My Take | Page 2 | Syracusefan.com

My Take

A good friend died from COVID and the services started at 1 PM today. So I ended up arriving relatively late for the tailgate, trying to deal with some very different emotions. Props to Jeremy, Nell, Cliff, Mark, Mike and everyone else who helped put the tailgate on, Looked like a lot of wonderful food that I am sure was quite delicious.

We left early to avoid a big queue at the screening tent and later entering the dome. That worked well and 15 minutes later or so, we were in our seats.

The band continues to sound great. 12 tubas again. They did a Halloween themed halftime show based on Thriller. Have seen these before but the dancing in this one was really well done. The whole band recreated parts of the zombie dance from the Thriller video (very well) and even stayed in character zombie walking back to their instruments. They got an enormous hand that was richly deserved. SUMB is definitely stepping up their game. Major props.

I can’t give props the the BC fan base. The school is pretty legendary for their struggles to bring fans to away games (home games too). But even for BC, this was a bad showing. Maybe 100 fans showed up. Albany did a far better job.

The prospect of having to watch one of the worst teams in the country also affected the attendance of Syracuse fans, as thousands of season ticket holders elected to ate their tickets and stay home rather than be subjected to watching the lowly Eagles attempt to play football. Probably a good move on their part. The students also had their worst attendance of the season. No one wants to see Boston College play football.

That said, despite the apathy and lack of enthusiasm from everyone, including the players, the game was still played. Kind of. Neither team really played in the first half, largely walking around in a daze. BC did something with their DL early I have never seen. They had them jerking their arms into the neutral zone just before the ball was snapped over and over. It bothered an SU OL that was retooled after the injury to Vet last week and the disastrous attempt to play Ilaoa at center.

The good news this week was that Bleich returned. He ended up moving over from his normal LG position to RG. I think this was done to allow Ellis to stay at LG and make things as easy as possible for the true frosh. Servais moved back to center. And Dakota Davis moved from RG to RT. So while we had some players out of their normal positions, it was an experienced group. Thought they did fairly well run blocking and struggled some pass blocking. But they had a bunch of illegal procedures early, as BC’s defensive lineman kept doing those weird jerks just before the ball was snapped.

Looked like BC did what we usually see when people try and defend this SU offense. They put 8 men in the box, tried to take the run away and dared us to beat them passing. I think we might have been able to do this but our pass blocking was not good and Garrett was clearly not his normal really agile self. And our WRs struggled some too. I think Johnson dropped a couple. Alford was targeted deep and just stopped running his route, for like the 3rd time this season.

We used a formation with 5 guys split wide and an empty backfield with some success late against VT and ended up using it a lot today as well. BC had some secondary players hurt and going 5 wide really opens up the field for Shrader to use his skills to full effect. But he was not sharp throwing it today and again, was not running it with the speed and power we have seen earlier this season. Tucker was the focus for the BC defense and they had some success focusing on his in the first half. Might have had 10 carries for 62 yards in that half. Not great but not bad. One of the problems playing 8 men in the box is that you end up playing with no one beyond the first 5 or 6 yards past the LOS. That is really risky with a guy as fast and shifty as Sean Tucker carrying the ball and he burned the slow footed Eagles for a number of runs where it was one quick move and go.

Sterlin seems to add a couple of new plays every game where he gets everyone running one way, following Sean, and gets it to Garrett running the other way. He has done a good job getting Sean the ball directly ways with some space to run. I see a lot of nice things happening schematically with him as our OC that I did not see in past years and I think it is not just a coincidence that the running game has improved dramatically within him running things. And no, last year doesn’t count. You need to have a spring practice and a full preseason practice to evaluate players and put the offense in.

Thought the defense had a terrific effort today. Yes, BC has no QB and their RBs aren’t very good and yes, Harley has somehow taken the best OL in the ACC and made it into the worst OL in the conference in the scan of 1.5 seasons. But still, I don’t think anyone has shut this down as well as Syracuse did. Great to have Garrett W back at CB. That helped a lot. I think Mikel Jones is banged up pretty badly. He played a lot less than normal and wasn’t as dominant as he normally is. Thompson has really been playing well and had another big game. Kingsley Jonathan missed a lot of time early in the season and had his first real breakout game today. He ate up Vrabel and that crappy player that came in for him when he got re-injured. We played a ton of players again on defense and pretty much everyone contributed.

