SWC75
Bored Historian
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(Done between pitches of the baseball game.)
The show this year will be broadcast on Thursdays at 7PM from TGI Fridays on the third floor of Destiny USA, (just past the theater ticket booth and on the right after you walk down the hallway). I don’t know if they will take questions from the audience there but they say you can watch the show whereas when it was at a restaurant, their table tended to be in a secluded location. (Remember its Thursdays at TGI Fridays, not Fridays at TGI Thursdays). The football show is an hour in duration, (Coach Boeheim’s basketball show is usually 2 hours).
Note: because the first game is on a Friday Night, the first show will be on Wednesday, September 2nd. After that it will be on the Thursday before each game until the last game when the show will again be on a Wednesday, (11/25) due to Thanksgiving.
“Fans are invited to attend the show in person or participate via telephone (1-888-7-Go Cuse or 424-8599) or Twitter (@CuseIMG) using the hashtag #AskShafe. 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: http://tunein.com/radio/WGVA-1240-s29191/
That first phone number is 1-888-746-2873 numerically.
You can also send them in advance at this site:
http://cuse.com/sb_output.aspx?form=4
(I do both so they can be prepared to give me an informed, reasoned answer.)
My Question(s)
“Coach, now that AJ Long is not available due to concussions, it seems more important than ever to protect the health of the quarterbacks we have left. Many fans expressed concern that Eric Dungey and Zack Mahoney take a lot of big hits on the option. Is there any thought of eliminating the option for our offense from now or reducing the number of times we run it?”
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.)
Matt told the coach that “for the second straight game, you’ve got to get the team prepared to play on the road, only now it’s a conference game.” Coach: “ These are the games that really count. They are a talent team that got off to a difficult start. They’ve played some very good football teams. They’ve bene playing football a long time. 85 years, going on 450 wins. It will be 60 degrees and sunny. We are anxious to get back on the field.”(Actually Virginia’s been playing since 1888, the year before we started- that’s 127 years and they have 640 victories:
http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/active/v/virginia/yearly_totals.php )
Matt said that much of the campus was designed by Thomas Jefferson in the 1700’s. (Actually it was the 1800s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_University_of_Virginia
It’s a bad habit of mine- always correcting people). He did say that the field doesn’t date back quite that far, “an indented bowl, nestled in the woods.” (Actually 1931:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Stadium ).
It's sort of in the woods:
Matt said that Virginia “would like the first quarter against Pittsburgh back”, (they gave up 217 yards), “but were proud of the way they played after that”. Shafe said “They left a couple of plays on the field, just like we’ve done in games. They threw a couple of balls down the field that went a bit too far. They wanted a pass interference call on that last play. They’d had a 10 play drive and converted a 4th and 23.”
Liam in Pompey asked about the late hit call that seemed to take all the wind out of our sails. SS: “I don’t like to criticize the referees. If I do it, I do it on the sidelines. But that was an over-throw out of bounds. Both players were going after the ball and they were on ice skates. There was no intent to hit him. It looked worse than it was. But we got away with one against LSU when Riley Dixon threw a punch in celebration and almost hit the LSU guy. Whitner felt horrible.” Matt said that he’d seen more serious collisions at the salad bar at Wegman’s. But it’s hard not to throw the flag.”
I called in my question about not endangering the quarterbacks on the option. “Actually, very few quarterback injuries are on designed running plays. Most of them come when the quarterback is tangled up on a pass or they start to scramble and get blind-sided. We actually only run them on designed plays 8-10 times a game, although we want to stay out of double digits.” Regarding the number of quarterbacks we’ve lost the last two years: “I’ve never been around anything like these last two years. They come in droves and this has bene a hell of a drove.”
Previewing Virginia: “They don’t always use 4-5 wide-outs but they have a ton of ways to get people on the field and a ton of ways to get them touches. But Coach Bullough has a great game plan to crack the code.” (I hope so.)
