Elephant in the room…

[CU44SE]

So you guys wanted the recruiter with no head coaching or coordinating experience and then expected him to be Dan Mullen on gameday? Some of you are delusional. It’s going to take some time. The talent on the field has improved drastically. Now Fran and the coaches need to get better game after game. I know Fran wants to win. That loss is only going to make him hungrier. People have to adjust their expectations.

 

[Dr. Bill]

Everyone will be in love again when we go out west next Friday and win

This season will unfold...game by game. We yet are.....what we will be, so, hold on, and let's wait and see!!

 

[SUFan44]

You can talk about first-time head coach all you want, but Holy Cross -- a 1-3 team with a brand new head coach -- had the ball down 21-14 with 2:30 left in the 2nd quarter.

Sorry to be negative but the last two weeks have not been good. And our schedule gets exponentially more difficult from here on out.

 

[HtownOrange]

You can talk about first-time head coach all you want, but Holy Cross -- a 1-3 team with a brand new head coach -- had the ball down 21-14 with 2:30 left in the 2nd quarter.

Sorry to be negative but the last two weeks have not been good. And our schedule gets exponentially more difficult from here on out.

You didn’t like the halftime adjustments the coaching staff made? I thought the adjustments worked out well on defense and good on offense. Isn’t that what we want from a HC and new staff?

 

[OrangePA]

The team looks unprepared and undisciplined, no matter how many years of experience the HC has or doesn't.

I don’t agree.

There were some mistakes of course but overall the team looks well coached and well organized.

Brown is doing a nice job.

 

[Bulldog04]

Only thing I don’t like is going up 21-0 and not winning by 50. Optics matter. The fact holy cross was even “in the game” at 21-14 was kind of a joke to me. Respect the opponent but also trounce the opponent

 

[GoSU96]

Um what? I’ll have what you’re having

59 vast majority min protect no quick game pass plays plays and they got beat on 5 reps. No great, but not awful either.

Yesterday there was no attempt to get the ball out quick, very little use of motion or formations. It was very basic.

 

[FRANKIEFAN]

I have zero gripe with Fran. Been accountable and fine with clock management/in game decisions. That cannot be said for the last 2 coaches we had in here. My problems are with Erob and James Vollano.

Even E Rob has been ok. Basically pitched a shutout 2nd half of Stanford and GT very good.

I did not expect us to wax Ohio or HC.

No he’s not going to put a safety on the sideline last play of the game and he’s there was help.

Specials is bad but Dennaburg looked promising backing up Andre. He should have gotten the talk and wasn’t good last year. We play in a dome below average place kicking is not acceptable.

 

[UpstateSM]

Syracuse | 2024 | Game on Paper

Advanced stats for Syracuse during the 2024 season

gameonpaper.com

The advanced numbers back up what my eyes are seeing with our run game. I have little doubt that we are going to beat a good team or two just slinging it all over the place but it is going to be very hard to win games against real football teams (I, personally, do not think we have played one yet) if the rush game is that much of a negative. Especially on the road.

However much money Kyle McCord is getting paid to play for us, it should be more.

 

[upperdeck]

They blew the one coverage thats 35% of the yda they had all game.

Then they blew the option pass when it was not going to work if the DB does his simple job.

50% of yds on 2 plays. they avg 2 yds per play the rest of the game. Unless we were just going to live in their backfield with TFL that's pretty solid.

Hornsby and Tremble are exciting. 2 plays in a and you can see the twitch they bring. It would be interesting to see Tremble in spots because OG gets doubled, and he would not. Since he isn't RS maybe play him in some more parts of the passing game.

 

[tep624]

Fran is a first time head coach and he’s going to be learning on the job. And as disjointed as the team has looked at times, we’re still a last second FG from being 4-0.

Fran was known for his recruitment prowess but I think he’s done a great job with clock management and the 2 minute drill in general, and that’s important. And he’s done that right out of the gate.

Not every staff hire that he made first time out was going to be perfect. And I would bet that in a perfect world they would have upgraded the roster even more. What will be his measure as a HC is how he overcomes those things.

 

[SUFan44]

You didn’t like the halftime adjustments the coaching staff made? I thought the adjustments worked out well on defense and good on offense. Isn’t that what we want from a HC and new staff?

We scored 14 points in the second half, one on a pick six.

Defensively, sure -- it was better. Offensively, it was worse. You also forget our special teams are among the worst in college football.

 

[TheHaze315]

Even E Rob has been ok. Basically pitched a shutout 2nd half of Stanford and GT very good.

I did not expect us to wax Ohio or HC.

No he’s not going to put a safety on the sideline last play of the game and he’s there was help.

Specials is bad but Dennaburg looked promising backing up Andre. He should have gotten the talk and wasn’t good last year. We play in a dome below average place kicking is not acceptable.

