sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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Watched the game with the usual Syracusefan.com away game watching crew at Buffalo Wild Wings in Clay/Cicero. Nice place, our waitress Nikki was solid, Chandler Jones was in the house for a while. I apologize to anyone who happened to be there if I got a little too boisterous at times (and I did).
Everyone is going to talk about the refs, and certainly it was a game filled with controversial calls. I don't like blaming a loss on refs, don't do it very often. Blown calls are part of the game and good teams overcome them. The only reasons I bring the topic up are 1) the bad calls were such a big part of the game and 2) the replay situation.
The nice thing about college football these days is that when there is a controversial call, there is the opportunity to review it and correct it if the wrong call was made. The refs missed the two fumbles UC had in real time on the field. That is okay, it happens. Don't understand how the review process could be so flawed that the calls were not reviewed. What a shame a great game had to be marred by such incompetence. I can't agree with the people saying this is a conspiracy by the Big East to get Syracuse for leaving the conference. The Big East is far too poorly run to be able to pull something like this off. Anyway, I am done talking about it; let's move on to the game.
Another away game in the Big East, another crowd way under 30K. Attendance is becoming a huge issue for the conference. Even a school like Rutgers, even their best season ever, can't sell out a game like Syracuse and is forced to give away tickets to Army. Happy to be moving to a conference with teams that have real fan bases.
Syracuse came out determined to run the ball, and as they have in the last few games, they had a lot of success early running, with Jerome Smith doing most of the damage. I think Hackett is doing a really good job calling plays. Has defenses confused and on the run every game these days. My only quibbles are 1) the run zone play calling and 2) I wish we ran the ball more with Smith after the first couple of drives, when he has been featured. Smith quietly ran for over 100 yards again and finally got off the snide with a TD on an impressive leap over the LOS down near the goal line. He runs hard and takes good angles. Has a lot of work to do catching the ball though. A lot of work,
After establishing the run, Hackett attacked the sidelines with the WRs with success, then attacked the middle with Wales. Really nice progression. Liked seeing us throw the ball down the field a lot as well. Nassib has improved in this area a lot, and is throwing deep better now than at any point in his career. Ryan got off to his characteristic slow start, might have overthrown a few balls early. Locked into receivers a few times, but he took care of the ball, made a lot of good decisions, kept some plays alive with his feet and threw the ball with accuracy most of the game. He should have had 3 TD throws. West and Wales each dropped one. Both have done this before, so has Smith, Lemon has a couple, there might be 10 TD passes dropped this season alone already. Unacceptable.
On defense, Bromley played a bit but limped noticeably and was not a factor in the game. Crume did well with his extended playing time. Goggins played terrific and without seeing the stats. I think he again had more tackles than the linebackers. He should be all conference when this season is all said and done. As should Shamarko, who often seems like the only player on the team capable of making a tackle in the open field. Don't know how he does it, he also hits harder than anyone on the team by a large margin and he is again playing with only one arm. Our DEs are basically space eaters who have not been productive...really disappointed with this unit. Wish we could have played Dion there but it was not to be with the injuries inside.
Lyn has had a disappointing season but I thought he played really well yesterday. Anderson also had a fine game; maybe the best of his career. Reddish again was very good. UC really didn't hurt us with their WRs almost at all. The TE had a couple long TDs on well executed trick plays, Winn did okay running inside and Abernathy hurt us on some screens and dump passes. Amazing UC scored so many points with relatively little production by their offensive unit. Maybe the biggest difference in the game was their ability to take advantage of opportunities on offense; they were a lot better at that than we were.
Our LBs are undersized, struggle against a power attack and did not have a good game again on Saturday. They just do not fight off blocks to make plays well, and when the DL is struggling with the OL, as happened again with Bromley out, we end up seeing a lot of plays where the RB is in the secondary before being touched. If there is a positive to this injury to Bromley, it might result in him returning for his senior year.
Special teams were not good on Saturday. Can't get FGs blocked as often as we are getting them blocked. Can't keep missing so many FGs. Can't have punts that go 15 or 20 yards in key situations. Extremely disappointed with FG blocking, FG kicking in general and punting. Fisher was bad early, showed signs of improvement but had an awful game yesterday. On a positive note, the coverage teams have been dramatically better this season and Ritchy, while he didn't break a punt return yesterday, looks far better at PR than anyone we have had there in years. We continue to have a big issue at KOR. Kobena has failed in just about every way possible. If anything, he appears to be regressing.
UL is going to be much harder to defend than UC was. Bridgewater is the real deal and will probably beat out Nassib for 1st team all conference at QB. Throws it well, gets better as the game goes on. We are going to have to stop the run and do well on passing situations, a tall order for this defense given the injury to Bromley. Not sure UL runs the ball as well as UC, Winn is a fine back who is underrated and Abernathy and Muchie caused problems too. Their defense is not outstanding and we should be able to put some points up on the board. Is is a shame this is not a night game. We could use the extra wildness and noise.