About QB Matt Johns, Matt Park said that “About 2/3 of his passes are right on target. The rest are well off. That’s why he’s hitting 60%. He has 8 TDs,(actually 9) 7 interceptions and is second in the ACC in passing yardage.” SS: “Big arm. The thing that counter-balances all they do is his ability to throw the ball down the field.” Matt said that the Su secondary “nee3ds to be on alert”.
On Tyquan Mizell, probably their most talented player. He’s their leading rusher with 196 yards and their second leading pass receiver with 340 yards. “He has all the skill sets you are looking for. He is a deep threat who can catch it in traffic. He made a great catch at the back of the end zone.”
Michael Mooney, the Cav’s left tackle, is out for the game. Matt wondered if that meant we will be brining ‘heat’, then acknowledged that we always do that anyway. Coach: “it will depend upon the feel of the game after the first quarter. Coach Bullough will then make his adjustments. They’ve always had talented offensive linemen in Virginia and whoever starts for them will be good.” I am wondering about this tendency to say that we’ll see what happens in the first quarter and then make adjustments. We could use a great first quarter to begin with.
Syracuse’s injury list includes Kellen Moore who again will not make the trip and Rodney Williams is doubtful for the game. Then there’s AJ Long. “he had an injury when he fell out of bed and the symptoms didn’t go away for a dozen days. Then he got frustrated and punched a padded wall and broke his hand. Finally he got “thudded up ” by one of our players and it didn’t look like much. It’s one of those unfortunate realities. Now he’s got to attack the academics.”
Jordan Fredericks, per Matt, is “out-distancing his positon group”. Coach: “And he’s getting the bulk of his reps in practice, too. He has a lot of abilities. He can catch the ball, run it out of the wildcat. It’s a different mindset. He’s bigger than Erv is and has power to go with elusiveness and vision. George Morris and Devante are battling, too. There’s completion every week. We’ve got the same at H back where Dontae Strickland is doing good things and we have Erv Phillips and Ben Lewis, too.
A caller praised the players for playing wi9th a lot of heart and said the coaching staff must be doing great things. Coach pointed out that “67% of our offensive players are with four years to go and 50% of the defensive players have 3-4 years to go”. I looked at our two deep for this week and counted 4 offensive freshmen and 6 sophomores among 24 players listed, (three at the running back and H back spots). Defensively we had 8 freshmen and 6 sophomores among 23 players. That’s 42% and 61% by my reckoning. But we are certainly a very young team overall. “They haven’t batted an eye in pressure situations. Their character, confidence and the coaches keeping it simple has been the key. “
Matt suggested that “what the defenses give you dictates a great deal of what you do.” SS: “There’s a lot more moving people around these days. There’s a lot of pre-snap movement. We’ve set our tendencies up. League play is the most important thing.” That made it sound like we haven’t really seen the full Syracuse offense to this point but now that we’re in league play, we’re going to see the whole thing.
Stefan in Utica wanted to know how the coaches get the team to bounce back after a bad game. “Is it like baseball, where you just tell them to get up in the morning: it will be a new day with a new game?”
Coach: “We sure do. Win the day that’s in front of you. Control the Controllables. (I’ll abbreviate that as “CTC” in future.) We tell the kids ‘You showed improvement here and here today. Now what are you going to attack tomorrow?”
Coach is also a baseball fan and feels that the Mets against the Cubs would be a great series. He said there are several people with a Chicago background in his clubhouse. Grad assistants Joe Furco and Chris Fitzpatrick are in that group, although Furco is more of a White Sox guy. Zack Mahoney also comes from there but he’s all about the Black hawks The biggest Cubs fan is Tim Lester has worked his way from #42,000 on the season ticket waiting list to #10 and threatens to become a bleacher creature if he manages to get one. Coach would prefer him to do it on a recruiting trip in May.
Matt noted it’s been a wacky year in the ACC, with the preseason favorite in the Coastal Division, (Georgia Tech) in last place. “Two years ago we felt good about ourselves. We couldn’t compete with Florida or Clemson but we felt good against the other teams. Last year we had all the injuries. Now FSU and Clemson are winning but they have a lot of new guys. On any given Saturday, we have an opportunity to win.”
