability to go up 2 possessions.

That’s fair, regardless we both agree the FG try was horrible

 

[IthacaMatt]

Everyone has lost players. Teams have lost their starting QB for year for goodness sakes. This is not going to be the injury excuse year following the covid excuse year, is it?

Once again, every FBS team dealt with covid in 2020. Every single one. Most did not finish 1-10.

No free pass. Injuries happen. Part of football, unfortunately. Rough sport.

We were down 3 of our 5 starting offensive linemen, plus our blocking FB, in one game.

Do most teams lose the majority of their O line in a game against a ranked opponent and still take it down to the wire?

 

[AZOrange]

For the most part - I did not believe WF was more talented. But I get where you’re coming from. I thought our guys outside of some inexperienced frosh and our DL VS their OL were better.

Their WRs were far superior.

 

[AZOrange]

You don’t run for 360 being outmatched. ST’s sure, mainly Punter. Pena was great in the PR role last night. Defense, they gave up 5 bills, nothing special there.

Coaching, whelp, hard to make arguments on our behalf right now other than I believe our game plan coming in was really strong. Adjustments appear to be continually lacking and some in game decisions we’re just really poor.

The dline got less than zero push…all game

 

[AZOrange]

Can someone clear up Dinos contract? I thought that in 2018 he signed for 5 years? While frustrated, I'm not in the fire Dino camp. (We could be 6-0)

I dont think any of that matters. To 43ll with the fire Dino talk. KEEP TUCKER.

We need a comprehensive NIL campaign for Tucker and 44(EARNED).
We lose him? We are SCREWED. Wildhack can facilitate 44, the boosters can help assure Tucker STAYS, with a plan. Have him slinging everything from hot dogs to shredding services.. They can complain about coaching, but our game plan is Tucker. Same with the "next" make believe coach. I want my Tucker 44 jersey.

Tucker is the priority.

Ohh. And give Mike Schmidt a BIG a$$ raise. Our previously "crappy" oline is suddenly destroying people, when they struggled for years . Even the 2s. go figure. Its like they have a coach.


At ALL cost. We need to keep Tucker. I dont care who the coach is. Promote Schmidt and Lynch to co-OC. Y'all may have forgotten that Lewis was gone in 18, and that was Lynch. Its Schmidt and Lynch, right now on offense, as far as I'm concerned. Promote White to assistant head coach.

The priority here is not the coach. Its Sean Tucker. (With a hat tip to Garret's legs)

Keeping him is our most important asset.

And how long did the fanbase have to complain about how bad Cav was before a change was made? This stuff isn’t that hard. Babers has weird loyalties and it kills him. Saban would fire whoever screws up a play call by Sunday

 

[AZOrange]

We have a guy who has put together a good staff and has brought in a solid group of young talent.

The decision to to take the penalty didn’t lose the game and the decision to kick a FG that our kicker normally makes didn’t lose the game.

We didn’t make enough plays on the field to win the game - especially on defense.

I am optimistic about this team - I like the direction in which we are headed.

Optimism is fine. But we are not a good enough team where we can overcome the weaknesses on staff. This is bigger than a few plays that the staff blew that cost us the game. It’s fundamental. It’s the way we practice (openly described as disorganized), the lack of a dedicated special teams coach, the fact that our punter couldn’t kick on my kids pop Warner team, the fact that our Lou groza winner has lost all semblance of being good, that we spend 24 seconds a play staring at the sidelines trying to get a play called in a hurry up offense, the fact that Dino continued to start Tommy THIS YEAR after he knew he had a superior player behind him….and that’s just a start

 

[Evan Miller]

I take it that Dino was not a fan of the old TV game show, "Beat the Clock"? The clock has not been a friend.

 

[AZOrange]

Th
That decision cost Cuse the game. You do not go for 2 until 4th Q. Never!!! The rule in FB is you never chase points until the 4th Q. Resist temptation to go for 2. Store away the old 3x5 "points card" until final 15 minutes. Just kick the XP.

