The latest all encompassing recruiting thread

[Sudano]

I agree. If we were in the AAC our MAC our current level of recruiting would be great compared to the other teams in our conference. We would win 8 to 9 games every year and be ranked and go to bowl games every single year blah blah blah. Its kinda like taking the worst MLB team and putting them in triple A. They would be a top 3 team every year if not the perennial champ.

But we are in the ACC and Power5 aka Major Leagues not Triple A. Every single year under HCDB we have been 9 or worse in ACC recruiting based on the dreaded rating services. I dont need or expect a bunch of 4 or 5 star recruits. But I do expect our recruiting classes to be made up of more recruits with 5 or more P5 offers than those with 1 or less. The ratio of the two shouldn't even be close. That would be a start for us to

It would seem regardless of how many stars, camp visits or great highlights a kid has, a really good barometer would be how many other P5 offers a kid has. So as a bare minimum I would expect a top half ACC team to recruit more players with multiple other P5 offers than players with only 1 P5 offer. In our case the ratio of committed players with 5+ P5 offers vs those with 2 or less is not good. Again not 100% metric. But if you just think about it. We are bound to perform better if we have players that 10% of the top teams in college want instead of players that just Syracuse wants.

Great Post. Its about overall stats for entire classes not just individual players. Of course a player or two under the radar players will be very good but that doesn't make a huge dent in overall wins.

 

[General Joe]

Let's try this a different way -- explain to me how these sites scientifically and objectively rank the 3,000 or so prospects nationwide each year?

Edit: and for the record, each of those teams was better than us. OK, we played a tougher schedule, we also lost to just about everyone on it.

For Arguments sake lets just agree that "we lost to just about everyone on it (our schedule)". I feel the reason is our recruiting the prior three years under HCDB. What do you think is the reason?

BTW our schedule wasn't tough
UMD 3-9was a mess and won 3 games only vs the 3worst teams on its schedule put 69 on us
BC 6-7 humiliated us and they were a mess. Ask Adazio if you dont believe me. A backup rb went for 172 BUT after Dillon went for 242. 496yds rushing vs us. The most humiliating football game I have ever attended
NCST 4-8 and 1 win in ACC. 1 guess who that team was
FLST 6-7 was a mess with cupcake schedule including Alabama ST UL Monroe only win vs a P5 team above .500 was Lousiville
LOUISVILLE scored 49 points in 3 quarters then ran out the clock literally with 370yds rushing

The Players we put on the field didnt measure up. The coaching wasn't good either. But thats a different argument for a different forum

 

[orangefog]

For Arguments sake lets just agree that "we lost to just about everyone on it (our schedule)". I feel the reason is our recruiting the prior three years under HCDB. What do you think is the reason?

BTW our schedule wasn't tough
UMD 3-9was a mess and won 3 games only vs the 3worst teams on its schedule put 69 on us
BC 6-7 humiliated us and they were a mess. Ask Adazio if you dont believe me. A backup rb went for 172 BUT after Dillon went for 242. 496yds rushing vs us. The most humiliating football game I have ever attended
NCST 4-8 and 1 win in ACC. 1 guess who that team was
FLST 6-7 was a mess with cupcake schedule including Alabama ST UL Monroe only win vs a P5 team above .500 was Lousiville
LOUISVILLE scored 49 points in 3 quarters then ran out the clock literally with 370yds rushing

The Players we put on the field didnt measure up. The coaching wasn't good either. But thats a different argument for a different forum

You know, since we're shitting on the program, I don't even like the shade of orange. I mean, what the hell, can't we get a decent shade of freaking orange?

 

[FloridaFan]

You know, since we're shitting on the program, I don't even like the shade of orange. I mean, what the hell, can't we get a decent shade of freaking orange?

I want Illinois orange

 

[billsin01]

For Arguments sake lets just agree that "we lost to just about everyone on it (our schedule)". I feel the reason is our recruiting the prior three years under HCDB. What do you think is the reason?

BTW our schedule wasn't tough
UMD 3-9was a mess and won 3 games only vs the 3worst teams on its schedule put 69 on us
BC 6-7 humiliated us and they were a mess. Ask Adazio if you dont believe me. A backup rb went for 172 BUT after Dillon went for 242. 496yds rushing vs us. The most humiliating football game I have ever attended
NCST 4-8 and 1 win in ACC. 1 guess who that team was
FLST 6-7 was a mess with cupcake schedule including Alabama ST UL Monroe only win vs a P5 team above .500 was Lousiville
LOUISVILLE scored 49 points in 3 quarters then ran out the clock literally with 370yds rushing

The Players we put on the field didnt measure up. The coaching wasn't good either. But thats a different argument for a different forum

I agree. Absolutely dreadful season. Not sure it could be argued otherwise. And in terms of talent, it needs to improve. And the coaching was not particularly great either. Agree there as well.

Having said that, however, two questions remain:

1) How are we supposed to evaluate the recruits we get? We are not going to magically start landing 4/5 star kids all over and we could fire this whole staff and start over ... of course that would mean it was the staffs fault but does that make sense considering it's been more than 20 years since we recruited at a high level? I'd argue no, it's just more of the same.

2) Is it something where we need to get rid of this staff? I don't really think so at this point given that they have actually had a taste of success and given that we have churned through a bunch of coaches with similar results.

 

[NJCuse97]

Finally you mentioned the weather. Can we agree that Syracuse DOESN'T play in bad weather but instead plays in one of the most recognizable indoor stadiums in all of college Football. The weather is bad in Boston, WV, Pitt, Mich, State of Washington, Illinois, Minnesota etc etc who all play football outside?

