My two cents

[kcsu]

Lets start with the positive.

The D is vastly improved. We have ACC caliber talent at every position and the young players all look solid. Coach White is to be commended for his ability to install a radically different D remotely . We went up against a high powered O with experienced future NFL skill players and shut them down for 3 periods until we were gassed and mentally broken. Great job by the D as they are top 20 caliber.

The O on the other hand continues to play at a level of incompetence not seen since the Little train days. I watched the game again last night and i couldn't find one offensive position group that played at an ACC level. Not one which is pathetic.
For as good as the coaching was on the defensive side of the ball it was equally bad on the offensive.
With the above as a foundation here are my two cents on why we are here and what needs to be considered going forward.

1: Dino is a good CEO type head coach. He is not a good offensive coordinator, or in game coach. He needs to be the face of the program and hire the best offensive position coaches that his budget permits. I will give Gilbert a pass as i do not believe he was calling the plays. Its obvious that nothing changed offensively as the play calling was as bad if not worse than it ever has been.
For me this is the single biggest worry going forward. That Dino is too enamored with his version of the spread to change.
Next up is Tommy. As we all know he was anointed to become our starting QB prior to stepping foot on campus. Hand picked by Dino.
At this point Tommy is by all accounts a great representative of SU, a model teammate, and extremely hard worker. He has as good an arm as any QB to ever wear Orange. Unfortunately he is not a good ACC caliber QB at this point. I posted in the Rex post that certain QBs certain leaders be it in business, government, the military, religion or sports have the ability to elevate everyone around them to a higher level. Eric had those qualities. Not just for the offensive side but for the entire team. When he was on the field the guys,the fans thought that anything was possible. He was a generational leader. He was the epitome of "the straw that stirs the drink"
Tommy on the other hand is more like another player. Yes he is the QB but its hard to articulate but he just doesn't have the IT factor that the great ones have. Its hard to say this but last year when our back up came in we looked different. Same with Rex yesterday. Maybe its just me but i swear i noticed a change and in both cases it was positive.
Id like to say and i hope that Tommy somehow finds the "IT" and maybe he will because if he doesn't its going to be a very long two years.

As to Dino he needs to look in the mirror and ask himself if his offensive scheme, his offensive strategies are green and growing or red and rotten.
I like Dino and still hope he is our coach for a very long time. I hope that he continues to grow, continues to improve his staff as he is a great representative of Syracuse University and has a chance to lead this program back. Its going to be an interesting season at best. Lets hope that Dino realized change is needed on his side of the ball and most of all that the kids dont pull apart which can happen when one group is considerably better than the other.
Go Orange!

 

[shu 49]

Lets start with the positive.

The D is vastly improved. We have ACC caliber talent at every position and the young players all look solid. Coach White is to be commended for his ability to install a radically different D remotely . We went up against a high powered O with experienced future NFL skill players and shut them down for 3 periods until we were gassed and mentally broken. Great job by the D as they are top 20 caliber.

The O on the other hand continues to play at a level of incompetence not seen since the Little train days. I watched the game again last night and i couldn't find one offensive position group that played at an ACC level. Not one which is pathetic.
For as good as the coaching was on the defensive side of the ball it was equally bad on the offensive.
With the above as a foundation here are my two cents on why we are here and what needs to be considered going forward.

1: Dino is a good CEO type head coach. He is not a good offensive coordinator, or in game coach. He needs to be the face of the program and hire the best offensive position coaches that his budget permits. I will give Gilbert a pass as i do not believe he was calling the plays. Its obvious that nothing changed offensively as the play calling was as bad if not worse than it ever has been.
For me this is the single biggest worry going forward. That Dino is too enamored with his version of the spread to change.
Next up is Tommy. As we all know he was anointed to become our starting QB prior to stepping foot on campus. Hand picked by Dino.
At this point Tommy is by all accounts a great representative of SU, a model teammate, and extremely hard worker. He has as good an arm as any QB to ever wear Orange. Unfortunately he is not a good ACC caliber QB at this point. I posted in the Rex post that certain QBs certain leaders be it in business, government, the military, religion or sports have the ability to elevate everyone around them to a higher level. Eric had those qualities. Not just for the offensive side but for the entire team. When he was on the field the guys,the fans thought that anything was possible. He was a generational leader. He was the epitome of "the straw that stirs the drink"
Tommy on the other hand is more like another player. Yes he is the QB but its hard to articulate but he just doesn't have the IT factor that the great ones have. Its hard to say this but last year when our back up came in we looked different. Same with Rex yesterday. Maybe its just me but i swear i noticed a change and in both cases it was positive.
Id like to say and i hope that Tommy somehow finds the "IT" and maybe he will because if he doesn't its going to be a very long two years.