This was a big game for Courtney, who was asked to be the primary WR as well as our KOR and PR guy. He looked pretty tentative and unsure returning kicks early but the one time the BC punter kicked a low doing drive directly at him, he was ready, made a couple nice runs and was off to the races. Impressive.

5-4. Not bad considering all the crazy things that have happened. It has been a 9 week gauntlet and thank god we got through it with a chance to have a winning season and make a bowl. With every passing week, it seems the teams in the conference get closer to each other. Really think we could win or lose all three remaining games.

It is fun to have dreams of bowls and winning seasons. It is nice to have a bunch of players who might make all conference teams. It is good to be somewhat respected by conference opponents and to have bowl scouts interested in us. Hope the bye week helps heal up all our banged up players and we play well down the stretch. That would be an awesome thing.
Condolences. Good friends are a treasure- sorry for your loss.
 
Im sorry for your loss. Truly good friends are rare and are treasures. As always, thank you for your post Tom which are also treasures.
 
2 great photos:

4A1DAF73-E2C5-4B3C-9E07-743A544A9C51.jpeg

A98C2250-C748-414E-9BF6-130C5B8BFAE8.jpeg
 
Sorry for your loss Tom, appreciate your writeups as always.

Glad to be at the bye and hopefully guys will get healthy and back into the lineup with the time off. I'm hoping the passing game gets worked on in the film room and is more like what we saw vs VT. Not sure if it was Shrader being dinged up, but plenty of improvement is needed there. What I've found interesting is we're 5th in the ACC in points scored (143), though granted some teams have had a bye and we haven't yet.

We've now won 2 conference games for the seventh time in the 9 years since we joined the ACC. I'm hoping they will win at least 3 conference games every year going forward
 
A good friend died from COVID and the services started at 1 PM today. So I ended up arriving relatively late for the tailgate, trying to deal with some very different emotions. Props to Jeremy, Nell, Cliff, Mark, Mike and everyone else who helped put the tailgate on, Looked like a lot of wonderful food that I am sure was quite delicious.

We left early to avoid a big queue at the screening tent and later entering the dome. That worked well and 15 minutes later or so, we were in our seats.

The band continues to sound great. 12 tubas again. They did a Halloween themed halftime show based on Thriller. Have seen these before but the dancing in this one was really well done. The whole band recreated parts of the zombie dance from the Thriller video (very well) and even stayed in character zombie walking back to their instruments. They got an enormous hand that was richly deserved. SUMB is definitely stepping up their game. Major props.

I can’t give props the the BC fan base. The school is pretty legendary for their struggles to bring fans to away games (home games too). But even for BC, this was a bad showing. Maybe 100 fans showed up. Albany did a far better job.

The prospect of having to watch one of the worst teams in the country also affected the attendance of Syracuse fans, as thousands of season ticket holders elected to ate their tickets and stay home rather than be subjected to watching the lowly Eagles attempt to play football. Probably a good move on their part. The students also had their worst attendance of the season. No one wants to see Boston College play football.

That said, despite the apathy and lack of enthusiasm from everyone, including the players, the game was still played. Kind of. Neither team really played in the first half, largely walking around in a daze. BC did something with their DL early I have never seen. They had them jerking their arms into the neutral zone just before the ball was snapped over and over. It bothered an SU OL that was retooled after the injury to Vet last week and the disastrous attempt to play Ilaoa at center.

The good news this week was that Bleich returned. He ended up moving over from his normal LG position to RG. I think this was done to allow Ellis to stay at LG and make things as easy as possible for the true frosh. Servais moved back to center. And Dakota Davis moved from RG to RT. So while we had some players out of their normal positions, it was an experienced group. Thought they did fairly well run blocking and struggled some pass blocking. But they had a bunch of illegal procedures early, as BC’s defensive lineman kept doing those weird jerks just before the ball was snapped.