You keep mentioning the weather we play football in. You completely ignore that football games are 3 hours a week and only 6 at home, so 18 hours. The other approximately 6,600 hours are spent in the rest of Syracuse, and for about 5,000 of those, it is winter. Compare that with other regions, especially for 18-20 year olds looking for co-eds in shorts, and not Canada Goose jackets and I can see how weather can be a negative. That is why the draft history is so important. We have been lacking that the last... 15 years?

 

[General Joe]

You keep mentioning the weather we play football in. You completely ignore that football games are 3 hours a week and only 6 at home, so 18 hours. The other approximately 6,600 hours are spent in the rest of Syracuse, and for about 5,000 of those, it is winter. Compare that with other regions, especially for 18-20 year olds looking for co-eds in shorts, and not Canada Goose jackets and I can see how weather can be a negative. That is why the draft history is so important. We have been lacking that the last... 15 years?
[/QUOTE]
That is specifically why I didnt list Miami, SD or LA, Tampa or Houston etc. I listed the other "cold weather" schools and regions. Again they are recruiting these kids why cant we???? The weather is a irrelevant excuse. If you feel the cold weather is a detriment, wouldn't playing in a dome for as you say 6 games gives us a advantage over the other cold weather P5 teams that have to play in the cold?

 

[NJCuse97]

That is specifically why I didnt list Miami, SD or LA, Tampa or Houston etc. I listed the other "cold weather" schools and regions. Again they are recruiting these kids why cant we???? The weather is a irrelevant excuse. If you feel the cold weather is a detriment, wouldn't playing in a dome for as you say 6 games gives us a advantage over the other cold weather P5 teams that have to play in the cold?

And that is why I mentioned draft success in the last 15 years. Those other schools have overcome their potential weather issues (and for the record, the city of Syracuse is not Pittsburgh or Boston) by getting kids drafted.

 

[General Joe]

I agree. Absolutely dreadful season. Not sure it could be argued otherwise. And in terms of talent, it needs to improve. And the coaching was not particularly great either. Agree there as well.

Having said that, however, two questions remain:

1) How are we supposed to evaluate the recruits we get? We are not going to magically start landing 4/5 star kids all over and we could fire this whole staff and start over ... of course that would mean it was the staffs fault but does that make sense considering it's been more than 20 years since we recruited at a high level? I'd argue no, it's just more of the same.

2) Is it something where we need to get rid of this staff? I don't really think so at this point given that they have actually had a taste of success and given that we have churned through a bunch of coaches with similar results.

So here is the thing. I love Dino Babers as a man. He is a great great guy and brings a charisma and dare I say swag to SU that we haven't had in a head coach in a while if ever.
I love HCDB for Syracuse football. Love the locker room speeches and his football mind, the hurry up offense. Most importantly his leadership and the culture he is trying to bring to my school. The one concern I have is clock management specifically at the end of halves and the game. That can be fixed. The one thing I cannot accept is the recruiting. HCDB was a MAC coach and the level of recruits we are getting are good enough to challenge for the MAC or AAC championship every year. Its his comfort level, I get it. But now he is in the ACC playing teams with ACC caliber recruits. So the scheme we employed was cute and caught some teams by surprise the 1st couple of years. The HCSS recruits lead by Dungey led us to a magical season 2 years ago in what was frankly the most rewarding college sports season personally for me in 19 years. But now we have HCDB recruits 100% So no excuses. Lets look at last year and see how HCDB recruits performed in the trenches.

Offensive line-
We had one HCSS holdover at G. The rest were Dino's guys. The short of it 50 sacks given up. Not just the worst in ACC or P5,but amongst the worst in all of NCAA division one
Excuse watch****** We had injuries to the HCSS G Adams and had to play a bunch of true Freshman we had nobody else ready.
My response- THAT IS EXACTLY MY FREAKING POINT!!!! We didn't have ANYBODY else from HCDB prior classes who after years in the system could step in and compete at the ACC level. So we turned to Freshman. That's why I theorized you can predict how good Syracuse will be based on the recruits from the prior 2 cycles. If you want to know how we will perform next year look at our recruits from 18 and 19.

Now lets look at the Defense
Excuse watch*******We lost 1 HCSS DT to injury and other teams
What happened we lined up our MAC level recruits against the ACC O-lines and they blew us away. Again running the ball straight ahead tends to show in a undisputable way the talent difference in the trenches. Again if two guys line up in front of each other and engage. 80% of the time the more talented, bigger, stronger, better ACC type will maul the MAC, AAC, Sun Belt type player. Lets look at a couple of our games to illustrate this difference

Week 2 UMD 63-20 loss Maryland 354 yards rushing 7.9yds a clip season high As a comparison Maryland had only 317 yds rushing vs Howard Think about that for a second as you say "our recruiting isn't that bad. Here is the interesting point Maryland key recruits who killed us this game
17 4 star rb Anthony McFarland 99 overall recruit 75yds 2 tds 29 offers from P5 teams including Syracuse
17 4 star OG MarcusMinor 220 overall recruit 25 offers from P5 schools
17 4 star OT Jordan McNair 287 overall recruit 19 offers from P5 schools
17 3 star rb Javon Leake 468 overall recruit 7 rushes 107yds 2 tds
17 3star rb Tayon Fleet Davis 855 overall recruit 61yds 1 td 9 offers from P5 schools
17 3 star OC Johnny Jordan 863 overall recruit 9 offers from P5 schools
18 4 star OT Jaelyn Duncan 145 overall recruit 13 P5 offers
Excuse watch*** They won because they get 4 star recruits
My response**** DUH!!!! Better recruits gives you an advantage but it is not the end all. We need better recruits
Excuse watch*** Maryland is a prettier campus, in a better region without snow blah blah blah blah
My response*** lets look at another game vs a conference peer in our region with snow who also routinely recruits better than us in the trenches

