My Take

[kcsu]

Also when talking to Andre Szmyt he said that hiring a special teams coach that had coached in the NFL was why he came back. He said it would be a great opportunity to learn from him and get the skills necessary to play at the next level. I look forward to seeing the old Andre Szmyt this year!

Very nice talking with him last night!

I had a good talk with him as well. He was very complimentary of the new coach and super excited for the season

 

[Goin' Deep]

I like Bolinsky...snaps are consistently good and the guy gets down on punt coverage.
He's a much unheralded asset..IMO.

 

[texascpa]

Nice recap Tom. It was great to watch the game on the ACC network and hear them hyping things so much. Nice interviews with the former players and great to see them again. I had chatted with Don McPherson on the quad the day his jersey was retired, and he was always my second favorite player behind Ernie. Man, Don is looking more mature these days based on the broadcast. Hard to believe, because "obviously" I, myself, am not aging.

Was impressed with Lamson. Nice to see a guy with an arm who also has poise. The RB's looked really nice as well, even though their time will clearly be post-Tucker. Great to fill the cupboard for the future. A number of WR's staked their claim to PT this year.

I think we are going to enjoy this offense. The D had some nice moments too. It was hard, as you say, to really evaluate based upon which unit was matched up against which string.

Build a fire, watch some SU football. Felt like October in April.

I have zero complaints on last night's broadcast. Knowledgeable broadcasters, lots of good interviews, very impressed with the female sideline reporter and her questions, nice format regardless if it was 1v2's, and good camera work. I will take this format, without complaint, every year.

 

[MSOrange]

I have zero complaints on last night's broadcast. Knowledgeable broadcasters, lots of good interviews, very impressed with the female sideline reporter and her questions, nice format regardless if it was 1v2's, and good camera work. I will take this format, without complaint, every year.

Agree. Do this every year and as someone mentioned earlier, it's really a layup as far as generating goodwill and excitement among the diehards.

 

[Dick_in_MI]

If anyone talked with Tucker, did he mention that he was held out of the game so that opposing coaches wouldn't see what new number he was wearing?

Asking for a friend...

 

[GoSU96]

The "Blue" team were the 1st teamers. The "Orange" team were the 2nd & 3rd teamers.

When "Blue" had the ball, it was the #1 Offense vs the #2 Defense. When "Orange" had the ball it was the #2 Offense vs the #1 Defense. Not really a fair fight. Thats how the score got to 21-0 in a hurry.

Just to confuse everyone further: All the offensive players wore blue, all the defensive players wore orange, and the QB's wore white.

The skill guys played with both offenses. the ol and qbs were on one or the other

 

[OttoinGrotto]

I have zero complaints on last night's broadcast. Knowledgeable broadcasters, lots of good interviews, very impressed with the female sideline reporter and her questions, nice format regardless if it was 1v2's, and good camera work. I will take this format, without complaint, every year.

It wasn't bad that Dino got pushed out of his comfort zone.

All you need to do is make it look like quasi real football and have a couple of young guys score TDs. That's really it.

 

[SWC75]

The "Blue" team were the 1st teamers. The "Orange" team were the 2nd & 3rd teamers.

When "Blue" had the ball, it was the #1 Offense vs the #2 Defense. When "Orange" had the ball it was the #2 Offense vs the #1 Defense. Not really a fair fight. Thats how the score got to 21-0 in a hurry.

Just to confuse everyone further: All the offensive players wore blue, all the defensive players wore orange, and the QB's wore white.

On that play were about six guys crush the running back while the QB runs in the other direction, I wouldn't have blamed the RB if he went over to the QB and asked to borrow that white jersey.

 

[SWC75]

Some more things I should have mentioned. These are just random things some might be interested in.

Cruz runs really well for an OL. On one of the long RB runs, I saw him drop the DL in front of him, beat an LB and take him out and go around 10 yards and block a safety. All in one play.

I was worried after we lost Cantin-Arcu about linebacker depth. That happens if one of the ‘Big 3’ (Thompson/Wax/Jones) get hurt? Much less concerned about that now.

Sparrow, McDonald, Lowery and Mason all were impressive. Best of all, they are all physically ready to play today. Meaning, they aren’t 205 pound kids we hope can add 20 pounds and retain their athletic ability.

We have no one who can get the ball into the end zone consistently on kickoffs. That worries me. We face some really good return guys in the ACC. Hope Liggy has the coverage units ready. No chance to see the coverage units last night as kickoffs and punts were limited to the guy kicking it and the guy catching it. And a snapper for punts. Bolinsky looked good long snapping. Kelly was almost as good backing him up.
It will be interesting to see who plays on the coverage units. Who are the gunners going to be? We have upgraded the overall size and speed of the team sufficiently that trying to guess this is not a trivial exercise.