The show this year will be broadcast on Thursdays at 7PM from TGI Fridays on the third floor of Destiny USA, (just past the theater ticket booth and on the right after you walk down the hallway). I don’t know if they will take questions from the audience there but they say you can watch the show whereas when it was at a restaurant, their table tended to be in a secluded location. (Remember its Thursdays at TGI Fridays, not Fridays at TGI Thursdays). The football show is an hour in duration, (Coach Boeheim’s basketball show is usually 2 hours).
Note: because the first game is on a Friday Night, the first show will be on Wednesday, September 2nd. After that it will be on the Thursday before each game until the last game when the show will again be on a Wednesday, (11/25) due to Thanksgiving.
“Fans are invited to attend the show in person or participate via telephone (1-888-7-Go Cuse or 424-8599) or Twitter (@CuseIMG) using the hashtag #AskShafe. 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: http://tunein.com/radio/WGVA-1240-s29191/
That first phone number is 1-888-746-2873 numerically.
You can also send them in advance at this site:
http://cuse.com/sb_output.aspx?form=4
(I do both so they can be prepared to give me an informed, reasoned answer.)
My Question(s)
“Coach, now that AJ Long is not available due to concussions, it seems more important than ever to protect the health of the quarterbacks we have left. Many fans expressed concern that Eric Dungey and Zack Mahoney take a lot of big hits on the option. Is there any thought of eliminating the option for our offense from now or reducing the number of times we run it?”
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.)
Matt told the coach that “for the second straight game, you’ve got to get the team prepared to play on the road, only now it’s a conference game.” Coach: “ These are the games that really count. They are a talent team that got off to a difficult start. They’ve played some very good football teams. They’ve bene playing football a long time. 85 years, going on 450 wins. It will be 60 degrees and sunny. We are anxious to get back on the field.”(Actually Virginia’s been playing since 1888, the year before we started- that’s 127 years and they have 640 victories:
http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/active/v/virginia/yearly_totals.php )
Matt said that much of the campus was designed by Thomas Jefferson in the 1700’s. (Actually it was the 1800s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_University_of_Virginia
It’s a bad habit of mine- always correcting people). He did say that the field doesn’t date back quite that far, “an indented bowl, nestled in the woods.” (Actually 1931:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Stadium ).
It's sort of in the woods:
Matt said that Virginia “would like the first quarter against Pittsburgh back”, (they gave up 217 yards), “but were proud of the way they played after that”. Shafe said “They left a couple of plays on the field, just like we’ve done in games. They threw a couple of balls down the field that went a bit too far. They wanted a pass interference call on that last play. They’d had a 10 play drive and converted a 4th and 23.”
Liam in Pompey asked about the late hit call that seemed to take all the wind out of our sails. SS: “I don’t like to criticize the referees. If I do it, I do it on the sidelines. But that was an over-throw out of bounds. Both players were going after the ball and they were on ice skates. There was no intent to hit him. It looked worse than it was. But we got away with one against LSU when Riley Dixon threw a punch in celebration and almost hit the LSU guy. Whitner felt horrible.” Matt said that he’d seen more serious collisions at the salad bar at Wegman’s. But it’s hard not to throw the flag.”
I called in my question about not endangering the quarterbacks on the option. “Actually, very few quarterback injuries are on designed running plays. Most of them come when the quarterback is tangled up on a pass or they start to scramble and get blind-sided. We actually only run them on designed plays 8-10 times a game, although we want to stay out of double digits.” Regarding the number of quarterbacks we’ve lost the last two years: “I’ve never been around anything like these last two years. They come in droves and this has bene a hell of a drove.”
Previewing Virginia: “They don’t always use 4-5 wide-outs but they have a ton of ways to get people on the field and a ton of ways to get them touches. But Coach Bullough has a great game plan to crack the code.” (I hope so.)
