Pasqualoni's Last Full Recruiting Class - 2004

[OrangePA]

http://syracuse.At their request, t...ked from this site./a.z?s=185&p=9&c=8&yr=2004

Dowayne Davis, Tony Fiammetta, Joe Fields, Jameel McClain, and Curtis Brinkley all made it to the NFL.

Courtney Greene was in that class, though he never made it Syracuse University.

And guys like Tom Herron, Rice Moss, JJ Bedle, Ben Maljovec, AJ Brown, Ryan Ehrie, and Donta Herod all had decent offers.

There were other guys who contributed at SU, Corey Chavers, Jake Flaherty, Nick Santiago et al.

It doesn't seem like a bad class at all.

I guess CIL is probably right though. There probably was not enough depth in that class and in other late P classes.

It certainly is interesting to look back though and see how players panned out.

 

[OrangeCrush22]

Why don't links to scout work on this site?

 

[mountaincuse]

Why don't links to scout work on this site?

Because this site blocks them, as like many ex-girlfriends they don't like it when you dump them..

 

[cuseguy]

It's really dawened on me lately how much ground we've lost over the years in Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

 

[OrangePA]

It's really dawened on me lately how much ground we've lost over the years in Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

True.

 

[SUFan44]

Dowayne Davis made the practice squad - he has no official games played in the NFL.

Joe Fields also has zero official NFL games played. Practice squad player at best.

Brinkley was in that boat too until he played for the Chargers this season after a bunch of RBs got injured.

McClain and Fiammetta are the only two players that made the NFL and contributed. Let's not try to make this recruiting class better than it actually was.

Also, "There were other guys who contributed at SU, Corey Chavers, Jake Flaherty, Nick Santiago et al." Not difficult to contribute when the team is pretty terrible.

Give it up. Pasqualoni's recruiting classes were miserable toward the end of his tenure. And we are so far past this, why even bring it up?

 

[OrangePA]

Dowayne Davis made the practice squad - he has no official games played in the NFL.

Joe Fields also has zero official NFL games played. Practice squad player at best.

Brinkley was in that boat too until he played for the Chargers this season after a bunch of RBs got injured.

McClain and Fiammetta are the only two players that made the NFL and contributed. Let's not try to make this recruiting class better than it actually was.

Also, "There were other guys who contributed at SU, Corey Chavers, Jake Flaherty, Nick Santiago et al." Not difficult to contribute when the team is pretty terrible.

Give it up. Pasqualoni's recruiting classes were miserable toward the end of his tenure. And we are so far past this, why even bring it up?

I'm not sure you understood the discussion.

The purpose was to look back at a class with eight or four years of prespective.

I guess you didn't notice that a similar post was made regarding Greg Robinson's last class.

Also, you didn't notice that both posts observed that a number of decent players came to Syracuse University in 2004 and in 2008 when things did not look all that good for the Orange.

And you didn't notice that the post about the 2004 class acknowledged CIL's observation that our last few classes under Pasqualoni lacked substantial depth.

 

[Cadillac]

Interesting that the guys with the decent offers were the most disappointing guys: Moss, Bedle, Brown, Ehrie, Herrod. Ferron, who knows what happened there, he looked great as a sophomore then bye-bye.

Also the half-class P secured in 2004 was not too bad: Art Jones, Perkins, Owen, Stenclik (who IIRC had a Miami offer to play FB, back when Miami was THE U).

That was the year so much emphasis was put on Lavar Lobdell, P wasn't going to get him and people made it seem like that was an unforgivable failure. I was guilty of that. Did LL ever catch a TD? I want to say in his last game he did.

 

[orangenauburn]

and had P been retained would have included Ray Rice and Courtney Greene

 

[Chip]

The reason I'm always somewhat impressed with what GRob was able to recruit is because his head coaching record was so bad right out of the gate. How can you expect to recruit when a 6 win program went to a 2.5 win program on your watch?

What less than impressed me about Coach P's final classes is that SU was a winning, nationally recognized program under his watch and recruiting fell off the cliff. I know facilities were a big part but the competitors all rose up around him.

Good news is that our brand wasn't damaged through it all and we should be well positioned to rise again in the northeast.

 

[Pyle]

Grob classes were top heavy with busts and non-qualifiers. He recruited significantly lower quality players at the bottom of his classes. See the DM purge for evidence of this. P and Grob could land a few top quality guys, P more than Grob IMO but the lack of depth killed the program over the years. The real meat of any class is what you've got beyond the top 5 guys. P was below average, Grob stunk.

 

[Rocco]

The real meat of any class is what you've got beyond the top 5 guys. P was below average, Grob stunk.

