The Dino Babers Show - before Rutgers | Syracusefan.com

The Dino Babers Show - before Rutgers

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Coach Babers’s show this year show will be Thursday nights at 7PM except when the game is not on a Saturday. This year it will be 90 minutes, with the first hour being with Dino and the last half hour being with a ‘special guest’, who in the past just got a couple minutes at the end of the show.

The show originates from Heritage Hill Brewery in Jamesville:

You can also listen to the show live each week on the Syracuse IMG Sports Network and Cuse.com. Wednesday's show will be on 99.1 FM and 97.7 FM, as well. The show will regularly air on 99.5FM (Syracuse) 99.1 FM (Utica) and 1200 AM.”
You can also get it on: Listen to Free Radio Online | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn

There hasn’t been any change in the phone numbers, which last year were 315-424-8599 (local) or 1-888-746-2873. You can call to ask questions or submit them via Twitter at: https://twitter.com/CuseIMG
#AskDino or through Cuse.com, (the SU Athletic website):

You can (or could last year, anyway), listen to a podcast of the show, probably the next day, at: Search results for babers | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn


My Question(s) or Comments

First segment question:

“Coach, when I looked at the rosters for the Ohio game, I noticed that their starting defensive backs were all under 6 feet tall. We’re capable of putting wide-outs on the field who are 6-6 and 6-5, a 6-2 slot and a 6-4 tight end. I thought that those guys were going to play catch with Tommy and we had a chance to blow them out early. Why didn’t we make greater use of that physical advantage?”

Second segment question:

“You’ve just won your 5th opener in 6 years. But in three of the previous four occasions, the next game was a loss. Two were blow-outs and the other was Middle Tennessee State. The one win was against Wagner. Coach, it’s often said that a football team’s greatest improvement is between the first and second game. Is that a canard?”



The Show
(I sometimes re-arrange the comments so that statements made on the same subject are reported together, even if they came at different points of the show.)

Coach admired the view from heritage Hill. Matt said that that was the first 29-9 game in SU history. He called it “as clean an opener as I can recall”. (It must have been: Ohio committed no infractions, per the refs.) Dino said that he was “very pleased” with his teams first game performance, that they were “very poised”. He looks forward to a big improvement against Rutgers because “teams usually improve the most between weeks one and two”. That caused me to reverse the order of my questions. (below)

They talked about a ‘huge’ play made by Duce Chestnut to force their QB out of bounds and hold them to a field goal, (I think it’s the last play of the first quarter, when Roarke ran for 5 yards to the SU 9). Duce was named ACC DB of the week. Matt wondered how a player can be that good that early. Dino: “It may be luck. It may not be. Future games will tell. They are primarily an option team. But it’s a rare thing to get the game ball in your first game as a freshman.” He also said that we’ll have to make adjustments as the year progressed due to covid – and so will everyone else. Dino also praised to other freshmen: Max Mang, who did some great blocking filling in for Chris Elmore and James Williams, who pinned Ohio back with his punts.”In their first game, freshmen typically don’t even know their name.” He particularly admired the play of Caleb Okechukwu and Marlowe Wax on the safety. “Caleb made a great move.” I recall that Mr. Tuggle took the handoff, looked up and saw Okechukwu and Wax staring at him from inside the goal line with no blockers anywhere near them. Coach was impressed with Sean Tucker but he thinks everyone should have been impressed with him last year, “gaining 626 yards behind that line showed me a lot. Our line is much better this year.”

Rutgers scored 61 points on temple. “it was close for a second. It got away from Temple in the second quarter. Rutgers got a kick-off return and a safety. We got one, too. Rutgers got to play their entire roster. We had so many flukes last year, we wanted to avoid them in our game. We’re going to get a battle on the offensive and defensive lines. Their linebackers are good- so are ours. We have a shut-down defensive back. So do they. They may be faster than us. Our running backs have speed but their receivers are really fast. They run the wildcat, trying to get one on one with a defender. The hippos and the elephants will decide the issue.”