About QB Matt Johns, Matt Park said that “About 2/3 of his passes are right on target. The rest are well off. That’s why he’s hitting 60%. He has 8 TDs,(actually 9) 7 interceptions and is second in the ACC in passing yardage.” SS: “Big arm. The thing that counter-balances all they do is his ability to throw the ball down the field.” Matt said that the Su secondary “nee3ds to be on alert”.
On Tyquan Mizell, probably their most talented player. He’s their leading rusher with 196 yards and their second leading pass receiver with 340 yards. “He has all the skill sets you are looking for. He is a deep threat who can catch it in traffic. He made a great catch at the back of the end zone.”
Michael Mooney, the Cav’s left tackle, is out for the game. Matt wondered if that meant we will be brining ‘heat’, then acknowledged that we always do that anyway. Coach: “it will depend upon the feel of the game after the first quarter. Coach Bullough will then make his adjustments. They’ve always had talented offensive linemen in Virginia and whoever starts for them will be good.” I am wondering about this tendency to say that we’ll see what happens in the first quarter and then make adjustments. We could use a great first quarter to begin with.
Syracuse’s injury list includes Kellen Moore who again will not make the trip and Rodney Williams is doubtful for the game. Then there’s AJ Long. “he had an injury when he fell out of bed and the symptoms didn’t go away for a dozen days. Then he got frustrated and punched a padded wall and broke his hand. Finally he got “thudded up ” by one of our players and it didn’t look like much. It’s one of those unfortunate realities. Now he’s got to attack the academics.”
Jordan Fredericks, per Matt, is “out-distancing his positon group”. Coach: “And he’s getting the bulk of his reps in practice, too. He has a lot of abilities. He can catch the ball, run it out of the wildcat. It’s a different mindset. He’s bigger than Erv is and has power to go with elusiveness and vision. George Morris and Devante are battling, too. There’s completion every week. We’ve got the same at H back where Dontae Strickland is doing good things and we have Erv Phillips and Ben Lewis, too.
A caller praised the players for playing wi9th a lot of heart and said the coaching staff must be doing great things. Coach pointed out that “67% of our offensive players are with four years to go and 50% of the defensive players have 3-4 years to go”. I looked at our two deep for this week and counted 4 offensive freshmen and 6 sophomores among 24 players listed, (three at the running back and H back spots). Defensively we had 8 freshmen and 6 sophomores among 23 players. That’s 42% and 61% by my reckoning. But we are certainly a very young team overall. “They haven’t batted an eye in pressure situations. Their character, confidence and the coaches keeping it simple has been the key. “
Matt suggested that “what the defenses give you dictates a great deal of what you do.” SS: “There’s a lot more moving people around these days. There’s a lot of pre-snap movement. We’ve set our tendencies up. League play is the most important thing.” That made it sound like we haven’t really seen the full Syracuse offense to this point but now that we’re in league play, we’re going to see the whole thing.
Stefan in Utica wanted to know how the coaches get the team to bounce back after a bad game. “Is it like baseball, where you just tell them to get up in the morning: it will be a new day with a new game?”
Coach: “We sure do. Win the day that’s in front of you. Control the Controllables. (I’ll abbreviate that as “CTC” in future.) We tell the kids ‘You showed improvement here and here today. Now what are you going to attack tomorrow?”
Coach is also a baseball fan and feels that the Mets against the Cubs would be a great series. He said there are several people with a Chicago background in his clubhouse. Grad assistants Joe Furco and Chris Fitzpatrick are in that group, although Furco is more of a White Sox guy. Zack Mahoney also comes from there but he’s all about the Black hawks The biggest Cubs fan is Tim Lester has worked his way from #42,000 on the season ticket waiting list to #10 and threatens to become a bleacher creature if he manages to get one. Coach would prefer him to do it on a recruiting trip in May.
Matt noted it’s been a wacky year in the ACC, with the preseason favorite in the Coastal Division, (Georgia Tech) in last place. “Two years ago we felt good about ourselves. We couldn’t compete with Florida or Clemson but we felt good against the other teams. Last year we had all the injuries. Now FSU and Clemson are winning but they have a lot of new guys. On any given Saturday, we have an opportunity to win.”