Looked like BC did what we usually see when people try and defend this SU offense. They put 8 men in the box, tried to take the run away and dared us to beat them passing. I think we might have been able to do this but our pass blocking was not good and Garrett was clearly not his normal really agile self. And our WRs struggled some too. I think Johnson dropped a couple. Alford was targeted deep and just stopped running his route, for like the 3rd time this season.

We used a formation with 5 guys split wide and an empty backfield with some success late against VT and ended up using it a lot today as well. BC had some secondary players hurt and going 5 wide really opens up the field for Shrader to use his skills to full effect. But he was not sharp throwing it today and again, was not running it with the speed and power we have seen earlier this season. Tucker was the focus for the BC defense and they had some success focusing on his in the first half. Might have had 10 carries for 62 yards in that half. Not great but not bad. One of the problems playing 8 men in the box is that you end up playing with no one beyond the first 5 or 6 yards past the LOS. That is really risky with a guy as fast and shifty as Sean Tucker carrying the ball and he burned the slow footed Eagles for a number of runs where it was one quick move and go.

Sterlin seems to add a couple of new plays every game where he gets everyone running one way, following Sean, and gets it to Garrett running the other way. He has done a good job getting Sean the ball directly ways with some space to run. I see a lot of nice things happening schematically with him as our OC that I did not see in past years and I think it is not just a coincidence that the running game has improved dramatically within him running things. And no, last year doesn’t count. You need to have a spring practice and a full preseason practice to evaluate players and put the offense in.

Thought the defense had a terrific effort today. Yes, BC has no QB and their RBs aren’t very good and yes, Harley has somehow taken the best OL in the ACC and made it into the worst OL in the conference in the scan of 1.5 seasons. But still, I don’t think anyone has shut this down as well as Syracuse did. Great to have Garrett W back at CB. That helped a lot. I think Mikel Jones is banged up pretty badly. He played a lot less than normal and wasn’t as dominant as he normally is. Thompson has really been playing well and had another big game. Kingsley Jonathan missed a lot of time early in the season and had his first real breakout game today. He ate up Vrabel and that crappy player that came in for him when he got re-injured. We played a ton of players again on defense and pretty much everyone contributed.

This was a big game for Courtney, who was asked to be the primary WR as well as our KOR and PR guy. He looked pretty tentative and unsure returning kicks early but the one time the BC punter kicked a low doing drive directly at him, he was ready, made a couple nice runs and was off to the races. Impressive.

5-4. Not bad considering all the crazy things that have happened. It has been a 9 week gauntlet and thank god we got through it with a chance to have a winning season and make a bowl. With every passing week, it seems the teams in the conference get closer to each other. Really think we could win or lose all three remaining games.

It is fun to have dreams of bowls and winning seasons. It is nice to have a bunch of players who might make all conference teams. It is good to be somewhat respected by conference opponents and to have bowl scouts interested in us. Hope the bye week helps heal up all our banged up players and we play well down the stretch. That would be an awesome thing.
I hope writing this review was cathartic because that is one heck of a day. Peace with you and your friend. Sorry for your loss.
 
A good friend died from COVID and the services started at 1 PM today. So I ended up arriving relatively late for the tailgate, trying to deal with some very different emotions. Props to Jeremy, Nell, Cliff, Mark, Mike and everyone else who helped put the tailgate on, Looked like a lot of wonderful food that I am sure was quite delicious.

We left early to avoid a big queue at the screening tent and later entering the dome. That worked well and 15 minutes later or so, we were in our seats.

The band continues to sound great. 12 tubas again. They did a Halloween themed halftime show based on Thriller. Have seen these before but the dancing in this one was really well done. The whole band recreated parts of the zombie dance from the Thriller video (very well) and even stayed in character zombie walking back to their instruments. They got an enormous hand that was richly deserved. SUMB is definitely stepping up their game. Major props.

I can’t give props the the BC fan base. The school is pretty legendary for their struggles to bring fans to away games (home games too). But even for BC, this was a bad showing. Maybe 100 fans showed up. Albany did a far better job.

The prospect of having to watch one of the worst teams in the country also affected the attendance of Syracuse fans, as thousands of season ticket holders elected to ate their tickets and stay home rather than be subjected to watching the lowly Eagles attempt to play football. Probably a good move on their part. The students also had their worst attendance of the season. No one wants to see Boston College play football.