If that XP was kicked in 3rd Q...game never goes to OT. One point win. Which is all you need. Be ahead by one point. Brutal mistake.

Yep. And it’s not even in the top 3 bad decisions they made yesterday. Critical errors all game

 

[Ozcuse]

Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe 4 of 6 timeouts yesterday were used in dead ball situations to avoid delay of game penalties.

That’s not very good.

 

[0.2 YNdeeR]

There was nothing fluky about it. We had the best QB in the league.

We were a bad call away from beating Clemson away, and the refs blowing the whistle when Dungey was in the grasp for 10 seconds against Pitt away from being 11-1 in the regular season.

QB is everything. We’ve got a pretty good one and we’re all of a sudden competitive again. Without Shrader in there we’re 2-4 and coming off two double digit losses in a row and expecting to lose out. Instead we’re complaining about how we should be 5-1 or 6-0 and talking about if we can get to a bowl.

Have to agree. As upset as I was yesterday (almost lost my mind after the Lutz fumble), we were in the game the whole way. The kids on this team are playing hard and developing .. which is why I disagree with the OP. Fans can quibble about 50/50 coaching decisions on certain plays. But those complaints are far outweighed by the overall progress this team has made - without which we would never have made it to OT against WF in the first place. Many are forgetting that Dino's the one who let Cav go, brought in Schmidt and rebuilt the O-line, the one who swapped out Shrader for TD, the one who hired White and implemented a new defensive scheme, the one who brought in Wax and Jones and shored up a porous LB corps, and the one who restored competition to the RB room and produced the best back in the ACC. There's still work to do, obviously, with WR, safety and the slumping kicking game. But progress in many areas is undeniable.

 

[rackman18]

He may be able to recruit some but he can not coach worth beans.

 

[DoctorBombay]

Overall, I’m a Dino fan & would love to see him earn his way to more seasons at SU. But like him or not, I’ve witnessed over the years some rather disturbing patterns in his game management skills.
Early on in his tenure, there was that game where we had a huge lead, he takes out Dungey & puts in a raw TD- not a bad move on its face to get a young QB some PT in a blowout, no? However, the real issue there was how early he put him in (3rd quarter), and how long it took him to realize we were losing the lead and finally…FINALLY put Dungey back in to literally save the game.
That’s the pattern of Dino’s judgement calls- the inability to adjust on the fly when his first call is not working. He always seems stuck in neutral and takes far too long to make decisions.
Witness the countless delay of game penalties as the clock winds down. Or the hesitancy in finally dealing w/ Taj Harris’ issues, or the OL coaches’ incompetence, or TD stinking up the joint for 2 seasons.
“He who hesitates is lost”- and Dino gets stuck in quicksand most times, and reaches somewhat rash, hurried decisions in others. He overthinks things that he shouldn’t- and doesn’t think long enough, when he should. It’s a pattern that we’ve seen over and over again. If he gets canned, it’ll ultimately be because of this fundamental flaw. JMHO

 

[djorange1989]

Of all the dumb decisions, accepting the holding penalty was so so beyond stupid. The kid had never hit a 50 yarder in a game let alone 52. And even if our D doesn’t screw up and allow the first down, what if they pick up 14 yards and the kid gets an easier FG attempt? Stupid stupid stupid.

 

[Cuseregular]

Of all the dumb decisions, accepting the holding penalty was so so beyond stupid. The kid had never hit a 50 yarder in a game let alone 52. And even if our D doesn’t screw up and allow the first down, what if they pick up 14 yards and the kid gets an easier FG attempt? Stupid stupid stupid.

Yep game costing decision ultimately IMO, likely season as well (meaning no bowl).

The X factor that might make this prediction wrong is superShrader, If he can overcome the coaching deficiencies AND stay healthy with the pounding he takes.

As I said elsewhere would love to be wrong on my pessimism.