BC 58-27 loss. Everybody knows they lined up we lined up and they ran it down our throat 65times for 496 yds. They stopped counting yards rushing vs our MAC level recruits and started measuring by football fields rushed for... almost 5. Again this was the worst most humiliating football game I have ever attended. Boston College Trench recruiting
17 3 star RB AJ Dillon 407 overall 35 rushes 242 yds 3 td 13 P5 offers
17 3 star OG Ben Petrula 723 8 P5 offers
18 4 star OG Finn Dirstine 362 overall 4 P5 offers major interest from ND Mich Ala
18 3 star OG Thomas Shelmire 953
Excuse watch**** This proves that you don't have to have high recruits
my response**** Exactly, but to win in the ACC you have to have ACC quality O-line recruiting This is what I want to see Syracuse do more of in the trenches. And it doesn't have to be 4 star players necessarily, but they do have to be players that other P5 teams are recruiting. Again higher probability that they will be better players. One set of eyes can lie about a P5 player. Less likely that 7+ sets of eyes are lying so on and so on. Our interior line and O-line recruiting was AAC or MAC level so far under HCDB. Here are the highest rated O-linemen in 17- unranked 3 star Dakota Davis or unranked 3 star Patrick Davis (you pick one smh). 18 4 star Quadir White- but we have to put a asterisk by his name as he has never seen the field. But alas we have a ACC recruit in the trenches-
2018 3 star OG Carlos Vettorello 915 ranked 12 P5 offers. Here is the good news. The profile on Vettorello is what we should be recruiting more of. Its the ACC player recruit profile that is needed to build depth early in case a upperclass player goes down like we have seen each of the last few years, and that should be a good ACC starting type player his junior and senior seasons. Perhaps Bergeron was a diamond in a rough and will be solid. But what else do we have on the O-line for 2021 that we can rely on. Again in my theory recruiting 2 years prior is indicative of how you will perform 2 years later.
So this bunch gave up 50 sacks last year, and we lose our best wr and rb. Recruited behind these olinemen including current verbals for 2021
18 DE turned OT maybe Cooper Dawson
19 OT Anthony Red 1817 ranked player 0 P5 offers besides Syracuse
20 OT Garth Barclay 955 ranked player 1 P5 offer besides Syracuse
20 OT Mark Petry 268 ranked Juco player 0 P5 offers besides Syracuse
we do have a transfer in Bleich who will be eligible in 2021 maybe sooner if the NCAA does us a solid but I wouldn't hold my breathe on that although it would be huge based on what we have. But again looking to 2021 we are looking at Vetto, Bleich Bergeron and 3 or 4 other guys to round out our rotation. And we cant even confidently point to those other players on our existing roster unless you think its these guys with zero or 1 P5 offers above. This is HCDB fatal flaw, recruiting and developing quality depth (more on that in a different thread). We had zero quality depth in the trenches (O-line and interior D-line) last year on either line. One injury to each line revealed this flaw. On top of that we lost our best O-lineman and both stud DE's to graduation. We DO have a ton of bodies at DE but all but Jonathan are unproven, unless Black is playing DE. We also have new LB that are even more unproven, and if your starters are unproven how can you possibly have quality depth. So we have to improve it. Until we do I see 4 or 5 win seasons unless we get some 4 or 5 star type recruit who can step in immediately and star as a freshman.

Billsin01 the above was a long winded idea of what I see wrong and how to improve and even a examples of how we can get better based on teams that really embarrassed us. It is not the magic bullet, just a thought based on the irrefutable evidence that you can see in game film on these two games. Here is the short answer

1) How are we supposed to evaluate the recruits we get? We are not going to magically start landing 4/5 star kids all over and we could fire this whole staff and start over ... of course that would mean it was the staffs fault but does that make sense considering it's been more than 20 years since we recruited at a high level? I'd argue no, it's just more of the same************
Recruit with a emphasis on the O-line and DT (this may change with the new 3-3-5). If all you have is good trenches its a start and you can play smash mouth football and be stout against the run. Good start for any team. Look at what MD and BC did to us

2) Is it something where we need to get rid of this staff? I don't really think so at this point given that they have actually had a taste of success and given that we have churned through a bunch of coaches with similar results.*******
Man I really like HCDB. I was hoping more that we got a top notch recruiter. Perhaps this new D-cord will work wonders. I can say this we can love HCDB but another 4 or 5 win season and he is on the hot seat. 2 more this year and next and he is gone. So I truly want him to pick it up. Let me know your thoughts. Lets go Orange

 

[orangefog]

So here is the thing. I love Dino Babers as a man. He is a great great guy and brings a charisma and dare I say swag to SU that we haven't had in a head coach in a while if ever.
I love HCDB for Syracuse football. Love the locker room speeches and his football mind, the hurry up offense. Most importantly his leadership and the culture he is trying to bring to my school. The one concern I have is clock management specifically at the end of halves and the game. That can be fixed. The one thing I cannot accept is the recruiting. HCDB was a MAC coach and the level of recruits we are getting are good enough to challenge for the MAC or AAC championship every year. Its his comfort level, I get it. But now he is in the ACC playing teams with ACC caliber recruits. So the scheme we employed was cute and caught some teams by surprise the 1st couple of years. The HCSS recruits lead by Dungey led us to a magical season 2 years ago in what was frankly the most rewarding college sports season personally for me in 19 years. But now we have HCDB recruits 100% So no excuses. Lets look at last year and see how HCDB recruits performed in the trenches.