As to Dino he needs to look in the mirror and ask himself if his offensive scheme, his offensive strategies are green and growing or red and rotten.
I like Dino and still hope he is our coach for a very long time. I hope that he continues to grow, continues to improve his staff as he is a great representative of Syracuse University and has a chance to lead this program back. Its going to be an interesting season at best. Lets hope that Dino realized change is needed on his side of the ball and most of all that the kids dont pull apart which can happen when one group is considerably better than the other.
Go Orange!

Just don’t understand where our short game went too. That would give Tommy a chance to snap and throw. Get in a rhythm. This offense is completely different than 3 or 4 yrs ago. It’s terrible to watch. Now we score when we had the chance and we may have one. 3 and outs killed our d. Just became too much. They played tough today.

 

[Cuse'91]

A West Coast offense would be perfect for us. Tommy throwing quick short darts around the field. Would take pressure off our run game; and, force Tommy to look at entire field of view.

 

[JKinPhilly]

Not to hijack your thread, but just got to watch the second half of the game as I had a conflict yesterday and got home just as the game was wrapping up. Anyway, some quick thoughts:
*it was anyone's game going into the 4th quarter. Final score doesn't really reflect that.
*we blew so many first half chances to put points on the board
*d got run down in 4th quarter - I was impressed up to that point especially with some of the newcomers. Have to winder how conditioning has been impacted
*can't begin to fathom the struggles on offense - sure a new OC but it's essentially the same system. There shouldn't be a break-in period to learn a new system. I'm at a loss there, but that's been dissected deeply elsewhere. Something is severely broken there
*I don't think the sky is falling. I saw enough on D to be optimistic if we can put any points on the board. If...

 

[CuseMan4]

Agree with most of this. I will say I found it strange in the post game press conference when Dino said “Gilbert like to play aggressive”. Nothing about play calling yesterday seemed remotely aggressive and I thought it was extremely conservative and weak. So it tells me Dino is calling most the plays, which is not great since the offensive play calling was atrocious.

Lastly, it’s been said in another thread by someone and I can’t agree enough. As much as this fan base wants a fast offense and to score a lot of points. As much as Dino wants to go fast and score a lot of points. We need to slow this offense wayyyyy down. To me this offense is not going to win us games, the defense is going to win us games and I think that’s obvious. We can’t have 45 second, 3 and outs. We just can’t. Defense gets gassed by the fourth like we saw and they can’t play to the level they are capable of. We have legit studs all over the defense and they can win us ball games.

Fact: we arent going to win ball games 49-42 this year, we aren’t out scoring anyone. We are going to win games 21-10, etc...it won’t be pretty but that’s how we win this year. Honestly, huddle up after every play, make sure everyone is settled, I think this will cut down on pre snap penalties as well, call better plays, get the right personnel in, literally take the clock down to under 10 seconds every snap and play that way. Have the defense out there as little as possible so they are fresh and making plays when they are, because that’s exactly what they will do when they are gassed. Dino has to swallow some pride with his offense and realize that’s not the bread and butter of this years team. Play to your teams strengths, not to mention we have one of the best kickers in the country, keep the game low scoring because with the kicker and defense we have, we’ll have the upper hand in those games.

In my opinion that’s how we win football games this year.

 

[kcsu]

Other points. By not using the middle of the field we are in essence providing the D with a 12th defender as the boundaries are defenders. By remaining stubborn and calling off tackle runs on 90% of 1st down plays we are putting ourselves consistently behind in the down distance game which only accentuates our weaknesses. By not running clock we dont allow our coaches time to actually think about play calling and most importantly provide our D with time to recover. Not using time outs properly vs as a result of a lack of organization is a sure sign of coaching issues. Simply put because of a lack of organization, a stubbornness to change, a lack of Offensive creativity to scheme based on your personnel vs your wants leads to a predictable hot mess of an offensive unit.
Back to my original post. Dino is not a good play caller or in game coach its why he was relieved of play calling duties as an assistant coach. S Lewis was very good at putting his players in position to succeed. So far he hasn't been replaced on the field, as a motivator or recruiter. He is missed.
Lets see if Dino looks in the mirror and demands change from himself and his game planning and play calling as this is our biggest issue and has been since Lewis left.

