SWC75
Bored Historian
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
- Messages
- 34,518
- Like
- 67,284
- It’s always darkest before the dawn. This is the first great win of the Dino Babers era, with many more to come.
- We finally exploded on somebody and made the college football world aware of us.
- Win next week and we are 4-4 and our dreams of getting back to a bowl game and using that as a stepping stone to rev this program up again are alive and well. The fact that we have an exciting offense will help us if we wind up 5-7: they’ll need a couple of 5-7 teams, as they do every year now.
- Eric Dungey was amazing. He passed the ball 53 times for 311 yards and ran it 24 times for 106 yard, becoming the first Syracuse quarterback to pass for 300 and run for 100. He passed or ran the ball on 77 of our 100 plays. (Virginia Tech had 72 plays.) He did have 25 incompletions but most of those were passes he intentionally threw away to avoid any bad plays, (including sacks).
- He did it despite being battered by the defense repeatedly, including one second quarter play where he sustained some kind of knee injury. He was back for the next series with a knee brace but played the rest of the game, still passing with poise and running with determination and leading his team to victory. He’s the type of leader a team will follow and rally around.
- We shredded their lovely defensive statistics. They came in averaging giving up 105 yards a game rushing, (17th in the nation), 132 yards passing (2nd) and 238 totally (3rd). We ran for 156 yards, passed for 405 and gained 561 yards. They weren’t playing Liberty today.
- Dontae Strickland had a strong game with 69 yards in 16 carries, including the 16 ayrd clincher and that 84 yard pass to Brisley Estime.
- The Salt Badger roared with 8 catches for 131 yards and a 20 yard punt return that got the clinching drive going.
- Erv Phillips had another huge game with 11 catches for 139 yards and a score.
- Steve Ismael didn’t get a huge gainer but made some amazing catches while closely guarded. He has 6 for 81 yards.
- Amba Etta Tawo had a quiet day with 5 catches for 54 yards but got us some first downs. We are taking advantage of the attention he now gets to get the other guys involved. Now the defense has to cover guys on pass plays. The next thing to do is to hit Cam McPherson over the middle. Then the opposing defensive coordinator might put up a white flag.
- But the story of the game was our defense. They did give up 468 yards but they made the big plays needed to hold the 17th ranked team in the country to 17 points. The offense, as usual, failed to take advantage of some scoring opportunities and did nothing in the third quarter. But our defense never let them take control of the game the way they did vs. South Florida. And there were none of those “so bad you can’t believe it” plays we saw against Louisville and Notre Dame. Brian Ward realized that relying on the front four to pressure the backfield wasn’t enough: you’ve got to try to stop the play in the backfield or at least hurry it and we are blitzing like Scott Shafer was making the calls. Even the Hokies good plays were reasonably well-defended.
- Davion Ellison and Zaire Franklin both had double figures in tackles. We had only 1 sack but 5 tackles for a loss, 9one on 4th and 1), and were in the Hokies backfield the whole night. The sack was from De’Jon Wilson, the Colorado transfer who got a chance to play because of the dubious suspension of Kendall Coleman from last week’s “targeting” play.
- Special teams made a major comeback. Cole Murphy was only 1 for 3 in field goals but they were all rom 50+ yards. The one he made would have bene good from 60 and was right through the middle. Sterling Hofrichter averaged a whopping 48.7 yards per punt. Our kick coverage was amazing. They got one 37 yard kick return, (I don’t even remember) but in the fourth quarter we were cutting them down before they got to the 20. The lead gunner was George Morris, a young man who came here from Georgia to be a feature running back, found himself slipping down the depth chart, then got injured and has just been cleared to play again in his senior year and is running full speed down the field and throwing his body around to stop kick-off returns. He deserves our upmost respect.
- The team that faded as the game went along won this game by dominating the fourth quarter.
- In the post-game show Dan Conley said that the staff had 25-30 recruits there watching this game.
- It’s not the basketball season – yet.
- Click on the highlights for the SU game from this ESPN page. (You can enlarge it by clicking on the box in the lower left hand corner). The first video is Dino Babers speech to his team in the locker room after the game. Anyone who sees Babers as emotionless or uninspiring needs to see this. One of the most encouraging things is that one of the players closest to Babers and seeming mesmerized by his speech is #22, Jordan Fredericks. I only saw him in on one play but he’s still emotionally invested with this team and his coach.