Offensive line-
We had one HCSS holdover at G. The rest were Dino's guys. The short of it 50 sacks given up. Not just the worst in ACC or P5,but amongst the worst in all of NCAA division one
Excuse watch****** We had injuries to the HCSS G Adams and had to play a bunch of true Freshman we had nobody else ready.
My response- THAT IS EXACTLY MY FREAKING POINT!!!! We didn't have ANYBODY else from HCDB prior classes who after years in the system could step in and compete at the ACC level. So we turned to Freshman. That's why I theorized you can predict how good Syracuse will be based on the recruits from the prior 2 cycles. If you want to know how we will perform next year look at our recruits from 18 and 19.

Now lets look at the Defense
Excuse watch*******We lost 1 HCSS DT to injury and other teams
What happened we lined up our MAC level recruits against the ACC O-lines and they blew us away. Again running the ball straight ahead tends to show in a undisputable way the talent difference in the trenches. Again if two guys line up in front of each other and engage. 80% of the time the more talented, bigger, stronger, better ACC type will maul the MAC, AAC, Sun Belt type player. Lets look at a couple of our games to illustrate this difference

Week 2 UMD 63-20 loss Maryland 354 yards rushing 7.9yds a clip season high As a comparison Maryland had only 317 yds rushing vs Howard Think about that for a second as you say "our recruiting isn't that bad. Here is the interesting point Maryland key recruits who killed us this game
17 4 star rb Anthony McFarland 99 overall recruit 75yds 2 tds 29 offers from P5 teams including Syracuse
17 4 star OG MarcusMinor 220 overall recruit 25 offers from P5 schools
17 4 star OT Jordan McNair 287 overall recruit 19 offers from P5 schools
17 3 star rb Javon Leake 468 overall recruit 7 rushes 107yds 2 tds
17 3star rb Tayon Fleet Davis 855 overall recruit 61yds 1 td 9 offers from P5 schools
17 3 star OC Johnny Jordan 863 overall recruit 9 offers from P5 schools
18 4 star OT Jaelyn Duncan 145 overall recruit 13 P5 offers
Excuse watch*** They won because they get 4 star recruits
My response**** DUH!!!! Better recruits gives you an advantage but it is not the end all. We need better recruits
Excuse watch*** Maryland is a prettier campus, in a better region without snow blah blah blah blah
My response*** lets look at another game vs a conference peer in our region with snow who also routinely recruits better than us in the trenches

BC 58-27 loss. Everybody knows they lined up we lined up and they ran it down our throat 65times for 496 yds. They stopped counting yards rushing vs our MAC level recruits and started measuring by football fields rushed for... almost 5. Again this was the worst most humiliating football game I have ever attended. Boston College Trench recruiting
17 3 star RB AJ Dillon 407 overall 35 rushes 242 yds 3 td 13 P5 offers
17 3 star OG Ben Petrula 723 8 P5 offers
18 4 star OG Finn Dirstine 362 overall 4 P5 offers major interest from ND Mich Ala
18 3 star OG Thomas Shelmire 953
Excuse watch**** This proves that you don't have to have high recruits
my response**** Exactly, but to win in the ACC you have to have ACC quality O-line recruiting This is what I want to see Syracuse do more of in the trenches. And it doesn't have to be 4 star players necessarily, but they do have to be players that other P5 teams are recruiting. Again higher probability that they will be better players. One set of eyes can lie about a P5 player. Less likely that 7+ sets of eyes are lying so on and so on. Our interior line and O-line recruiting was AAC or MAC level so far under HCDB. Here are the highest rated O-linemen in 17- unranked 3 star Dakota Davis or unranked 3 star Patrick Davis (you pick one smh). 18 4 star Quadir White- but we have to put a asterisk by his name as he has never seen the field. But alas we have a ACC recruit in the trenches-
2018 3 star OG Carlos Vettorello 915 ranked 12 P5 offers. Here is the good news. The profile on Vettorello is what we should be recruiting more of. Its the ACC player recruit profile that is needed to build depth early in case a upperclass player goes down like we have seen each of the last few years, and that should be a good ACC starting type player his junior and senior seasons. Perhaps Bergeron was a diamond in a rough and will be solid. But what else do we have on the O-line for 2021 that we can rely on. Again in my theory recruiting 2 years prior is indicative of how you will perform 2 years later.
So this bunch gave up 50 sacks last year, and we lose our best wr and rb. Recruited behind these olinemen including current verbals for 2021
18 DE turned OT maybe Cooper Dawson
19 OT Anthony Red 1817 ranked player 0 P5 offers besides Syracuse
20 OT Garth Barclay 955 ranked player 1 P5 offer besides Syracuse
20 OT Mark Petry 268 ranked Juco player 0 P5 offers besides Syracuse
we do have a transfer in Bleich who will be eligible in 2021 maybe sooner if the NCAA does us a solid but I wouldn't hold my breathe on that although it would be huge based on what we have. But again looking to 2021 we are looking at Vetto, Bleich Bergeron and 3 or 4 other guys to round out our rotation. And we cant even confidently point to those other players on our existing roster unless you think its these guys with zero or 1 P5 offers above. This is HCDB fatal flaw, recruiting and developing quality depth (more on that in a different thread). We had zero quality depth in the trenches (O-line and interior D-line) last year on either line. One injury to each line revealed this flaw. On top of that we lost our best O-lineman and both stud DE's to graduation. We DO have a ton of bodies at DE but all but Jonathan are unproven, unless Black is playing DE. We also have new LB that are even more unproven, and if your starters are unproven how can you possibly have quality depth. So we have to improve it. Until we do I see 4 or 5 win seasons unless we get some 4 or 5 star type recruit who can step in immediately and star as a freshman.