 

[gocraz4dasu]

I'd really like to see us throwing the ball over the middle more. We had a couple of good slants to start off drives but we never really went back to them. I'm unsure if that is a play calling thing or a Devito thing. Dungey did throw a lot of balls to Ervin Phillips or Sean Riley over the middle. Our slot guys have vanished this year and last year, and I think Nykiem and Courtney Jackson have talent. Our receivers dropped too many balls and then Devito missed them when they were open. They just could not get on the same page. I did like what I saw from Queeley and Taj's YAC. Need to see Benson and Hackett used more, as I think they give us solid match-ups in our favor.

I hate our run game from the blocking to the play calls. Can we run some sweeps with Jawhar? He has the speed but he is not built to succeed when our interior line is not the strength. I'd have liked to see some delayed screens. I'd also really like to see us pull a guard here or there. And I LOATHE our read option. We have yet to get it right since the start of last year. The red zone read-option was awful today and I was pulling my hair our when we were first and goal and ran the read option twice (both went to Jordan who had no chance to do anything with it). Did we even attempt a play action pass?

Any time Devito turns around, and starts running backwards/backpedaling, nothing good happens. Very few quarterbacks can pull that off, like Manziel at A&M. The times when he stepped up in the pocket good things happened. Those step ups had me excited but the backpedaling outpaced the step-ups or roll-outs. A good portion of that is due to our interior lineman not being great. They weren't awful this week but they certainly weren't good (I'd say mediocre). The worry is that UNC's dline is their weakness. Clemson might destroy our interior.

Our secondary is legit. Trill was basically not targeted all game. UNC's best plays early came from slipping in the secondary. The 4th quarter the whole defense was gassed and frustrated so I don't hold that against them too much. Garrett Williams and Iffy are definitely an ACC caliber CB pairing based off of today. Coley was the weakest out of the bunch and he still played OK.

Our dline had moments of playing well but they weren't fantastic. I'd give them a B, if I had to grade them. Linton and Jonathan on the same side proved to be a lot for UNC to handle though, which I loved to see.

The undicsiplined penalties need to be cut out.

Still can't believe Szymt missed that 33 yard field goal. I thought he'd still make it but Devito running out of bounds and taking the sack switching hashmarks was a poor decision when he could have easily tossed it out of bounds. Still should be made by the kicker but it was unnecessary.

This game was frustrating because we made UNC look very beatable but our offense was a 2 ton weight around our necks all game. The defense gave them GREAT field position multiple times and the O did nothing with it. Had our offense been even somewhat competent, and put together 3 or 4 drives, I genuinely think we win that game. Instead we look like we got smoked at 31-6. It's still a long season and there are reasons to have some excitement. My nervousness is stemming from how we looked weak starting out last year and we do again this year. It took like 8 games last year to figure it out and I really hope it doesn't take the offense that long again to get going.

 

[JKinPhilly]

By not using the middle of the field we are in essence providing the D with a 12th defender as the boundaries are defenders.

This is baffling to me - I would love to know the thought process behind doing this over and over again

 

[Dick_in_MI]

I have to pushback on one thing, kcsu. I don’t think Dino is remotely a good CEO type coach. He is good with the marketing stuff; catch phrases, selling a vision early on, etc.

But we had to fire his two most important underlings at the end of last year, which at best is a giant red flag. That means he made bad hires in his two most important spots. We don’t even have proof that the terminations were his decision.

I won’t get bogged down in microanalysis of the rest of his coaching performance but the above is not indicative of a good CEO. Rather, it is the mark of a guy who has never had a job at this level before now and is still learning.

 

[kcsu]

I have to pushback on one thing, kcsu. I don’t think Dino is remotely a good CEO type coach. He is good with the marketing stuff; catch phrases, selling a vision early on, etc.

But we had to fire his two most important underlings at the end of last year, which at best is a giant red flag. That means he made bad hires in his two most important spots. We don’t even have proof that the terminations were his decision.

I won’t get bogged down in microanalysis of the rest of his coaching performance but the above is not indicative of a good CEO. Rather, it is the mark of a guy who has never had a job at this level before now and is still learning.

Very very good point. I stand corrected. I was focused more on the public facing aspect of the job.