SWC75
Bored Historian
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The coach’s show is on TK99, (FM 99.5) in the Syracuse area and can also be heard through Orange All-Access on the SU Athletic website. It’s 8PM Thursdays- or two days before each game, when they are not on Saturday. They have a link to their “Radio Mailbox” for submitting E-Mail questions on the SU Athletic website. You also can call in questions at 1-888-740-2873 or locally at 315-424-8599.
In past years it took sometimes weeks for a podcast to turn up on the SU athletics website, so I tried to do a virtual transcript of the show. This year I missed the first show and the pod cast was available the next day at this site:
http://www.suathletics.com/podcasts.aspx
This year I’ll start out by just summarizing the main points and referring people to the pod cast to listen to the whole thing. If the podcast starts appearing later- such as after the next game, I’ll go back to doing more of a transcript.
My Questions/Comments
“Coach, fans like to look at comparative scores. We all know that if you look for unusual results you can make it look like a small college team would beat LSU. But it’s hard not to take note of how LSU and Alabama do against common opponents to try to imagine how they will do against each other. Here are some scores that alarm Syracuse fans: Army 45 Tulane 6, Syracuse 37 Tulane 34, UTEP 44 Tulane 7. It makes us wonder how good a football team we have. What do you see when you look at those scores? Are we making too much of them?”
HCDM
Brian Higgins, sitting in for Matt Park, (who was at Big East Media Day), asked the coach how he spent the bye week. Coach said they made sure the players were on strong footing academically, did some recruiting and also did a “quality control” review of the team. “We are not where we need to be and decided we needed to do the little things consistently well in order to get to where we need to be. He also said they had a tendency to not come back to successful plays often enough.
I called in my question, which he twice said was an interesting question. I suggested perhaps coaches are just satisfied to have won and turn their full attention to the next game but he said it’s not like that. Coaches do notice comparative scores and if they indicate we are not where we need to be, they try to determine what’s necessary to “take it to the next level”. But they keep it in perspective. Coach noted that we beat Wake Forest and was pleasantly surprised when they dominated Florida State and the same when Toledo beat an undefeated Temple team so easily. Sometimes the style of play is an issue. A team might not be ready for a triple option team like Army, (I checked: UTEP is not a wishbone team). We would have taken it to the next level vs. Tulane if we’d taken advantage of that turnover up by 17 points and not given up those long passes. “But we have to challenge ourselves to learn from these games and take that next step.
You can’t just say we won. The point is to win but how have you done it? You balance the negatives and positives and ask ‘Who are we?’” But he said “I don’t like to learn from losing.”
Brian asked him how Coach rated the first half of the season. “I don’t know. Is 6-0 an “A”? Is 0-6 and “F”? I just know we aren’t where we wanted to be. What we have to do is to improve attention to detail. Playing young players isn’t an excuse. They have to perform.” Brian noted we have several guys coming back from injury and that their back-ups have gotten considerable experience playing in their place. Coach: “What you have now is called depth.” That enables us to alternate people and keep them fresh. He said Chandler Jones and Olando Fisher are “full go.”
They talked about players who stood out vs. Tulane and focused on Dorian Graham. “He’s a great model for players in the program who switched from offense to defense and struggled for a long time but he’s worked his way to where he’s winning vs. man-to-man coverage. He’s also an unbelievable gunner on those kicks.” Higgins noted that the Graham touchdowns were not on ‘speed’ routes’ but rather on very technical routes.
Coach said Micah Robinson was really impressing the staff with his play. Dyshawn Davis is showing a lot of athletic ability and is performing better now that’s he’s out of the Okie package and just playing the basic defense. They want to keep “feeding the offense” to Smith, Rene and Moore so they don’t overuse Antwon Bailey. “It’s like building a house- you have to create a foundation. We still need to run to set up the big plays downfield.”
Brian asked about playing on a Friday night, noting that every time he asked the players about it there was a smile on their faces. The whole nation will be watching this one. Doug recalled the first games he ever played in that were on TV, which was more unusual back then. They couldn’t get on TV when he was a freshman because they stunk, (1982: 2-9) but in his sophomore year they played Boston College with Doug Flutie in the Dome and a nationally ranked West Virginia team and won both games. It was a thrill not just winning those games but knowing that they were being televised. He’s also played on Monday Night Football. He said the NFL is a “small league” and that it’s something special to play when everyone in the league is watching. He told the players “I can’t even imagine how excited you must be to play in this game. This is why you came to Syracuse, why you did all that lifting and running.” He challenged the players to respond to the occasion. He also said he’s got a lot of positive response, especially from recruits from that ESPN show on Syracuse.