Billsin01 the above was a long winded idea of what I see wrong and how to improve and even a examples of how we can get better based on teams that really embarrassed us. It is not the magic bullet, just a thought based on the irrefutable evidence that you can see in game film on these two games. Here is the short answer

1) How are we supposed to evaluate the recruits we get? We are not going to magically start landing 4/5 star kids all over and we could fire this whole staff and start over ... of course that would mean it was the staffs fault but does that make sense considering it's been more than 20 years since we recruited at a high level? I'd argue no, it's just more of the same************
Recruit with a emphasis on the O-line and DT (this may change with the new 3-3-5). If all you have is good trenches its a start and you can play smash mouth football and be stout against the run. Good start for any team. Look at what MD and BC did to us

2) Is it something where we need to get rid of this staff? I don't really think so at this point given that they have actually had a taste of success and given that we have churned through a bunch of coaches with similar results.*******
Man I really like HCDB. I was hoping more that we got a top notch recruiter. Perhaps this new D-cord will work wonders. I can say this we can love HCDB but another 4 or 5 win season and he is on the hot seat. 2 more this year and next and he is gone. So I truly want him to pick it up. Let me know your thoughts. Lets go Orange

I only got as far as "I love Dino Babers". Me too.

 

[kcsu]

So here is the thing. I love Dino Babers as a man. He is a great great guy and brings a charisma and dare I say swag to SU that we haven't had in a head coach in a while if ever.
I love HCDB for Syracuse football. Love the locker room speeches and his football mind, the hurry up offense. Most importantly his leadership and the culture he is trying to bring to my school. The one concern I have is clock management specifically at the end of halves and the game. That can be fixed. The one thing I cannot accept is the recruiting. HCDB was a MAC coach and the level of recruits we are getting are good enough to challenge for the MAC or AAC championship every year. Its his comfort level, I get it. But now he is in the ACC playing teams with ACC caliber recruits. So the scheme we employed was cute and caught some teams by surprise the 1st couple of years. The HCSS recruits lead by Dungey led us to a magical season 2 years ago in what was frankly the most rewarding college sports season personally for me in 19 years. But now we have HCDB recruits 100% So no excuses. Lets look at last year and see how HCDB recruits performed in the trenches.

Offensive line-
We had one HCSS holdover at G. The rest were Dino's guys. The short of it 50 sacks given up. Not just the worst in ACC or P5,but amongst the worst in all of NCAA division one
Excuse watch****** We had injuries to the HCSS G Adams and had to play a bunch of true Freshman we had nobody else ready.
My response- THAT IS EXACTLY MY FREAKING POINT!!!! We didn't have ANYBODY else from HCDB prior classes who after years in the system could step in and compete at the ACC level. So we turned to Freshman. That's why I theorized you can predict how good Syracuse will be based on the recruits from the prior 2 cycles. If you want to know how we will perform next year look at our recruits from 18 and 19.

Now lets look at the Defense
Excuse watch*******We lost 1 HCSS DT to injury and other teams
What happened we lined up our MAC level recruits against the ACC O-lines and they blew us away. Again running the ball straight ahead tends to show in a undisputable way the talent difference in the trenches. Again if two guys line up in front of each other and engage. 80% of the time the more talented, bigger, stronger, better ACC type will maul the MAC, AAC, Sun Belt type player. Lets look at a couple of our games to illustrate this difference

Week 2 UMD 63-20 loss Maryland 354 yards rushing 7.9yds a clip season high As a comparison Maryland had only 317 yds rushing vs Howard Think about that for a second as you say "our recruiting isn't that bad. Here is the interesting point Maryland key recruits who killed us this game
17 4 star rb Anthony McFarland 99 overall recruit 75yds 2 tds 29 offers from P5 teams including Syracuse
17 4 star OG MarcusMinor 220 overall recruit 25 offers from P5 schools
17 4 star OT Jordan McNair 287 overall recruit 19 offers from P5 schools
17 3 star rb Javon Leake 468 overall recruit 7 rushes 107yds 2 tds
17 3star rb Tayon Fleet Davis 855 overall recruit 61yds 1 td 9 offers from P5 schools
17 3 star OC Johnny Jordan 863 overall recruit 9 offers from P5 schools
18 4 star OT Jaelyn Duncan 145 overall recruit 13 P5 offers
Excuse watch*** They won because they get 4 star recruits
My response**** DUH!!!! Better recruits gives you an advantage but it is not the end all. We need better recruits
Excuse watch*** Maryland is a prettier campus, in a better region without snow blah blah blah blah
My response*** lets look at another game vs a conference peer in our region with snow who also routinely recruits better than us in the trenches