Everyone is going to talk about the refs, and certainly it was a game filled with controversial calls. I don't like blaming a loss on refs, don't do it very often. Blown calls are part of the game and good teams overcome them. The only reasons I bring the topic up are 1) the bad calls were such a big part of the game and 2) the replay situation.
The nice thing about college football these days is that when there is a controversial call, there is the opportunity to review it and correct it if the wrong call was made. The refs missed the two fumbles UC had in real time on the field. That is okay, it happens. Don't understand how the review process could be so flawed that the calls were not reviewed. What a shame a great game had to be marred by such incompetence. I can't agree with the people saying this is a conspiracy by the Big East to get Syracuse for leaving the conference. The Big East is far too poorly run to be able to pull something like this off. Anyway, I am done talking about it; let's move on to the game.
Another away game in the Big East, another crowd way under 30K. Attendance is becoming a huge issue for the conference. Even a school like Rutgers, even their best season ever, can't sell out a game like Syracuse and is forced to give away tickets to Army. Happy to be moving to a conference with teams that have real fan bases.
Syracuse came out determined to run the ball, and as they have in the last few games, they had a lot of success early running, with Jerome Smith doing most of the damage. I think Hackett is doing a really good job calling plays. Has defenses confused and on the run every game these days. My only quibbles are 1) the run zone play calling and 2) I wish we ran the ball more with Smith after the first couple of drives, when he has been featured. Smith quietly ran for over 100 yards again and finally got off the snide with a TD on an impressive leap over the LOS down near the goal line. He runs hard and takes good angles. Has a lot of work to do catching the ball though. A lot of work,
After establishing the run, Hackett attacked the sidelines with the WRs with success, then attacked the middle with Wales. Really nice progression. Liked seeing us throw the ball down the field a lot as well. Nassib has improved in this area a lot, and is throwing deep better now than at any point in his career. Ryan got off to his characteristic slow start, might have overthrown a few balls early. Locked into receivers a few times, but he took care of the ball, made a lot of good decisions, kept some plays alive with his feet and threw the ball with accuracy most of the game. He should have had 3 TD throws. West and Wales each dropped one. Both have done this before, so has Smith, Lemon has a couple, there might be 10 TD passes dropped this season alone already. Unacceptable.
On defense, Bromley played a bit but limped noticeably and was not a factor in the game. Crume did well with his extended playing time. Goggins played terrific and without seeing the stats. I think he again had more tackles than the linebackers. He should be all conference when this season is all said and done. As should Shamarko, who often seems like the only player on the team capable of making a tackle in the open field. Don't know how he does it, he also hits harder than anyone on the team by a large margin and he is again playing with only one arm. Our DEs are basically space eaters who have not been productive...really disappointed with this unit. Wish we could have played Dion there but it was not to be with the injuries inside.
Lyn has had a disappointing season but I thought he played really well yesterday. Anderson also had a fine game; maybe the best of his career. Reddish again was very good. UC really didn't hurt us with their WRs almost at all. The TE had a couple long TDs on well executed trick plays, Winn did okay running inside and Abernathy hurt us on some screens and dump passes. Amazing UC scored so many points with relatively little production by their offensive unit. Maybe the biggest difference in the game was their ability to take advantage of opportunities on offense; they were a lot better at that than we were.
Our LBs are undersized, struggle against a power attack and did not have a good game again on Saturday. They just do not fight off blocks to make plays well, and when the DL is struggling with the OL, as happened again with Bromley out, we end up seeing a lot of plays where the RB is in the secondary before being touched. If there is a positive to this injury to Bromley, it might result in him returning for his senior year.
Special teams were not good on Saturday. Can't get FGs blocked as often as we are getting them blocked. Can't keep missing so many FGs. Can't have punts that go 15 or 20 yards in key situations. Extremely disappointed with FG blocking, FG kicking in general and punting. Fisher was bad early, showed signs of improvement but had an awful game yesterday. On a positive note, the coverage teams have been dramatically better this season and Ritchy, while he didn't break a punt return yesterday, looks far better at PR than anyone we have had there in years. We continue to have a big issue at KOR. Kobena has failed in just about every way possible. If anything, he appears to be regressing.
UL is going to be much harder to defend than UC was. Bridgewater is the real deal and will probably beat out Nassib for 1st team all conference at QB. Throws it well, gets better as the game goes on. We are going to have to stop the run and do well on passing situations, a tall order for this defense given the injury to Bromley. Not sure UL runs the ball as well as UC, Winn is a fine back who is underrated and Abernathy and Muchie caused problems too. Their defense is not outstanding and we should be able to put some points up on the board. Is is a shame this is not a night game. We could use the extra wildness and noise.