After the first break I called in my second question, about teams improving the most before the second game. Dino doesn’t consider it to be a canard. “There’s huge development. It’s human nature for players to believe that they are doing better than they actually are. We get to show them film and show them ‘look at this other guy…you did that wrong three times in a row – that’s why you’re still splitting time.’ They are more receptive to you. What you say moves the needle more. He also said that you have to look at the opponents we played in those second games. One was against Lamar Jackson, who jumped over our defenders. Middle Tennessee State had Scot Shafer, who knew our personnel’s strengths and weaknesses. I’ve had some games like that and the winning percent age of ex-coaches in those situations is amazing. I was at Texas A&M and moved to Pittsburgh and we beat A&M. The best team doesn’t always win. The team that plays the best wins.”

Matt added that football is different than other sports where you get to play a team multiple times. He cited the NBA where the champion must win a series of seven game series. “There aren’t too many upsets”. Dino remembered when the Dolphins beat the Bears in 1985 to prevent them from going undefeated. “The Bears might have beaten them 9 out of 10 times but on that night, the Dolphins were better. They only had to beat them once. The Bears won the Super Bowl.” (I guess that explains the Maryland game.)

They agreed that it was fitting that teams from New York and New Jersey will play on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Dino’s talked with the team about 9/11. They were babies at the time – if they’d been born yet. He told them that, “despite what’s happened in this country for the last year and a half, we’re all Americans and this is one country. I’ve been to other countries and they are nice to visit but I’m always glad I live here. I was at Texas A&M when it happened. They have an active ROTC program there and I and some of the other coaches had a military background. We were watching film, trying to put together a gameplan when Head Coach R.C. Slocum came in and told us to stop and come watch television. That never happens. We saw the burning tower, then saw the second jet and we knew we were under attack. I talked to our players about the third jet that hit the pentagon and about the people on the fourth jet, who knew what was going on and where they might be headed and did what they had to do to stop it. AJ (Calabro, whose father died on 9/11), will be a captain Saturday.”

Matt suggested that playing Rutgers is a good recruiting move – if we can beat them. Dino: in the old days, if you won a game like this, it gives you bragging rights. Kids liked to go to their local schools or where Mom and Dad went or a great player from their high school went there. Now recruiting is a national thing and young people are so informed through social media that they know where their skills would fit in, where they could play early, what the NIL prospects are. With the transfer portal, you can’t stack players anymore.” Regarding NIL: “I tell the kids that a lot of people live in New York State and if you are a big name here, you can make a lot of money.”

It's the “second coming” of Greg Schiano. Dino wasn’t here for the first but is impressed with the job Schiano is doing in a difficult spot. “He got three wins on the road last year and has done some good recruiting on paper and brought in a lot of transfers. We’ll have to see how their kids grow up. They have an opportunity to be very good.” Matt: “It’s a hard place to get it done but he’s a fit there and he’s had more success than anyone else.”

Our game is at 2PM because of TV: it’s on the ACC network and their first game is an 11AM game between Virginia and Illinois. We are the second game. Matt asked coach his opinion of the results of the first weekend for the conference. “Guys are in, guys are out. it’s hard to tell.” He talked about when his Eastern Illinois FCS team beat San Diego State, “who might have won their conference that year” in the opening game. (They didn’t but they went 8-5 and won a bowl game. Dino whipped ‘em 40-19).

Injury non-report: Dakota Davis, McKinley Williams, Kingsley Jonathan and Garrett Williams “were at practice. We’ll see how they do. Some guys were moving faster than others. It’s amazing how some players can be slow on a Tuesday and fast on Saturday.”

They had a trivia question: What school did Syracuse play in it’s first game after 9/11?
(Bonus: Who had they been scheduled to play on 9/15?)

