The Upside | Syracusefan.com

The Upside

SWC75

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- The defense is back! That looked like last year’s group- a pack of pitbulls straining at their leashes until the ball is snapped. And to play like that with nearly everybody in the backfield wearing casts was amazing, since it put a lot of pressure on the backfield not to let anybody get free on a “hot route”.

- Mohammed Sanu was held to 7 catches for 65 yards. In his previous two games he had 29 catches for 295 yards.

- Deon Goggins couldn’t cover Sanu but he did everything else. I saw one play where he blitzed into he backfield, saw a runner running by him on the draw, got blocked, fought off the block and ran down the back a couple yards past the line of scrimmage. He’s going to be a very good one.

- Dyshawn Davis’ hit to force the fumble at the beginning of the game was the biggest hit I’ve ever seen in 30+ years of going to the Dome. He had 6 tackles, 3 for losses.

- SU had 11 tackles for losses in this game and forced 4 turnovers, the most since the Cincinnati game last year, We’d forced 9 turnovers in our previous 9 games. Anderson’s run with the fumble was our first defensive touchdown in five years. Now if we could only block a kick….

- I sensed in the post game player comments a sense of embarrassment more than anything else and a determination to get back on track. Ryan Nassib called it a humbling experience: “We weren’t as good as we thought we were. We discovered there are no shortcuts”. I have a feeling that this team- especially the offense- will come back strong next week. And Tulane is very very beatable- Army just handled them 45-6. 4-2 isn’t 5-1 but it’s a good first half.

- The offense has got to get it’s act together but if we can play defense like this the rest of the way, (and Coach Marrone says we’ll start getting people back next week), we can still claw our way to a bowl game and keep the rebuilding going strong. This is a very young team. We’ll basically be rooting for the same guys next year, with some reinforcements to further increase the depth. The key is to watch them grow up and the defense did a lot of that today.

3-2 with 7 to do

LET’S GO ORANGE!!!
 
Thanks you for your rational analysis (as always).
This game was a bitter pill swallow.
 
Isn't nice to be able to count on SWC to always give a good analyses of the game? :)

I saw a lot of 'promising' things in this game, it was just painful to watch how inconsistently we executed some plays, especially ST .. What?
 
Great job SWC.
I don't get the comment by Nassib. Why would anyone on the team take shortcuts? It's not like they are blowing teams out.
 
A lot of people talk about Dyshawn, but after that blown coverage the maturity is definitely not there to be one of the top guys in the league. Cam Lynch is the guy that I feel sparks this defense because is literally all over the field on every single play, and he actually is in position 95% of the time...this kid is going to be huge for us.
 
I will be very disappointed if we don't hang 40 on Tulane next week. Coming off this loss and on the road, I fully expect the team to be 100% focused and ready to get the job done.

The positives I took from today - the defense putting 7 on the board and also forcing 4 turnovers, 3 of which gave the offense the ball inside the RU 30. They aren't perfect and made some mistakes, but overall great game by the D. The punts, kickoffs, and punt team and kick team coverage were good as well.

Other than that, everything else was pretty much a negative.
 
After that game I needed my "Upside" fix in the worse way. It's comforting to know that I was not halucinating some of the positives I saw today.
 

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