Virginia Tech vs. Syracuse - Game Videos - October 15, 2016 - ESPN
3-4 with 5+ to go
LET’S GO ORANGE!!!
- We finally exploded on somebody and made the college football world aware of us.
- Win next week and we are 4-4 and our dreams of getting back to a bowl game and using that as a stepping stone to rev this program up again are alive and well. The fact that we have an exciting offense will help us if we wind up 5-7: they’ll need a couple of 5-7 teams, as they do every year now.
- Eric Dungey was amazing. He passed the ball 53 times for 311 yards and ran it 24 times for 106 yard, becoming the first Syracuse quarterback to pass for 300 and run for 100. He passed or ran the ball on 77 of our 100 plays. (Virginia Tech had 72 plays.) He did have 25 incompletions but most of those were passes he intentionally threw away to avoid any bad plays, (including sacks).
- He did it despite being battered by the defense repeatedly, including one second quarter play where he sustained some kind of knee injury. He was back for the next series with a knee brace but played the rest of the game, still passing with poise and running with determination and leading his team to victory. He’s the type of leader a team will follow and rally around.
- We shredded their lovely defensive statistics. They came in averaging giving up 105 yards a game rushing, (17th in the nation), 132 yards passing (2nd) and 238 totally (3rd). We ran for 156 yards, passed for 405 and gained 561 yards. They weren’t playing Liberty today.
- Dontae Strickland had a strong game with 69 yards in 16 carries, including the 16 ayrd clincher and that 84 yard pass to Brisley Estime.
- The Salt Badger roared with 8 catches for 131 yards and a 20 yard punt return that got the clinching drive going.
- Erv Phillips had another huge game with 11 catches for 139 yards and a score.
- Steve Ismael didn’t get a huge gainer but made some amazing catches while closely guarded. He has 6 for 81 yards.
- Amba Etta Tawo had a quiet day with 5 catches for 54 yards but got us some first downs. We are taking advantage of the attention he now gets to get the other guys involved. Now the defense has to cover guys on pass plays. The next thing to do is to hit Cam McPherson over the middle. Then the opposing defensive coordinator might put up a white flag.
- But the story of the game was our defense. They did give up 468 yards but they made the big plays needed to hold the 17th ranked team in the country to 17 points. The offense, as usual, failed to take advantage of some scoring opportunities and did nothing in the third quarter. But our defense never let them take control of the game the way they did vs. South Florida. And there were none of those “so bad you can’t believe it” plays we saw against Louisville and Notre Dame. Brian Ward realized that relying on the front four to pressure the backfield wasn’t enough: you’ve got to try to stop the play in the backfield or at least hurry it and we are blitzing like Scott Shafer was making the calls. Even the Hokies good plays were reasonably well-defended.
- Davion Ellison and Zaire Franklin both had double figures in tackles. We had only 1 sack but 5 tackles for a loss, 9one on 4th and 1), and were in the Hokies backfield the whole night. The sack was from De’Jon Wilson, the Colorado transfer who got a chance to play because of the dubious suspension of Kendall Coleman from last week’s “targeting” play.
- Special teams made a major comeback. Cole Murphy was only 1 for 3 in field goals but they were all rom 50+ yards. The one he made would have bene good from 60 and was right through the middle. Sterling Hofrichter averaged a whopping 48.7 yards per punt. Our kick coverage was amazing. They got one 37 yard kick return, (I don’t even remember) but in the fourth quarter we were cutting them down before they got to the 20. The lead gunner was George Morris, a young man who came here from Georgia to be a feature running back, found himself slipping down the depth chart, then got injured and has just been cleared to play again in his senior year and is running full speed down the field and throwing his body around to stop kick-off returns. He deserves our upmost respect.
- The team that faded as the game went along won this game by dominating the fourth quarter.
- In the post-game show Dan Conley said that the staff had 25-30 recruits there watching this game.
- It’s not the basketball season – yet.
- Click on the highlights for the SU game from this ESPN page. (You can enlarge it by clicking on the box in the lower left hand corner). The first video is Dino Babers speech to his team in the locker room after the game. Anyone who sees Babers as emotionless or uninspiring needs to see this. One of the most encouraging things is that one of the players closest to Babers and seeming mesmerized by his speech is #22, Jordan Fredericks. I only saw him in on one play but he’s still emotionally invested with this team and his coach.
Virginia Tech vs. Syracuse - Game Videos - October 15, 2016 - ESPN
3-4 with 5+ to go
LET’S GO ORANGE!!!