Offensive coordinator Sterlin Gilbert came on and said that he was excited to see kids compete and execute his offense. It was a chess game and both quarterbacks got to play a bit. (Well, one of them played a bit.) They tested Sean Tucker to see if he could carry the ball 25 times and he passed that test. “He’s a strong, durable kid. His YAC was impressive. We’ve got four backs who can all be explosive. That opening 47 yard run gave us a lot of momentum. Coach Schmidt’s front 5 set the physicality of the game. We played a complete game with offense-defense-special teams.”

Matt asked about the passing attack, noting that Taj Harris’ longest completion was for just 8 yards. Gilbert: “We had some near misses but we tell the kids that it doesn’t help to be close.” Matt was impressed with Gilbert’s “authentic cowboy boots”.

Gomez took over and noticed that one of their people, Brian, was wearing a T-shirt from the first Pinstripe Bowl from 11 years ago. Dino said “If he can fit into it, he’s a better man than I”.

Gomez stuck to the subject of the game more than usual. He asked about “tempo and pace”. Dino said he was happy with it. “They are a Nebraska-based team, very deliberate. They run it a great deal. It’s a chess match. We were patient and let the game come to us. Sean Tucker and James Williams were big factors. It was a complete team victories.” Tommy DeVito said that “We left a lot of meat on the bone”. Coach agreed: “We have extremely high standards. Our players were prepared for the throwing and the run game but they didn’t make the adjustments during the game.”

Gomez asked when and how many times Dino looks at film of the game. He said he usually does it on the plane back from the game but this time he was just too tired. He watched it when he got home, got to bed at 6AM. He watched it again after he got up. He normally watches it 2-3 times. Gomez wanted to know if they show the players any ‘funny’ plays, just to loosen the player sup. Dino was taken aback by that. “Funny? I don’t know if things are funny. You’ve to have a lot of wins and be pretty high up in the standings for anything to be funny. My dad was a big Clint Eastwood fan and I like him to so we tend to break the film down into “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”.

I called in my first question, which was now my second question. Dino: “All the players you mentioned, (the tall guys) are young players we’ll be seeing more of some time this year. (One is Taj Harris. One is Luke Benson and they are all on the two deep.) Just because a player is 6-4 or 6-5 doesn’t mean that a 5-10 guy can’t dunk over them. I suppose Damien, (6-6 Damien Alford) would be hard to dunk over. He can jump really high and has both height and reach.”

Gomez asked about Duce’s first play that Dino yelled at him about. “If I had known he was going to play that way, I might not have shouted. He was tentative eon that first play. You can’t be tentative You’re going to get beat. It’s what you do after you get beat.” Mikel Jones “is a fantastic player and teammate but I swear he’s got one foot in the player’s room and one foot in the coach’s room. He wants to know everything that’s going on.”

Dino agreed that the targeting call in the Wisconsin- Penn State game was “by definition but there was no intent. Their helmets touched. One guy was a at a certain height and the other guy was a at a certain height.” (It must have been the same height) “Ejection is not fair..”

Gomez ended it by asking what the coach’s favorite James Bond villains were. “The guy with the teeth and the guy with the hat”.

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Last edited:
Great write up. Thanks!!!

They had a trivia question: What school did Syracuse play in it’s first game after 9/11?
(Bonus: Who had they been scheduled to play on 9/15?)

Auburn I believe.
 
Great write up. Thanks!!!

They had a trivia question: What school did Syracuse play in it’s first game after 9/11?
(Bonus: Who had they been scheduled to play on 9/15?)

Auburn I believe.

Auburn was our 1st game back.

We were supposed to play ECU, which was rescheduled to Sept 29. That's the game the referee had the heart attack. That's also the game RJ Anderson was supposed to start, but he was benched at the last minute for Nunes. It wasn't announced until the 2nd quarter that Anderson had the flu.
 
Auburn was our 1st game back.

We were supposed to play ECU, which was rescheduled to Sept 29. That's the game the referee had the heart attack. That's also the game RJ Anderson was supposed to start, but he was benched at the last minute for Nunes. It wasn't announced until the 2nd quarter that Anderson had the flu.

I remembered the first one well.

The second one, not so much.
 