That said, despite the apathy and lack of enthusiasm from everyone, including the players, the game was still played. Kind of. Neither team really played in the first half, largely walking around in a daze. BC did something with their DL early I have never seen. They had them jerking their arms into the neutral zone just before the ball was snapped over and over. It bothered an SU OL that was retooled after the injury to Vet last week and the disastrous attempt to play Ilaoa at center.

The good news this week was that Bleich returned. He ended up moving over from his normal LG position to RG. I think this was done to allow Ellis to stay at LG and make things as easy as possible for the true frosh. Servais moved back to center. And Dakota Davis moved from RG to RT. So while we had some players out of their normal positions, it was an experienced group. Thought they did fairly well run blocking and struggled some pass blocking. But they had a bunch of illegal procedures early, as BC’s defensive lineman kept doing those weird jerks just before the ball was snapped.

Looked like BC did what we usually see when people try and defend this SU offense. They put 8 men in the box, tried to take the run away and dared us to beat them passing. I think we might have been able to do this but our pass blocking was not good and Garrett was clearly not his normal really agile self. And our WRs struggled some too. I think Johnson dropped a couple. Alford was targeted deep and just stopped running his route, for like the 3rd time this season.

We used a formation with 5 guys split wide and an empty backfield with some success late against VT and ended up using it a lot today as well. BC had some secondary players hurt and going 5 wide really opens up the field for Shrader to use his skills to full effect. But he was not sharp throwing it today and again, was not running it with the speed and power we have seen earlier this season. Tucker was the focus for the BC defense and they had some success focusing on his in the first half. Might have had 10 carries for 62 yards in that half. Not great but not bad. One of the problems playing 8 men in the box is that you end up playing with no one beyond the first 5 or 6 yards past the LOS. That is really risky with a guy as fast and shifty as Sean Tucker carrying the ball and he burned the slow footed Eagles for a number of runs where it was one quick move and go.

Sterlin seems to add a couple of new plays every game where he gets everyone running one way, following Sean, and gets it to Garrett running the other way. He has done a good job getting Sean the ball directly ways with some space to run. I see a lot of nice things happening schematically with him as our OC that I did not see in past years and I think it is not just a coincidence that the running game has improved dramatically within him running things. And no, last year doesn’t count. You need to have a spring practice and a full preseason practice to evaluate players and put the offense in.

Thought the defense had a terrific effort today. Yes, BC has no QB and their RBs aren’t very good and yes, Harley has somehow taken the best OL in the ACC and made it into the worst OL in the conference in the scan of 1.5 seasons. But still, I don’t think anyone has shut this down as well as Syracuse did. Great to have Garrett W back at CB. That helped a lot. I think Mikel Jones is banged up pretty badly. He played a lot less than normal and wasn’t as dominant as he normally is. Thompson has really been playing well and had another big game. Kingsley Jonathan missed a lot of time early in the season and had his first real breakout game today. He ate up Vrabel and that crappy player that came in for him when he got re-injured. We played a ton of players again on defense and pretty much everyone contributed.

This was a big game for Courtney, who was asked to be the primary WR as well as our KOR and PR guy. He looked pretty tentative and unsure returning kicks early but the one time the BC punter kicked a low doing drive directly at him, he was ready, made a couple nice runs and was off to the races. Impressive.

5-4. Not bad considering all the crazy things that have happened. It has been a 9 week gauntlet and thank god we got through it with a chance to have a winning season and make a bowl. With every passing week, it seems the teams in the conference get closer to each other. Really think we could win or lose all three remaining games.

It is fun to have dreams of bowls and winning seasons. It is nice to have a bunch of players who might make all conference teams. It is good to be somewhat respected by conference opponents and to have bowl scouts interested in us. Hope the bye week helps heal up all our banged up players and we play well down the stretch. That would be an awesome thing.
Sorry for the loss of your friend Tom,
Roger
 
So sorry to hear about your friend.
Hopefully the game provided you with a good distraction.
 
I also am sorry for your loss. Agreed that the BC DL swaying their arms at kickoffs and punts was really weird.
 

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