With Erob his tactics don’t make sense to me. He brings 3 knowing we struggle to generate any kind of pressure, and even when you’re dropping 8 back it’s difficult to defend receivers for that long, a good QB will carve it up. The best way to make up for a weak secondary is pressure. I’d like to see us blitz more and not ask our struggling secondary to defend for 4,5,6 seconds while their o line only has 3 to worry about. His unwillingness to change has frustrated me so far. The play before the 4th and 9 against Stanford we bring pressure and Daniels throws a bad ball setting up the 4th and 9. He struggled under pressure all night, so why not do it again? Why sit back, send weak help, and not just have a safety straight over the top shadowing 13 and make Daniels look elsewhere? The frustration with Erob is a lot of his mistakes have been situational and avoidable.

EDIT: Also are tackling has been some of the worst I’ve seen. Only team we consistently wrapped up against was Holy Cross.

 

[MikeSU02]

With Erob his tactics don’t make sense to me. He brings 3 knowing we struggle to generate any kind of pressure, and even when you’re dropping 8 back it’s difficult to defend receivers for that long, a good QB will carve it up. The best way to make up for a weak secondary is pressure. I’d like to see us blitz more and not ask our struggling secondary to defend for 4,5,6 seconds while their o line only has 3 to worry about. His unwillingness to change has frustrated me so far. The play before the 4th and 9 against Stanford we bring pressure and Daniels throws a bad ball setting up the 4th and 9. He struggled under pressure all night, so why not do it again? Why sit back, send weak help, and not just have a safety straight over the top shadowing 13 and make Daniels look elsewhere? The frustration with Erob is a lot of his mistakes have been situational and avoidable.

EDIT: Also are tackling has been some of the worst I’ve seen. Only team we consistently wrapped up against was Holy Cross.

He blitzed yesterday, especially in third down.

 

[TheHaze315]

He blitzed yesterday, especially in third down.

Which was very welcomed. I hope we see it in competitive games going forward.

 

[Scooch]

Immature.

That's word that keeps coming to my mind for the team and staff. And I don't mean that in a purely negative way. More of the dictionary definition of "not fully developed".

Everyone is learning on the job, except McCord. It bit us vs. Stanford, and it bit us in the 2nd quarter yesterday.

There were some troubling issues yesterday. Discussing them is entirely legitimate.

The season rides on how quickly the program can scale it's learning curve.

 

[ECE '76]

Offensive line is a huge disappointment. Mind boggling how the Crusaders got to him so easily. UNLV will be a problem. Need quick passing game

I seem to recall that Dale Williams and James Vollono were among the last assistants to be hired. Most of of fans on this board believed the OL was the most important position coach on he staff. Fran had a bunch of assistants lined up to join him, but he apparently didn't have an OL or ST coach in his inner circle.

Remember the Purdue game in the dome 2 years ago? That was Dale Williams. Brohm replaced Williams with Richard Owens to coach the OL at Louisville, and Owens' OLs have been spectacular. Williams did not have an on-field position at Louisville.

Denaburg has never been accurate as a FG kicker. He's great at booming kick offs. You may recall, Andre Szmyt's worst year of placekicking was the one season he also did kick offs. It messed him up.

I was glad to see a back up getting a chance at FG kicking yesterday, but surprised it was Jaydn Oh and not Jackson Kennedy, the transfer from Cornell. Kennedy has college experience and made All-Ivy twice. Oh is just a RS-FR.

Stanford beat us with their FG kicker. We had 3 TDs they only had 2, but they won the game. SU needs a good FG kicker, or we'll end up on the losing end of competitive games. This has to be fixed.

As for the bad snaps, that's on Vollono. STs has been really bad under Vollono. Blocked punt, blocked FGs, botched on sides kick, now they can't make non-pressure FGs in a dome on turf. Note to Fran: never hire the guy again who has to constantly over sell himself for the job. Maybe he should be given a marketing job in the ticket office.

They need to rethink the use of players to help their NFL resume. They put Jack Stonehouse at holder this year (to help his NFL resume), instead of the player with the best hands (was Justin Barron last year). I haven't found any fans who think it's a good idea to have OG on STs coverage either (just because the NFL might like that). He's coming off a lisfranc injury - why the hell over-use him when there are other players would love to get that PT and concentrate on being good at coverage. This is just dumb.

Speaking of OG and his disappearance... in the Stanford game, after the bye, it seemed like he spent a lot of time on the sideline when the offense was in. Why would he not be in on offense for nearly every snap? If you think he disappeared, he wasn't on the field a lot vs Stanford. But then of course they did send him out there to cover on STs...

 

[HtownOrange]

We scored 14 points in the second half, one on a pick six.

Defensively, sure -- it was better. Offensively, it was worse. You also forget our special teams are among the worst in college football.

Offense scores 14 points in the second half when the running game was much more in focus and the twos and threes played heavily. The defense scores and shuts down HC. Sounds like that's a good thing

Sure, ST needs work but they did well on XPs, KOs and Punts were handled good to very good on both sides of the ball. Sure, we can cherry pick single instances to complain about but when the overall product has improved and the staff make changes and the kids respond, I see that as improvement.

We all knew there would be growing pains and we all knew that young kids have to improve before seeing the field full time. Four games in under a new staff and new system and I see improvements. I am willing to let the staff do their jobs and evaluate them on the full body of work.

It could be worse, FSU looks like trash and getting spanked by teams they should mop the floor with. I chose our progress.