BC 58-27 loss. Everybody knows they lined up we lined up and they ran it down our throat 65times for 496 yds. They stopped counting yards rushing vs our MAC level recruits and started measuring by football fields rushed for... almost 5. Again this was the worst most humiliating football game I have ever attended. Boston College Trench recruiting
17 3 star RB AJ Dillon 407 overall 35 rushes 242 yds 3 td 13 P5 offers
17 3 star OG Ben Petrula 723 8 P5 offers
18 4 star OG Finn Dirstine 362 overall 4 P5 offers major interest from ND Mich Ala
18 3 star OG Thomas Shelmire 953
Excuse watch**** This proves that you don't have to have high recruits
my response**** Exactly, but to win in the ACC you have to have ACC quality O-line recruiting This is what I want to see Syracuse do more of in the trenches. And it doesn't have to be 4 star players necessarily, but they do have to be players that other P5 teams are recruiting. Again higher probability that they will be better players. One set of eyes can lie about a P5 player. Less likely that 7+ sets of eyes are lying so on and so on. Our interior line and O-line recruiting was AAC or MAC level so far under HCDB. Here are the highest rated O-linemen in 17- unranked 3 star Dakota Davis or unranked 3 star Patrick Davis (you pick one smh). 18 4 star Quadir White- but we have to put a asterisk by his name as he has never seen the field. But alas we have a ACC recruit in the trenches-
2018 3 star OG Carlos Vettorello 915 ranked 12 P5 offers. Here is the good news. The profile on Vettorello is what we should be recruiting more of. Its the ACC player recruit profile that is needed to build depth early in case a upperclass player goes down like we have seen each of the last few years, and that should be a good ACC starting type player his junior and senior seasons. Perhaps Bergeron was a diamond in a rough and will be solid. But what else do we have on the O-line for 2021 that we can rely on. Again in my theory recruiting 2 years prior is indicative of how you will perform 2 years later.
So this bunch gave up 50 sacks last year, and we lose our best wr and rb. Recruited behind these olinemen including current verbals for 2021
18 DE turned OT maybe Cooper Dawson
19 OT Anthony Red 1817 ranked player 0 P5 offers besides Syracuse
20 OT Garth Barclay 955 ranked player 1 P5 offer besides Syracuse
20 OT Mark Petry 268 ranked Juco player 0 P5 offers besides Syracuse
we do have a transfer in Bleich who will be eligible in 2021 maybe sooner if the NCAA does us a solid but I wouldn't hold my breathe on that although it would be huge based on what we have. But again looking to 2021 we are looking at Vetto, Bleich Bergeron and 3 or 4 other guys to round out our rotation. And we cant even confidently point to those other players on our existing roster unless you think its these guys with zero or 1 P5 offers above. This is HCDB fatal flaw, recruiting and developing quality depth (more on that in a different thread). We had zero quality depth in the trenches (O-line and interior D-line) last year on either line. One injury to each line revealed this flaw. On top of that we lost our best O-lineman and both stud DE's to graduation. We DO have a ton of bodies at DE but all but Jonathan are unproven, unless Black is playing DE. We also have new LB that are even more unproven, and if your starters are unproven how can you possibly have quality depth. So we have to improve it. Until we do I see 4 or 5 win seasons unless we get some 4 or 5 star type recruit who can step in immediately and star as a freshman.

Billsin01 the above was a long winded idea of what I see wrong and how to improve and even a examples of how we can get better based on teams that really embarrassed us. It is not the magic bullet, just a thought based on the irrefutable evidence that you can see in game film on these two games. Here is the short answer

1) How are we supposed to evaluate the recruits we get? We are not going to magically start landing 4/5 star kids all over and we could fire this whole staff and start over ... of course that would mean it was the staffs fault but does that make sense considering it's been more than 20 years since we recruited at a high level? I'd argue no, it's just more of the same************
Recruit with a emphasis on the O-line and DT (this may change with the new 3-3-5). If all you have is good trenches its a start and you can play smash mouth football and be stout against the run. Good start for any team. Look at what MD and BC did to us

2) Is it something where we need to get rid of this staff? I don't really think so at this point given that they have actually had a taste of success and given that we have churned through a bunch of coaches with similar results.*******
Man I really like HCDB. I was hoping more that we got a top notch recruiter. Perhaps this new D-cord will work wonders. I can say this we can love HCDB but another 4 or 5 win season and he is on the hot seat. 2 more this year and next and he is gone. So I truly want him to pick it up. Let me know your thoughts. Lets go Orange

Great post. Truth is Dino needs to surround himself with better assistants so hopefully his changes will make a difference.
Dino has the chops to be a great coach for us but only if he continues to make tough calls and upgrade his staff.

 

[OrangeinBoston]

Great post. Truth is Dino needs to surround himself with better assistants so hopefully his changes will make a difference.
Dino has the chops to be a great coach for us but only if he continues to make tough calls and upgrade his staff.

Navy
2018 Old Staff - 3 Wins 8 Losses
2019 7 New assistants - 11 Wins 2 Losses

 

[gmoney44]

Well, this is considered a down stretch for SU and that’s par for course for Vandy. Not to mention the ACC’s been the superior conference during that stretch.

20 years of garbage play isn’t a “down stretch” it’s who we are. We are now a bad programs that has had a couple good seasons.

 

[hoopsupstate]

So here is the thing. I love Dino Babers as a man. He is a great great guy and brings a charisma and dare I say swag to SU that we haven't had in a head coach in a while if ever.
I love HCDB for Syracuse football. Love the locker room speeches and his football mind, the hurry up offense. Most importantly his leadership and the culture he is trying to bring to my school. The one concern I have is clock management specifically at the end of halves and the game. That can be fixed. The one thing I cannot accept is the recruiting. HCDB was a MAC coach and the level of recruits we are getting are good enough to challenge for the MAC or AAC championship every year. Its his comfort level, I get it. But now he is in the ACC playing teams with ACC caliber recruits. So the scheme we employed was cute and caught some teams by surprise the 1st couple of years. The HCSS recruits lead by Dungey led us to a magical season 2 years ago in what was frankly the most rewarding college sports season personally for me in 19 years. But now we have HCDB recruits 100% So no excuses. Lets look at last year and see how HCDB recruits performed in the trenches.