Brian asked him what the Schwartzwalder trophy meant to him. Doug said that Coach Schwartzwalder was not only a great coach but a “great man for the country”, noting his service as a paratrooper during the war. “The two schools couldn’t have a better person to represent both schools.”
Brian asked about Al Davis. Doug Marrone had been drafted by the Raiders and he spoke with “Mr. Davis” then. He saw him a few times during his years in the league as a player and coach and since he got the SU job, he’s met with Al Davis each spring. The conversations lasted for about two hours and Doug was impressed with Al’s “great love for Syracuse and his great pride in his alma mater.” He noted that each time Al’s SU letterman of Distinction Award was on his desk, always in the same spot. Doug asked the secretary if he just gets it out for when Doug visited and she said no. He said that every time he talked with Al Davis, “he always sounded like he was trying to get something out of me. I think he seemed like that to a lot of people.”
Coach credited Davis with being one of the first coaches who recognized the value of the vertical passing game, although he shares credit with Paul Brown and also Sid Luckman. Brian thought he meant Sid Gillman, but Doug meant Luckman, whose granddaughter was in school with Doug at SU in the 80’s. He said that he wished he’d known that relationship at the time because he’d loved to have spent time with Sid, talking football with him. (It sounds like he must have dated Sid’s granddaughter.)
Brian closed by asking what was necessary to beat West Virginia and how different were they from last year when Bill Stewart was the coach. “Well, they still run the spread and have quite a bit of speed. The biggest difference is Geno Smith. He’s more mature and confident. He might be the best quarterback in the country in terms of production. The best pass defense is a rush. When quarterbacks are able to get into a rhythm, they can hurt you. Las year we got in his face early. We need to keep Geno Smith off his rhythm. We need to keep everything in front of us and prevent the big play.“ He said at one point that we were going to “come out in the no huddle and the players were excited about it” but in the summary said that we have to “keep the ball and get TDs and not field goals- last year we got four field goals.” He also said we need to avoid giving up big returns, because the Mountaineers have some dangerous return men.
He said a big key was getting the crowd into the game and keeping them there. “The student section won the Wake Forest game for us. I’ve never lost a game because of the crowd but I’ve won some because of them.”
In past years it took sometimes weeks for a podcast to turn up on the SU athletics website, so I tried to do a virtual transcript of the show. This year I missed the first show and the pod cast was available the next day at this site:
http://www.suathletics.com/podcasts.aspx
This year I’ll start out by just summarizing the main points and referring people to the pod cast to listen to the whole thing. If the podcast starts appearing later- such as after the next game, I’ll go back to doing more of a transcript.
My Questions/Comments
“Coach, fans like to look at comparative scores. We all know that if you look for unusual results you can make it look like a small college team would beat LSU. But it’s hard not to take note of how LSU and Alabama do against common opponents to try to imagine how they will do against each other. Here are some scores that alarm Syracuse fans: Army 45 Tulane 6, Syracuse 37 Tulane 34, UTEP 44 Tulane 7. It makes us wonder how good a football team we have. What do you see when you look at those scores? Are we making too much of them?”
HCDM
Brian Higgins, sitting in for Matt Park, (who was at Big East Media Day), asked the coach how he spent the bye week. Coach said they made sure the players were on strong footing academically, did some recruiting and also did a “quality control” review of the team. “We are not where we need to be and decided we needed to do the little things consistently well in order to get to where we need to be. He also said they had a tendency to not come back to successful plays often enough.
I called in my question, which he twice said was an interesting question. I suggested perhaps coaches are just satisfied to have won and turn their full attention to the next game but he said it’s not like that. Coaches do notice comparative scores and if they indicate we are not where we need to be, they try to determine what’s necessary to “take it to the next level”. But they keep it in perspective. Coach noted that we beat Wake Forest and was pleasantly surprised when they dominated Florida State and the same when Toledo beat an undefeated Temple team so easily. Sometimes the style of play is an issue. A team might not be ready for a triple option team like Army, (I checked: UTEP is not a wishbone team). We would have taken it to the next level vs. Tulane if we’d taken advantage of that turnover up by 17 points and not given up those long passes. “But we have to challenge ourselves to learn from these games and take that next step.
