The Downside- Pittsburgh | Syracusefan.com

The Downside- Pittsburgh

SWC75

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- We lost and thus came up short of the goal of getting 6 wins and going to a bowl. We were 5-4 and needed one more win and never got it, just as the 2017 team was 4-3 and had beaten Clemson and never got another win and the 2011 lead was 5-2 and had just whipped West Virginia and never won another game.


- Pittsburgh has now defeated up 17 in our last 20 games with them, a very painful and monotonous stretch.

- Pat Narduzzi in his postgame interview, (per Brent Axe), said that Pitt didn’t use all of it’s offense in this game because they were saving stuff for Wake Forest in the ACC title game. Yes, it’s come to that.

- We came out very strong, going 74 yards in 14 very efficient plays to take a 7-0 lead. Take that Pitt! In the third quarter, Garrett Shrader took advantage of the packed-in Pitt defense to complete 5 passes in 6 attempts to take us another 79 yards for the second scored. That’s 154 yards. Our total offense was 242 yards, other than those two drives we gained just 88 yards. In other words, we were occasionally great rather than consistently good.

- The 8th best rushing offense in the country (231 yards/game) vs. the 8th best rushing defense in the country, (98 yards per game). And the winner by a knock-out is: the 8th best rushing defense in the country (we wound up with a net 25 yards rushing).

- Completions to tight ends: Pitt 11 for 93 yards a 1TD. Syracuse 1 for 5 yards 0TDs.

- We finally got a takeover! Duce Chestnut reeled in an overthrown deep pass in our own end zone. Then he decided to play hero ball and try to run it out, getting tackled on the 5. The offense responded to the big break with a 2 yard run by Shrader, followed by two incompletions and an illegal substitution penalty that put the ball on the 3, due to “half the distance to the goal”, (a phrase I’ve heard too often this year). A good punt return by Addison Jordan put the ball on the SU 25, setting up their clinching field goal. Yes, we finally got a takeover and it helped the other team more than it helped us.

- Things you never expected to see, continued: We tired to draw them offside on 4th and short. It failed like it always does, (It’ like the baseball play where you fake a throw to third and throw to first, which also never works). Then we got a delay of game penalty. We also got flagged for a personal foul on a touchback. All told, we were penalized 9 times for 66 yards.

- One more swing at the officiating: there were two plays on the sideline near the Syracuse bench that should have been flagged as late hits or unnecessary roughness. On one a receiver was swung around out of bounds. On another Shrader was hit in the orange strip outside the boundary. Also, the big sack that was negated by a facemask penalty, leading to Pitt’s TD to open the second half, which gave them control of the game, took place away from me, (the quarterback’s back was to me and thus I was screened from seeing it) but matt park and Adam Terry in the SU broadcaster’s booth weren’t sure it was actually a facemask. Terry demanded that the Dome screens how a replay and they never did, virtually an admission that it was a bad call.

- Mikel Jones in the post-game presser said that it is “50-50” that he’ll decide next week to declare for the NFL. We already lead the country in players in the transfer portal. Are we a sinking ship?

- Dino Babers now had 5 losing seasons in five years. How does he sell this program as something good prospects will want to be a part of? Are we at the definition of insanity?
 

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