I remember the Auburn game well. We played really well, in a very somber environment. I remember Pataki was there, I think Mike Golic was one of the announcers. I remember that because I found out about the WTC attacks from Mike and Mike first
 

Coach Babers’s show this year show will be Thursday nights at 7PM except when the game is not on a Saturday. This year it will be 90 minutes, with the first hour being with Dino and the last half hour being with a ‘special guest’, who in the past just got a couple minutes at the end of the show.

The show originates from Heritage Hill Brewery in Jamesville:

You can also listen to the show live each week on the Syracuse IMG Sports Network and Cuse.com. Wednesday's show will be on 99.1 FM and 97.7 FM, as well. The show will regularly air on 99.5FM (Syracuse) 99.1 FM (Utica) and 1200 AM.”
You can also get it on: Listen to Free Radio Online | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn

There hasn’t been any change in the phone numbers, which last year were 315-424-8599 (local) or 1-888-746-2873. You can call to ask questions or submit them via Twitter at: https://twitter.com/CuseIMG
#AskDino or through Cuse.com, (the SU Athletic website):

You can (or could last year, anyway), listen to a podcast of the show, probably the next day, at: Search results for babers | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn


My Question(s) or Comments

First segment question:

“Coach, when I looked at the rosters for the Ohio game, I noticed that their starting defensive backs were all under 6 feet tall. We’re capable of putting wide-outs on the field who are 6-6 and 6-5, a 6-2 slot and a 6-4 tight end. I thought that those guys were going to play catch with Tommy and we had a chance to blow them out early. Why didn’t we make greater use of that physical advantage?”

Second segment question:

“You’ve just won your 5th opener in 6 years. But in three of the previous four occasions, the next game was a loss. Two were blow-outs and the other was Middle Tennessee State. The one win was against Wagner. Coach, it’s often said that a football team’s greatest improvement is between the first and second game. Is that a canard?”



The Show
(I sometimes re-arrange the comments so that statements made on the same subject are reported together, even if they came at different points of the show.)

Coach admired the view from heritage Hill. Matt said that that was the first 29-9 game in SU history. He called it “as clean an opener as I can recall”. (It must have been: Ohio committed no infractions, per the refs.) Dino said that he was “very pleased” with his teams first game performance, that they were “very poised”. He looks forward to a big improvement against Rutgers because “teams usually improve the most between weeks one and two”. That caused me to reverse the order of my questions. (below)

They talked about a ‘huge’ play made by Duce Chestnut to force their QB out of bounds and hold them to a field goal, (I think it’s the last play of the first quarter, when Roarke ran for 5 yards to the SU 9). Duce was named ACC DB of the week. Matt wondered how a player can be that good that early. Dino: “It may be luck. It may not be. Future games will tell. They are primarily an option team. But it’s a rare thing to get the game ball in your first game as a freshman.” He also said that we’ll have to make adjustments as the year progressed due to covid – and so will everyone else. Dino also praised to other freshmen: Max Mang, who did some great blocking filling in for Chris Elmore and James Williams, who pinned Ohio back with his punts.”In their first game, freshmen typically don’t even know their name.” He particularly admired the play of Caleb Okechukwu and Marlowe Wax on the safety. “Caleb made a great move.” I recall that Mr. Tuggle took the handoff, looked up and saw Okechukwu and Wax staring at him from inside the goal line with no blockers anywhere near them. Coach was impressed with Sean Tucker but he thinks everyone should have been impressed with him last year, “gaining 626 yards behind that line showed me a lot. Our line is much better this year.”

Rutgers scored 61 points on temple. “it was close for a second. It got away from Temple in the second quarter. Rutgers got a kick-off return and a safety. We got one, too. Rutgers got to play their entire roster. We had so many flukes last year, we wanted to avoid them in our game. We’re going to get a battle on the offensive and defensive lines. Their linebackers are good- so are ours. We have a shut-down defensive back. So do they. They may be faster than us. Our running backs have speed but their receivers are really fast. They run the wildcat, trying to get one on one with a defender. The hippos and the elephants will decide the issue.”