Offensive line-
We had one HCSS holdover at G. The rest were Dino's guys. The short of it 50 sacks given up. Not just the worst in ACC or P5,but amongst the worst in all of NCAA division one
Excuse watch****** We had injuries to the HCSS G Adams and had to play a bunch of true Freshman we had nobody else ready.
My response- THAT IS EXACTLY MY FREAKING POINT!!!! We didn't have ANYBODY else from HCDB prior classes who after years in the system could step in and compete at the ACC level. So we turned to Freshman. That's why I theorized you can predict how good Syracuse will be based on the recruits from the prior 2 cycles. If you want to know how we will perform next year look at our recruits from 18 and 19.

Now lets look at the Defense
Excuse watch*******We lost 1 HCSS DT to injury and other teams
What happened we lined up our MAC level recruits against the ACC O-lines and they blew us away. Again running the ball straight ahead tends to show in a undisputable way the talent difference in the trenches. Again if two guys line up in front of each other and engage. 80% of the time the more talented, bigger, stronger, better ACC type will maul the MAC, AAC, Sun Belt type player. Lets look at a couple of our games to illustrate this difference

Week 2 UMD 63-20 loss Maryland 354 yards rushing 7.9yds a clip season high As a comparison Maryland had only 317 yds rushing vs Howard Think about that for a second as you say "our recruiting isn't that bad. Here is the interesting point Maryland key recruits who killed us this game
17 4 star rb Anthony McFarland 99 overall recruit 75yds 2 tds 29 offers from P5 teams including Syracuse
17 4 star OG MarcusMinor 220 overall recruit 25 offers from P5 schools
17 4 star OT Jordan McNair 287 overall recruit 19 offers from P5 schools
17 3 star rb Javon Leake 468 overall recruit 7 rushes 107yds 2 tds
17 3star rb Tayon Fleet Davis 855 overall recruit 61yds 1 td 9 offers from P5 schools
17 3 star OC Johnny Jordan 863 overall recruit 9 offers from P5 schools
18 4 star OT Jaelyn Duncan 145 overall recruit 13 P5 offers
Excuse watch*** They won because they get 4 star recruits
My response**** DUH!!!! Better recruits gives you an advantage but it is not the end all. We need better recruits
Excuse watch*** Maryland is a prettier campus, in a better region without snow blah blah blah blah
My response*** lets look at another game vs a conference peer in our region with snow who also routinely recruits better than us in the trenches

BC 58-27 loss. Everybody knows they lined up we lined up and they ran it down our throat 65times for 496 yds. They stopped counting yards rushing vs our MAC level recruits and started measuring by football fields rushed for... almost 5. Again this was the worst most humiliating football game I have ever attended. Boston College Trench recruiting
17 3 star RB AJ Dillon 407 overall 35 rushes 242 yds 3 td 13 P5 offers
17 3 star OG Ben Petrula 723 8 P5 offers
18 4 star OG Finn Dirstine 362 overall 4 P5 offers major interest from ND Mich Ala
18 3 star OG Thomas Shelmire 953
Excuse watch**** This proves that you don't have to have high recruits
my response**** Exactly, but to win in the ACC you have to have ACC quality O-line recruiting This is what I want to see Syracuse do more of in the trenches. And it doesn't have to be 4 star players necessarily, but they do have to be players that other P5 teams are recruiting. Again higher probability that they will be better players. One set of eyes can lie about a P5 player. Less likely that 7+ sets of eyes are lying so on and so on. Our interior line and O-line recruiting was AAC or MAC level so far under HCDB. Here are the highest rated O-linemen in 17- unranked 3 star Dakota Davis or unranked 3 star Patrick Davis (you pick one smh). 18 4 star Quadir White- but we have to put a asterisk by his name as he has never seen the field. But alas we have a ACC recruit in the trenches-
2018 3 star OG Carlos Vettorello 915 ranked 12 P5 offers. Here is the good news. The profile on Vettorello is what we should be recruiting more of. Its the ACC player recruit profile that is needed to build depth early in case a upperclass player goes down like we have seen each of the last few years, and that should be a good ACC starting type player his junior and senior seasons. Perhaps Bergeron was a diamond in a rough and will be solid. But what else do we have on the O-line for 2021 that we can rely on. Again in my theory recruiting 2 years prior is indicative of how you will perform 2 years later.
So this bunch gave up 50 sacks last year, and we lose our best wr and rb. Recruited behind these olinemen including current verbals for 2021
18 DE turned OT maybe Cooper Dawson
19 OT Anthony Red 1817 ranked player 0 P5 offers besides Syracuse
20 OT Garth Barclay 955 ranked player 1 P5 offer besides Syracuse
20 OT Mark Petry 268 ranked Juco player 0 P5 offers besides Syracuse
we do have a transfer in Bleich who will be eligible in 2021 maybe sooner if the NCAA does us a solid but I wouldn't hold my breathe on that although it would be huge based on what we have. But again looking to 2021 we are looking at Vetto, Bleich Bergeron and 3 or 4 other guys to round out our rotation. And we cant even confidently point to those other players on our existing roster unless you think its these guys with zero or 1 P5 offers above. This is HCDB fatal flaw, recruiting and developing quality depth (more on that in a different thread). We had zero quality depth in the trenches (O-line and interior D-line) last year on either line. One injury to each line revealed this flaw. On top of that we lost our best O-lineman and both stud DE's to graduation. We DO have a ton of bodies at DE but all but Jonathan are unproven, unless Black is playing DE. We also have new LB that are even more unproven, and if your starters are unproven how can you possibly have quality depth. So we have to improve it. Until we do I see 4 or 5 win seasons unless we get some 4 or 5 star type recruit who can step in immediately and star as a freshman.