Donovan Brown was one of the guys who caught kickoffs. Pena did it most of the time. I think Pena and Courtney Jackson caught most of the punts.

They ran some trick plays. I think Dino is not a big fan of these. We have rarely used them. Believe the UVa fans thought Coach Anae called them too often. I guess we will see on this but I really like running a few during the spring game. Get that on film. Force defenses to waste time prepping for this. Even if we never get them in real games.

This was the first dome event I attended with dynamic bar codes on tickets. Not sure if that is even the right terminology but this is the latest brainchild of everyone’s favorite company, TicketMaster. Even I downloaded my tickets to the game and tried to add them to my wallet, a couple weird things happened.

First, I was asked if I wanted to add all my tickets to the event to my wallet at once. This excited me. I have 4 seasons for football and 3 for hoops and up until now, I have had to download the tickets one by one, then add them to my electronic wallet one by one. Just an awful design. Shocking that TicketMaster, Apple, whoever is responsible for the software would ever come up with such an inconvenient and poorly thought out setup. Anyway, I said yes, download them all and not only it this download both tickets to my phone, it also added them to my wallet in one fell swoop. So it appears an awful inconvenience has been removed.

As an aside, when you look at the new fangled electronic tickets in your wallet, there is just a stub there. No bar code. Just some text identifying the ticket. I was wondering if something was wrong. How is this going to work when I get my ‘ticket’ scanned?

Well, the worker scanning tickets knew about the change and asked me to point my phone at him. You are supposed to read the bar code by having the ticket up in your wallet and having the scanner point at the reader on your phone. He had to manipulate it a bit but it scanned pretty quickly. At least one friend had a major issue as it appears not all the people scanning tickets knew about the change.

The SUMB was at the game. No uniforms. No marching. I would guess maybe 25% of the normal band showed up. But they played with enthusiasm and it made the atmosphere collegiate and I was glad they were there. 9. Yup, 9. Great turnout of tubas given how small the SUMB was. It was a tuba concentric sound and I liked it. Hope we can get up past the 11 or 12 we had for most games last year. Based on the turnout last night, it seems possible.

Maybe the best thing about the game was seeing a lot of young children attending. Didn’t realize how much I missed seeing kids at the dome. They looked thrilled to be there and from what I could see, the players were awesome to them. Posing for pics, signing autographs, talking to them and making them feel important even before the game started.

Sitting halfway down section 116, I was looking indirectly into the LED lighting, which appeared to mostly be pointed directly in my eyes. It was a lot to take for 3 hours. Still hoping some small adjustments can be made to make this less tough on the eyes. I am fortunate that I sit on the 300 level for football and basketball and don’t have to deal with this very often.

I was the first person from the normal syracusefan.com contingent to arrive (right after the doors opened at 6 pm) and I sat alone on the end of a row in 116 for a while by myself. Wondered briefly if this was going to be a solo mission. Nope. @Orangetreme arrived shortly after me. storange and Dcuse shortly after that. LeMoyneCuse, JRHEETER, Cuseregular, Consigliere, TexanMark. Chris02M, lincolncuse were some of the board regulars in our group. Nice turnout. Good to see so much enthusiasm for the program.

Hope. It is a great thing.

The two great unanswerable questions of life are:

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

and

Is a big play in an intra-squad game good news or bad news?

 

[LAOrange]

Just to add to the others Wax was out there at times too.

Wax was the one who picked up the little receiver and set him down gently. They were all laughing after that. Wax is WWE strong, and I loved how the players were having fun. When Duce got burned on the play after the Pass Interference, He was really good about taking what appeared to be good-natured ribbing. A lot of smiles on that field.

 

[LAOrange]

"9. Yup, 9. Great turnout of tubas." I laughed out loud at this line. I have no idea how you see and recall so much but I genuinely appreciate the write-up.
One more thing I will say. I thought the kid who was doing the game for the ACC network was terrific. He has a great future.

 

[sutomcat]

"9. Yup, 9. Great turnout of tubas." I laughed out loud at this line. I have no idea how you see and recall so much but I genuinely appreciate the write-up.
One more thing I will say. I thought the kid who was doing the game for the ACC network was terrific. He has a great future.

Believe that was Drew Carter. Newhouse guy. Yup, he did a terrific job….

 

[SWC75]

"9. Yup, 9. Great turnout of tubas." I laughed out loud at this line. I have no idea how you see and recall so much but I genuinely appreciate the write-up.
One more thing I will say. I thought the kid who was doing the game for the ACC network was terrific. He has a great future.