You can’t just say we won. The point is to win but how have you done it? You balance the negatives and positives and ask ‘Who are we?’” But he said “I don’t like to learn from losing.”
Brian asked him how Coach rated the first half of the season. “I don’t know. Is 6-0 an “A”? Is 0-6 and “F”? I just know we aren’t where we wanted to be. What we have to do is to improve attention to detail. Playing young players isn’t an excuse. They have to perform.” Brian noted we have several guys coming back from injury and that their back-ups have gotten considerable experience playing in their place. Coach: “What you have now is called depth.” That enables us to alternate people and keep them fresh. He said Chandler Jones and Olando Fisher are “full go.”
They talked about players who stood out vs. Tulane and focused on Dorian Graham. “He’s a great model for players in the program who switched from offense to defense and struggled for a long time but he’s worked his way to where he’s winning vs. man-to-man coverage. He’s also an unbelievable gunner on those kicks.” Higgins noted that the Graham touchdowns were not on ‘speed’ routes’ but rather on very technical routes.
Coach said Micah Robinson was really impressing the staff with his play. Dyshawn Davis is showing a lot of athletic ability and is performing better now that’s he’s out of the Okie package and just playing the basic defense. They want to keep “feeding the offense” to Smith, Rene and Moore so they don’t overuse Antwon Bailey. “It’s like building a house- you have to create a foundation. We still need to run to set up the big plays downfield.”
Brian asked about playing on a Friday night, noting that every time he asked the players about it there was a smile on their faces. The whole nation will be watching this one. Doug recalled the first games he ever played in that were on TV, which was more unusual back then. They couldn’t get on TV when he was a freshman because they stunk, (1982: 2-9) but in his sophomore year they played Boston College with Doug Flutie in the Dome and a nationally ranked West Virginia team and won both games. It was a thrill not just winning those games but knowing that they were being televised. He’s also played on Monday Night Football. He said the NFL is a “small league” and that it’s something special to play when everyone in the league is watching. He told the players “I can’t even imagine how excited you must be to play in this game. This is why you came to Syracuse, why you did all that lifting and running.” He challenged the players to respond to the occasion. He also said he’s got a lot of positive response, especially from recruits from that ESPN show on Syracuse.
Brian asked him what the Schwartzwalder trophy meant to him. Doug said that Coach Schwartzwalder was not only a great coach but a “great man for the country”, noting his service as a paratrooper during the war. “The two schools couldn’t have a better person to represent both schools.”
Brian asked about Al Davis. Doug Marrone had been drafted by the Raiders and he spoke with “Mr. Davis” then. He saw him a few times during his years in the league as a player and coach and since he got the SU job, he’s met with Al Davis each spring. The conversations lasted for about two hours and Doug was impressed with Al’s “great love for Syracuse and his great pride in his alma mater.” He noted that each time Al’s SU letterman of Distinction Award was on his desk, always in the same spot. Doug asked the secretary if he just gets it out for when Doug visited and she said no. He said that every time he talked with Al Davis, “he always sounded like he was trying to get something out of me. I think he seemed like that to a lot of people.”
Coach credited Davis with being one of the first coaches who recognized the value of the vertical passing game, although he shares credit with Paul Brown and also Sid Luckman. Brian thought he meant Sid Gillman, but Doug meant Luckman, whose granddaughter was in school with Doug at SU in the 80’s. He said that he wished he’d known that relationship at the time because he’d loved to have spent time with Sid, talking football with him. (It sounds like he must have dated Sid’s granddaughter.)
Brian closed by asking what was necessary to beat West Virginia and how different were they from last year when Bill Stewart was the coach. “Well, they still run the spread and have quite a bit of speed. The biggest difference is Geno Smith. He’s more mature and confident. He might be the best quarterback in the country in terms of production. The best pass defense is a rush. When quarterbacks are able to get into a rhythm, they can hurt you. Las year we got in his face early. We need to keep Geno Smith off his rhythm. We need to keep everything in front of us and prevent the big play.“ He said at one point that we were going to “come out in the no huddle and the players were excited about it” but in the summary said that we have to “keep the ball and get TDs and not field goals- last year we got four field goals.” He also said we need to avoid giving up big returns, because the Mountaineers have some dangerous return men.
He said a big key was getting the crowd into the game and keeping them there. “The student section won the Wake Forest game for us. I’ve never lost a game because of the crowd but I’ve won some because of them.”