Billsin01 the above was a long winded idea of what I see wrong and how to improve and even a examples of how we can get better based on teams that really embarrassed us. It is not the magic bullet, just a thought based on the irrefutable evidence that you can see in game film on these two games. Here is the short answer

1) How are we supposed to evaluate the recruits we get? We are not going to magically start landing 4/5 star kids all over and we could fire this whole staff and start over ... of course that would mean it was the staffs fault but does that make sense considering it's been more than 20 years since we recruited at a high level? I'd argue no, it's just more of the same************
Recruit with a emphasis on the O-line and DT (this may change with the new 3-3-5). If all you have is good trenches its a start and you can play smash mouth football and be stout against the run. Good start for any team. Look at what MD and BC did to us

2) Is it something where we need to get rid of this staff? I don't really think so at this point given that they have actually had a taste of success and given that we have churned through a bunch of coaches with similar results.*******
Man I really like HCDB. I was hoping more that we got a top notch recruiter. Perhaps this new D-cord will work wonders. I can say this we can love HCDB but another 4 or 5 win season and he is on the hot seat. 2 more this year and next and he is gone. So I truly want him to pick it up. Let me know your thoughts. Lets go Orange

Good post. A couple of things. I believe we had 2-3 Oline recruits who were medically disqualified, plus an injury. That effected our oline depth. You can’t always control that. Stars aren't the end all. White was a four star and he can’t get on his the field. Hopefully, after two years in the strength and conditioning program he can become a contributor this year. I hope our new coaches will improve our recruiting. I don’t think our old Defensive Coordinator helped us a whole in lot either. I think our problem has been both recruiting and coaching. Let’s see if our new coordinators can make a difference this year.

 

[Trueblue25]

20 years of garbage play isn’t a “down stretch” it’s who we are. We are now a bad programs that has had a couple good seasons.

We’re a good program having a bad stretch.

List of NCAA football teams by wins - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[gmoney44]

We’re a good program having a bad stretch.

List of NCAA football teams by wins - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Syracuse feasting off the fact that we have played more games than most of the teams on that list. Don’t go by total wins and go by win percentage we don’t look nearly as good. I’m a fan boy too but the fact is we are not a good football program. We are a mediocre P5 football program at best.

 

[General Joe]

Good post. A couple of things. I believe we had 2-3 Oline recruits who were medically disqualified, plus an injury. That effected our oline depth. You can’t always control that. Stars aren't the end all. White was a four star and he can’t get on his the field. Hopefully, after two years in the strength and conditioning program he can become a contributor this year. I hope our new coaches will improve our recruiting. I don’t think our old Defensive Coordinator helped us a whole in lot either. I think our problem has been both recruiting and coaching. Let’s see if our new coordinators can make a difference this year.

I concur. Do you get my point though? Over the last 4 years I've cringed everytime I've seen a commit with 1 P5 offer US, and a bunch of MAC or AAC offers. Wouldn't it be great to have a guy like Vetto heck even Bergeron developing for 2 or 3 years with a redshirt.

Here is the ironic thing. What I have complained about on here for years regarding the poor "trench recruiting", I have to praise in our Safety recruiting. We probably have top 3 depth in ACC at safety, and top 10% in all of P5. Cisco will be playing on Sundays. Hell Cam Jonas hasnt even seen the field and those who watched him in high school thought he was the second coming of Donavan Darius. Kid is a beast. "Mr Nunn" (Cornelius) is super talented as well. Robert Hanna is a play maker just like Cisco. Some high school coaches in S and C Florida speak higher of Hanna than Cisco as high school senior year.

So we CAN recruit at a high ACC level. Again we do it at safety. But regarding the trenches anybody being honest looking at 1 our play on the field 2 the recruits coming in on O-line cant be surprised at last year. The writing was on the wall. And it is being written now for 2021 and 2022 with our class now

 

[orangepassion]

It has been surprising to me that Dino has recruited better on the Defensive side of the ball and Shafer recruited better on the offensive side of the ball.

 

[General Joe]

I would also add I like seeing linebackers with a lot of MAC offers. I think that conference always has an eye for linebacker talent. Sometimes it’s just a guy is a hair slow or whatever but that conference tends to have quality lb play.

Curious do you think the MAC teams get better LB than ACC teams?

 

[CuseLegacy]

Curious do you think the MAC teams get better LB than ACC teams?

 

[wfschrec]

Our downfall will be our average. I am still stunned how the lower half of our class is ranked and expect an uptick to carry our average a little higher.

 

[721Comstock]

WE WANT BAMA!!!!




‘s level ‘croots.

 

[TheCusian]

the unusual thing is quantity this early and a very slight uptick in quality

 

[CuseLegacy]

the unusual thing is quantity this early and a very slight uptick in quality

It's not just SU with the early quantity. This time last year UVA only had 5 commits. This year they already have 13.

 

[Orijinal]

Yes. This is a highly unusual year for everyone. I wish this was going to be the "new normal."

We should not get our pants in a tingle when we don't get our first 2022 commit until next June.