Let me know when we have this many:

 

[OrangeXtreme]

Believe that was Drew Carter. Newhouse guy. Yup, he did a terrific job….

Carter is on the call today for the WLAX game on ACCN right now.

 

[721Comstock]

The two great unanswerable questions of life are:

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

and

Is a big play in an intra-squad game good news or bad news?

Yes.

To both.

 

[money3189]

It wasn't bad that Dino got pushed out of his comfort zone.

All you need to do is make it look like quasi real football and have a couple of young guys score TDs. That's really it.

agree

 

[0.2 YNdeeR]

I believe you and MSOrange. Did either of you notice where he played? He has been moved around some over the course of his career. Guessing he was one of the guys who started playing relatively late and did not get a lot of snaps.

My family and I were down below you in the same section. Thanks for the after-action report. Good thing you counted 9 tubas because I only saw 8 walking by me in the concourse. Missed one.

I think Red played LT on the blue OL, which looked good despite missing 3 starters (Bleich, Ellis and Bergeron). Afterwards I spoke with Bleich. He said he's feeling great and will be ready for the fall. Very big guy who seemed to be moving well. Vet was next to him and did a good job at C when I saw him. I noted later in the scrimmage that when Illoa was playing C on the second line, he struggled in pass pro and got put on his back by geer (who had a good game).

On defense, Wax played with Thompson and Jones on the (real) 1st unit and looked great. The defensive starters were on cruise control.

Besides your observations, my takeaways were:

1. Lamson established himself as the early favorite for QB#2 (good in RPO, zone reads, throws a nice ball, not afraid to run and doesn't panic in unstructured situations);

2. WR corps is noticeably better - and not a moment too soon. I have no idea where he's going to play, but Alford is a spectacle out there with his length and speed. They didn't target him much but when they did - he made a sweet TD catch (on a double move) and outran everyone to the house. Hatcher (TD), Williams and Gadsden made the most of their targets and I would expect all three to be in the rotation with Queeley and Jackson. Jones was the first name mentioned in interviews. Once he gets stronger, he could be a wiley route runner in the mold of Alec Lemon. The last name I'll mention is Donovan Brown ... really fast and talented but seems like a year away strength-wise. The proof of the pudding is handling press coverage against ACC defenders, but to my eye, this WR unit is easily the most improved on the team;

3. LB's (behind the starters), macdonald looked good, and watch out for Mason (excellent instincts);

4. Safety (behind the starters) watch out for Oliver (INT and some serious speed).

5. Cruz at RT played well.

6. Geer and Jacquez on the DL (undersized but oozing potential).

For those who haven't attended a fan-fest/spring game, it's worth a special trip. The scrimmage itself was well-run, although the key guys on offense were held out. The best part of it is getting down on the field to meet the players, the coaches and the families ... a memorable and humbling experience. We have an excellent coaching staff and a lot of very talented (and polite) young men who might surprise the ACC this year (despite a difficult schedule) if they can add a DL or two.

 

[RICuse44]

I believe you and MSOrange. Did either of you notice where he played? He has been moved around some over the course of his career. Guessing he was one of the guys who started playing relatively late and did not get a lot of snaps.

Red started with the second unit at left tackle

Edit- just saw tretonians reply that scooped me. The one time I thought I could add something tomcat missed too!

 

[GreekFreak]

The last name I'll mention is Donovan Brown ... really fast and talented. WR's, to my eye, easily the most improved unit on the team;

I was really impressed with him for a freshman. The last play of the game to him should have been a TD as he had his man beat by a lot but Morgan underthrew the pass.

 

[Deleted member 7047]

Red started with the second unit at left tackle

Edit- just saw tretonians reply that scooped me. The one time I thought I could add something tomcat missed too!

...sorry...

 

[SWC75]

Some more things I should have mentioned. These are just random things some might be interested in.

Cruz runs really well for an OL. On one of the long RB runs, I saw him drop the DL in front of him, beat an LB and take him out and go around 10 yards and block a safety. All in one play.

I was worried after we lost Cantin-Arcu about linebacker depth. That happens if one of the ‘Big 3’ (Thompson/Wax/Jones) get hurt? Much less concerned about that now.

Sparrow, McDonald, Lowery and Mason all were impressive. Best of all, they are all physically ready to play today. Meaning, they aren’t 205 pound kids we hope can add 20 pounds and retain their athletic ability.

We have no one who can get the ball into the end zone consistently on kickoffs. That worries me. We face some really good return guys in the ACC. Hope Liggy has the coverage units ready. No chance to see the coverage units last night as kickoffs and punts were limited to the guy kicking it and the guy catching it. And a snapper for punts. Bolinsky looked good long snapping. Kelly was almost as good backing him up.
It will be interesting to see who plays on the coverage units. Who are the gunners going to be? We have upgraded the overall size and speed of the team sufficiently that trying to guess this is not a trivial exercise.

