SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- I guess it’s not OK for Syracuse fans to believe that their program is finally ready to pull themselves out of 13 years of mediocrity or worse, that we were finally going to regain the national respect we once had. Such thoughts, of course, had to be crushed. I feel like a fish that has been thrown back into the muddy waters.
- We played like a team that had left it’s intensity in Syracuse- two weeks ago. We’ve had five bye weeks in the Shafer era. We’ve managed to win the next game twice: Wake Forest tin the Dome two years ago and Central Michigan last year. The others were big losses: Clemson 14-49, Pittsburgh 7-30 and no USF 24-45.
- They played like a team trying to save their coach’s job because that’s what they were. They also played like a team sick of losing, which is what I thought we were.
- What they definitely were was a faster team than us. This game was all about the corners: we couldn’t get to them and they got to them play after play. But they also were quicker off the snap and they covered our receivers downfield like a blanket.
- But football is about something else, too: effort. And it’s often seen in the posture of the players. A big part of the game is getting lower than your opponent so you can get under him and push him backwards. We were playing upright the whole game. Our guys looked like a crowd being pushed aside so the celebrity can pass.
- Our running game was a squid without a break. It was starving, (2.2 yards per rush), and really didn’t get going until we fell way behind and had to pass. Then it became a typical game where the quarterback winds up with pretty good numbers because he had to pass on almost every play. Dungey looked very rusty in the early going and threw too many balls into coverage. He also tried to escape pressure by going backwards too many times. I don’t think it was the concussion. I just think it was three weeks off. He’s also still a true freshman- it’s easy for us to forget that sometimes.
- The exciting combination of having both Brisley Estime and Erv Phillips never found the end zone, although two other exciting young players, Steve Ismael and Jordan Fredericks did.
- The huge disappointment was our defense. I saw USF against Memphis and they looked like a team we could stuff: they were almost completely a running te4am and couldn’t pass deep accurately. They seemed just made for our defense. But watching them go through the SU defense was like watching a hot knife go through butter. One of Matt Park’s most frequent comments in describing a South Florida paly was “well blocked”. He didn’t say that about our plays.
- The call on Kielan Whitner might have been a bad one but you can’t let a call like that even happen. He had no business going anywhere near the guy once he was out of bounds. We had some real momentum at that point but fizzled like a wounded balloon after that.
- Whenever a player was down, it was one of our guys. I don’t think we lost anybody for an extended time, (most of them returned for the game and Ivan Foy was walking around under his own power). But it always seems when we are playing poorly and the other team is more aggressive and confident that our guys wind up on the ground. It certainly seemed to symbolize the game. “Did anybody get the number of that truck?”
- We played like a team that had left it’s intensity in Syracuse- two weeks ago. We’ve had five bye weeks in the Shafer era. We’ve managed to win the next game twice: Wake Forest tin the Dome two years ago and Central Michigan last year. The others were big losses: Clemson 14-49, Pittsburgh 7-30 and no USF 24-45.
- They played like a team trying to save their coach’s job because that’s what they were. They also played like a team sick of losing, which is what I thought we were.
- What they definitely were was a faster team than us. This game was all about the corners: we couldn’t get to them and they got to them play after play. But they also were quicker off the snap and they covered our receivers downfield like a blanket.
- But football is about something else, too: effort. And it’s often seen in the posture of the players. A big part of the game is getting lower than your opponent so you can get under him and push him backwards. We were playing upright the whole game. Our guys looked like a crowd being pushed aside so the celebrity can pass.
- Our running game was a squid without a break. It was starving, (2.2 yards per rush), and really didn’t get going until we fell way behind and had to pass. Then it became a typical game where the quarterback winds up with pretty good numbers because he had to pass on almost every play. Dungey looked very rusty in the early going and threw too many balls into coverage. He also tried to escape pressure by going backwards too many times. I don’t think it was the concussion. I just think it was three weeks off. He’s also still a true freshman- it’s easy for us to forget that sometimes.
- The exciting combination of having both Brisley Estime and Erv Phillips never found the end zone, although two other exciting young players, Steve Ismael and Jordan Fredericks did.
- The huge disappointment was our defense. I saw USF against Memphis and they looked like a team we could stuff: they were almost completely a running te4am and couldn’t pass deep accurately. They seemed just made for our defense. But watching them go through the SU defense was like watching a hot knife go through butter. One of Matt Park’s most frequent comments in describing a South Florida paly was “well blocked”. He didn’t say that about our plays.
- The call on Kielan Whitner might have been a bad one but you can’t let a call like that even happen. He had no business going anywhere near the guy once he was out of bounds. We had some real momentum at that point but fizzled like a wounded balloon after that.
- Whenever a player was down, it was one of our guys. I don’t think we lost anybody for an extended time, (most of them returned for the game and Ivan Foy was walking around under his own power). But it always seems when we are playing poorly and the other team is more aggressive and confident that our guys wind up on the ground. It certainly seemed to symbolize the game. “Did anybody get the number of that truck?”
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