Good post. Still too early to judge on everyone in the classes, but Marrone's recruits are deeper than P and GRob from top to bottom. Good signs ahead.

 

[tep624]

I thought that class was much better than it turned out to be at the time. Looking back now, almost all the guys with significant offers either left early or weren't factors. Not really much star quality at all. Fields was supposed to be the savior at QB and ended up a competent safety (which is probably where he belonged from the start). Fiammetta was hurt often. McClain and Davis were really the only consistent guys in the class - maybe AJ Brown too. You really can't have a class that weak and expect to compete, it's almost like taking a year off.

 

[mizzou15]

Was n't Brent Celek coming in w/ that last class before coach P was fired.

 

[Scooch]

I'm going to post this both here and the thread about GRob's last class...

This board wildly overrates SU's talent on an annual basis. That's entrely why some of these classes look OK to you. They're all below average, hence our crappy won/lost record over the last decade.

Put another way, even when Rutgers was the worst 1-A BCS level program I've ever seen, they had Marco Battaglia. Just because SU had a handful of decent players doesn't mean the classes were good.

 

[orangenauburn]

I'm going to post this both here and the thread about GRob's last class...

This board wildly overrates SU's talent on an annual basis. That's entrely why some of these classes look OK to you. They're all below average, hence our crappy won/lost record over the last decade.

Put another way, even when Rutgers was the worst 1-A BCS level program I've ever seen, they had Marco Battaglia. Just because SU had a handful of decent players doesn't mean the classes were good.

Basically Cuse last very good class was '94 or '95

 

[Scooch]

Basically Cuse last very good class was '94 or '95

I'm no recruitnik but I'd guess it was a couple years later, because the teams in '99, '00 and '01 were talented enough all things considered. I mean the D was excellent those years, and if we had landed Vick I suspect we'd have had more 8 or 9 win seasons.

So maybe '97/'98?

 

[bnoro]

It's really dawened on me lately how much ground we've lost over the years in Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

Who cares about recruits in CT and MA? There are maybe 5-10 legit prospects every year. NY is a football hotbed compared to those states.

 

[Fjoinkay]

Was it 2005 or 2006 when SU had zero players drafted for the first time in 30 YEARS? For me that shows the direction of coach P's recruiting. He inherited the program when it was top-notch. He maintained for a while, and did some exciting things especially during the McNabb years. And then we saw an unmitigated downward slope.

 

[Dick_in_MI]

Was it 2005 or 2006 when SU had zero players drafted for the first time in 30 YEARS? For me that shows the direction of coach P's recruiting. He inherited the program when it was top-notch. He maintained for a while, and did some exciting things especially during the McNabb years. And then we saw an unmitigated downward slope.

I'd take issue with the words "top notch" and "for awhile"

Mac's last two years we won 8 and 7 games respectively and opposing recruiters were starting to use Mac's age against us on the recruiting trail. We were not a top-notch program nationally. We were excellent by historic Syracuse standards but we had tailed off a bit from Mac's two glory seasons.

P tailed off at the end but before that he had an 11-season run that I believe is either unmatched or next to the best winning percentage in school history...91-38-1. We also went to 8 bowls during that stretch and notched three 10-win seasons and three 9-win seasons.

A solid 11 season stretch under the same coach is becoming fairly unusual in the football world, especially at a school that isn't a football factory. So it was more than awhile

Again, P tailed off at the end but it was nothing like the trainwreck of the GRob years that followed.

 

[Chip]

I'd take issue with the words "top notch" and "for awhile"

Mac's last two years we won 8 and 7 games respectively and opposing recruiters were starting to use Mac's age against us on the recruiting trail. We were not a top-notch program nationally. We were excellent by historic Syracuse standards but we had tailed off a bit from Mac's two glory seasons.

P tailed off at the end but before that he had an 11-season run that I believe is either unmatched or next to the best winning percentage in school history...91-38-1. We also went to 8 bowls during that stretch and notched three 10-win seasons and three 9-win seasons.

A solid 11 season stretch under the same coach is becoming fairly unusual in the football world, especially at a school that isn't a football factory. So it was more than awhile

Again, P tailed off at the end but it was nothing like the trainwreck of the GRob years that followed.

Seemed like we were a pretty loaded team in 1991 and 1992, which would relate to the recruiting in 1987 and 1988. Granted, I don't have as much historical info on 1989 and 1990, but it seemed to me that we recruited a QB who, while a talented passer, wasn't a great fit in the offense in Scharr. Tried to mix in McDonald here and there but that wasn't really the answer either. So we took some lumps in 1990 by going to the redshirt freshman QB who did fit the offense. And by season's end, he was looking very good. Very impressive, and mostly returning, SU team against Arizona that day.