Donovan Brown was one of the guys who caught kickoffs. Pena did it most of the time. I think Pena and Courtney Jackson caught most of the punts.

They ran some trick plays. I think Dino is not a big fan of these. We have rarely used them. Believe the UVa fans thought Coach Anae called them too often. I guess we will see on this but I really like running a few during the spring game. Get that on film. Force defenses to waste time prepping for this. Even if we never get them in real games.

This was the first dome event I attended with dynamic bar codes on tickets. Not sure if that is even the right terminology but this is the latest brainchild of everyone’s favorite company, TicketMaster. Even I downloaded my tickets to the game and tried to add them to my wallet, a couple weird things happened.

First, I was asked if I wanted to add all my tickets to the event to my wallet at once. This excited me. I have 4 seasons for football and 3 for hoops and up until now, I have had to download the tickets one by one, then add them to my electronic wallet one by one. Just an awful design. Shocking that TicketMaster, Apple, whoever is responsible for the software would ever come up with such an inconvenient and poorly thought out setup. Anyway, I said yes, download them all and not only it this download both tickets to my phone, it also added them to my wallet in one fell swoop. So it appears an awful inconvenience has been removed.

As an aside, when you look at the new fangled electronic tickets in your wallet, there is just a stub there. No bar code. Just some text identifying the ticket. I was wondering if something was wrong. How is this going to work when I get my ‘ticket’ scanned?

Well, the worker scanning tickets knew about the change and asked me to point my phone at him. You are supposed to read the bar code by having the ticket up in your wallet and having the scanner point at the reader on your phone. He had to manipulate it a bit but it scanned pretty quickly. At least one friend had a major issue as it appears not all the people scanning tickets knew about the change.

The SUMB was at the game. No uniforms. No marching. I would guess maybe 25% of the normal band showed up. But they played with enthusiasm and it made the atmosphere collegiate and I was glad they were there. 9. Yup, 9. Great turnout of tubas given how small the SUMB was. It was a tuba concentric sound and I liked it. Hope we can get up past the 11 or 12 we had for most games last year. Based on the turnout last night, it seems possible.

Maybe the best thing about the game was seeing a lot of young children attending. Didn’t realize how much I missed seeing kids at the dome. They looked thrilled to be there and from what I could see, the players were awesome to them. Posing for pics, signing autographs, talking to them and making them feel important even before the game started.

Sitting halfway down section 116, I was looking indirectly into the LED lighting, which appeared to mostly be pointed directly in my eyes. It was a lot to take for 3 hours. Still hoping some small adjustments can be made to make this less tough on the eyes. I am fortunate that I sit on the 300 level for football and basketball and don’t have to deal with this very often.

I was the first person from the normal syracusefan.com contingent to arrive (right after the doors opened at 6 pm) and I sat alone on the end of a row in 116 for a while by myself. Wondered briefly if this was going to be a solo mission. Nope. @Orangetreme arrived shortly after me. storange and Dcuse shortly after that. LeMoyneCuse, JRHEETER, Cuseregular, Consigliere, TexanMark. Chris02M, lincolncuse were some of the board regulars in our group. Nice turnout. Good to see so much enthusiasm for the program.

Hope. It is a great thing.

It will be a while before SU fans get impatient with the trick plays.

I have a friend who once told me that if he were a coach, he'd call a trick play one every play. I told him that if he did that, they wouldn't be trick plays. they would be your offense.

The teams that run trick plays the best are the teams that run basic plays the best.

 

[money3189]

The teams that run trick plays the best are the teams that run basic plays the best.

Exactly. Trick plays are just another play in your offense. Its an extention of a play. Especially base plays that you run well.

 

[Trueblue25]

If anyone talked with Tucker, did he mention that he was held out of the game so that opposing coaches wouldn't see what new number he was wearing?

Asking for a friend...

Tucker turned down 44 from what I’ve heard.

 

[Chris02M]

Tucker turned down 44 from what I’ve heard.

pretty sure the post your replying to was being sarcastic

 

[money3189]

Like what I saw in Lamson. He showed he can be a capable back up and potential starter. We have to keep in mind it was a small sample size. Play calling was vanilla. His two biggest throws was against a early enrollee CB who got hit with a double move and then got caught peeking in the backfield on another. I did like the throw. He threw it on a rope to Alford. He also missed a easy TD to Jones. I like his moxie and the way he finished runs. I think he can be a good one.