After the first break I called in my second question, about teams improving the most before the second game. Dino doesn’t consider it to be a canard. “There’s huge development. It’s human nature for players to believe that they are doing better than they actually are. We get to show them film and show them ‘look at this other guy…you did that wrong three times in a row – that’s why you’re still splitting time.’ They are more receptive to you. What you say moves the needle more. He also said that you have to look at the opponents we played in those second games. One was against Lamar Jackson, who jumped over our defenders. Middle Tennessee State had Scot Shafer, who knew our personnel’s strengths and weaknesses. I’ve had some games like that and the winning percent age of ex-coaches in those situations is amazing. I was at Texas A&M and moved to Pittsburgh and we beat A&M. The best team doesn’t always win. The team that plays the best wins.”

Matt added that football is different than other sports where you get to play a team multiple times. He cited the NBA where the champion must win a series of seven game series. “There aren’t too many upsets”. Dino remembered when the Dolphins beat the Bears in 1985 to prevent them from going undefeated. “The Bears might have beaten them 9 out of 10 times but on that night, the Dolphins were better. They only had to beat them once. The Bears won the Super Bowl.” I guess that explains the Maryland game.

They agreed that it was fitting that teams from New York and New Jersey will play on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Dino’s talked with the team about 9/11. They were babies at the time – if they’d been born yet. He told them that, “despite what’s happened in this country for the last year and a half, we’re all Americans and this is one country. I’ve been to other countries and they are nice to visit but I’m always glad I live here. I was at Texas A&M when it happened. They have an active ROTC program there and I and some of the other coaches had a military background. We were watching film, trying to put together a gameplan when Head Coach R.C. Slocum came in and told us to stop and come watch television. That never happens. We saw the burning tower, then saw the second jet and we knew we were under attack. I talked to our players about the third jet that hit the pentagon and about the people on the fourth jet, who knew what was going on and where they might be headed and did what they had to do to stop it. AJ (Calabro, whose father died on 9/11), will be a captain Saturday.”

Matt suggested that playing Rutgers is a good recruiting move – if we can beat them. Dino: in the old days, if you won a game like this, it gives you bragging rights. Kids liked to go to their local schools or where Mom and Dad went or a great player from their high school went there. Now recruiting is a national thing and young people are so informed through social media that they know where their skills would fit in, where they could play early, what the NIL prospects are. With the transfer portal, you can’t stack players anymore.” Regarding NIL: “I tell the kids that a lot of people live in New York State and if you are a big name here, you can make a lot of money.”

It's the “second coming” of Greg Schiano. Dino wasn’t here for the first but is impressed with the job Schiano is doing in a difficult spot. “He got three wins on the road last year and has done some good recruiting on paper and brought in a lot of transfers. We’ll have to see how their kids grow up. They have an opportunity to be very good.” Matt: “It’s a hard place to get it done but he’s a fit there and he’s had more success than anyone else.”

Our game is at 2PM because of TV: it’s on the ACC network and their first game is an 11AM game between Virginia and Illinois. We are the second game. Matt asked coach his opinion of the results of the first weekend for the conference. “Guys are in, guys are out. it’s hard to tell.” He talked about when his Eastern Illinois FCS team beat San Diego State, “who might have won their conference that year” in the opening game. (They didn’t but they went 8-5 and won a bowl game. Dino whipped ‘em 40-19).

Injury non-report: Dakota Davis, McKinley Williams, Kingsley Jonathan and Garrett Williams “were at practice. We’ll see how they do. Some guys were moving faster than others. It’s amazing how some players can be slow on a Tuesday and fast on Saturday.”

They had a trivia question: What school did Syracuse play in it’s first game after 9/11?
(Bonus: Who had they been scheduled to play on 9/15?)