 

[OrangeXtreme]

Seemed like we were a pretty loaded team in 1991 and 1992, which would relate to the recruiting in 1987 and 1988. Granted, I don't have as much historical info on 1989 and 1990, but it seemed to me that we recruited a QB who, while a talented passer, wasn't a great fit in the offense in Scharr. Tried to mix in McDonald here and there but that wasn't really the answer either. So we took some lumps in 1990 by going to the redshirt freshman QB who did fit the offense. And by season's end, he was looking very good. Very impressive, and mostly returning, SU team against Arizona that day.

Scharr took his degree, and McDonald was banged up in training camp. Wendell Lowrey was ineligible.

Graves was the only healthy body left to start the 1990 season.

 

[Dick_in_MI]

Seemed like we were a pretty loaded team in 1991 and 1992, which would relate to the recruiting in 1987 and 1988. Granted, I don't have as much historical info on 1989 and 1990, but it seemed to me that we recruited a QB who, while a talented passer, wasn't a great fit in the offense in Scharr. Tried to mix in McDonald here and there but that wasn't really the answer either. So we took some lumps in 1990 by going to the redshirt freshman QB who did fit the offense. And by season's end, he was looking very good. Very impressive, and mostly returning, SU team against Arizona that day.

We were loaded but P still did something with it. Not every coach who inherits talent is successful with it. Anytime the argument is made that P won 20 games early with Mac's players, the counter-argument can be made that prior to P, Mac won 8 and 7 games respectively with Mac's players.

I'm far from being the leader of the P Fan club (That would be OrangePA), but I feel it is important to put the guy's career in the proper perspective because so few take the time to.

He had a solid run at SU, especially by the historic standards of the school. Most fans play up the decline at the end, but the two coaches who are more revered, Ben and Mac, had problems of their own that we now choose to ignore or never remember in the first place. As new fans come aboard, fewer every year recall the Sack Mac Pack. Had the internet and sports talk radio been around in those days, he might never have survived. It is also unclear how much further Mac would have taken us had be not bailed for the Patriots. He likely would have done well, but who can say.

And the end of Ben's tenure was a train wreck. It coincided sadly with my undergrad years, which made for many long afternoons on the cold, wet Archbold steps. Most younger fans only know of the National Championshp team, Ernie, Floyd, Jim, Larry, etc. But it wasn't all peaches and cream

So I always try to keep things in perspective and look at the totality of a guy's career. In general there is both good and bad but in P's case there was a lot more of the former than the latter. I just try to keep that in mind.

 

[rrlbees]

Was it 2005 or 2006 when SU had zero players drafted for the first time in 30 YEARS? For me that shows the direction of coach P's recruiting.

That is an indicator of the beginning of the downfall and the level of recruiting.

 

[Chip]

We were loaded but P still did something with it. Not every coach who inherits talent is successful with it. Anytime the argument is made that P won 20 games early with Mac's players, the counter-argument can be made that prior to P, Mac won 8 and 7 games respectively with Mac's players.

I'm far from being the leader of the P Fan club (That would be OrangePA), but I feel it is important to put the guy's career in the proper perspective because so few take the time to.

He had a solid run at SU, especially by the historic standards of the school. Most fans play up the decline at the end, but the two coaches who are more revered, Ben and Mac, had problems of their own that we now choose to ignore or never remember in the first place. As new fans come aboard, fewer every year recall the Sack Mac Pack. Had the internet and sports talk radio been around in those days, he might never have survived. It is also unclear how much further Mac would have taken us had be not bailed for the Patriots. He likely would have done well, but who can say.

And the end of Ben's tenure was a train wreck. It coincided sadly with my undergrad years, which made for many long afternoons on the cold, wet Archbold steps. Most younger fans only know of the National Championshp team, Ernie, Floyd, Jim, Larry, etc. But it wasn't all peaches and cream

So I always try to keep things in perspective and look at the totality of a guy's career. In general there is both good and bad but in P's case there was a lot more of the former than the latter. I just try to keep that in mind.

I didn't mean to parallel that with my former desires to have Pasqualoni replaced as head coach. I have always said that I thought he did a tremendous job in 1991 and 1992, because even though I think he inherited a fairly loaded roster, you can't just go 10-2 automatically, especially as a new Head Coach. And I give him full credit for getting guys like McNabb (especially), and Konrad to come to SU to gain back that momentum that was slipping quickly after the 1994 season, watching the BCs and WVUs pass us by. It wasn't until 1999 that I realized an even more dangerous down cycle than 93/94 was kicking off, and was going to be much harder to recover from.