Offensive coordinator Sterlin Gilbert came on and said that he was excited to see kids compete and execute his offense. It was a chess game and both quarterbacks got to play a bit. (Well, one of them played a bit.) They tested Sean Tucker to see if he could carry the ball 25 times and he passed that test. “He’s a strong, durable kid. His YAC was impressive. We’ve got four backs who can all be explosive. That opening 47 yard run gave us a lot of momentum. Coach Schmidt’s front 5 set the physicality of the game. We played a complete game with offense-defense-special teams.”

Matt asked about the passing attack, noting that Taj Harris’ longest completion was for just 8 yards. Gilbert: “We had some near misses but we tell the kids that it doesn’t help to be close.” Matt was impressed with Gilbert’s “authentic cowboy boots”.

Gomez took over and noticed that one of their people, Brian, was wearing a T-shirt from the first Pinstripe Bowl from 11 years ago. Dino said “If he can fit into it, he’s a better man than I”.

Gomez stuck to the subject of the game more than usual. He asked about “tempo and pace”. Dino said he was happy with it. “They are a Nebraska-based team, very deliberate. They run it a great deal. It’s a chess match. We were patient and let the game come to us. Sean Tucker and James Williams were big factors. It was a complete team victories.” Tommy DeVito said that “We left a lot of meat on the bone”. Coach agreed: “We have extremely high standards. Our players were prepared for the throwing and the run game but they didn’t make the adjustments during the game.”

Gomez asked when and how many times Dino looks at film of the game. He said he usually does it on the plane back from the game but this time he was just too tired. He watched it when he got home, got to bed at 6AM. He watched it again after he got up. He normally watches it 2-3 times. Gomez wanted to know if they show the players any ‘funny’ plays, just to loosen the player sup. Dino was taken aback by that. “Funny? I don’t know if things are funny. You’ve to have a lot of wins and be pretty high up in the standings for anything to be funny. My dad was a big Clint Eastwood fan and I like him to so we tend to break the film down into “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”.

I called in my first question, which was now my second question. Dino: “All the players you mentioned, (the tall guys) are young players we’ll be seeing more of some time this year. (One is Taj Harris. One is Luke Benson and they are all on the two deep.) Just because a player is 6-4 or 6-5 doesn’t mean that a 5-10 guy can’t dunk over them. I suppose Damien, (6-6 Damien Alford) would be hard to dunk over. He can jump really high and has both height and reach.”

Gomez asked about Duce’s first play that Dino yelled at him about. “If I had known he was going to play that way, I might not have shouted. He was tentative eon that first play. You can’t be tentative You’re going to get beat. It’s what you do after you get beat.” Mikel Jones “is a fantastic player and teammate but I swear he’s got one foot in the player’s room and one foot in the coach’s room. He wants to know everything that’s going on.”

Dino agreed that the targeting call in the Wisconsin- Penn State game was “by definition but there was no intent. Their helmets touched. One guy was a at a certain height and the other guy was a at a certain height.” (It must have been the same height) “Ejection is not fair..”

Gomez ended it by asking what the coach’s favorite James Bond villains were. “The guy with the teeth and the guy with the hat”.

View attachment 205887 View attachment 205888

His Maryland answer is terrible.
 
What did he say?
“There aren’t too many upsets”. Dino remembered when the Dolphins beat the Bears in 1985 to prevent them from going undefeated. “The Bears might have beaten them 9 out of 10 times but on that night, the Dolphins were better. They only had to beat them once. The Bears won the Super Bowl.” I guess that explains the Maryland game.
 
“There aren’t too many upsets”. Dino remembered when the Dolphins beat the Bears in 1985 to prevent them from going undefeated. “The Bears might have beaten them 9 out of 10 times but on that night, the Dolphins were better. They only had to beat them once. The Bears won the Super Bowl.” I guess that explains the Maryland game.


I added the last sentence. Note that it's outside of the quotation marks.

I'll add parentheses to make it more clear.
 
I added the last sentence. Note that it's outside of the quotation marks.

I'll add parentheses to make it more clear.

I thought that was pretty obvious that you were adding the Maryland quib. Great write up - as usual. I look forward to reading these every friday morning over coffee!
 

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