SWC75
Bored Historian
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This is my annual post-mortem of the season in which I quote from my pre-season preview and comment about what happened during the season.
THE TEAM
Then:
“Good morning, Coach, Babers. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, (and you already have), is to get Syracuse University’s football team to a bowl game this year. You must do this while playing in the Atlantic Division of the ACC, which may be the most difficult division in college football. You are unanimously projected to finish last in that division, as you did last year, when you were the only team in the division that didn’t have a winning record.
You must open your season on the road playing Western Michigan, a school that went 13-1 two years ago and is coached by Tim Lester, your predecessors’ offensive coordinator. One of his defensive backs will be Juwan Dowells, who played at Syracuse last year, (he’s a grad transfer) and thus knows our defense- and our offense, having practiced against it. The defensive coordinator, Tim Daoust, also used to coach here and knows our most experienced personnel. The memory of last year’s Dome loss to Middle Tennessee State, whose defensive coordinator was you predecessor Scott Shafer, is still fresh in people’s minds, as is the memory of Shafer lighting up a victory cigar after the game. Historically, we don’t do well in games like this, (Paul Pasqualoni beat us the first time he coached Connecticut).
In your third game, you will play Florida State, a perennial national power who had a down season last year, in part because they lost their talented young quarterback, Deondre Francois, early in the year. We still couldn’t beat them and Francois is back. We’ve beaten the Seminoles exactly once in our history Floyd Little had one of his biggest days. It was 1966, 52 years ago.
In game five, you will travel to Clemson, another perennial power who beat you don there two years ago 0-54. You had the greatest victory of your career so far against them in the Dome last season, 27-24. They are expected to contend for the national championship again this year and your team will be right in their cross hairs.
Then you will travel to Pittsburgh, where we last won in 2001. We end with games against NC State, Wake Forest, Louisville, Notre Dame and Boston College. Four of those teams beat us last year and the other is Notre Dame. You team has been 1-15 in November the last four year and you didn’t get the ‘1’ – Shafer did.
You will have to beat these teams with a quarterback who has yet to finish a season due to injuries, a receiving corps that has been deprived of two receivers who caught 194 balls between them and your entire linebacking corps and your place-kicker gone.
Should your mission fail, the secretary will not disavow any knowledge of your actions but it will become harder to recruit because nobody will view Syracuse as a coming program anymore and rumors of you being on the hot seat will increase. If you can’t recruit, you can’t get better and your eventual self-destruction will be made more likely. And, if that happens, we won’t know where to go next and our reputation as a bottom-feeder will be cemented.”
Now:
The Mission did not fail. We almost won the Atlantic Divisions and went to an won a good bowl game. We blew out to a 34-7 halftime lead at Western Michigan and held on to win 55-42. We dominated a disappointing Florida State team, 30-7. We almost upset eventual national champion Clemson. We stumbled against Pitt and got handled by an undefeated Notre Dame team, (we lost Dungey but were being dominated even when he was in there. But we beat everybody else, including West Virginia in out bowl game to finish 10-3, our best record in 17 years. We wound up ranked #15 in the polls. Dungey did finish the season and had a great game in the bowl, ending his career with the “victory” play. It took a while for someone to emerge in the receiving and linebacking corps but Taj Harris and Ryan Guthrie had strong years. And Andre Szmyt came out of nowhere to become the best place-kicker in the country. After a lot of years were everything seemed to go wrong at the wrong time, all kinds of things went right this year and it was the right time. Our coach signed a contract extension, confirming that he doesn’t see Syracuse as a stepping stone to somewhere else. And recruits are lining up to come here and play for him. The future hasn’t seemed this bright in a generation.
Then:
“Let’s look at his Eastern Illinois and Bowling Green teams to get a glimpse of what Babers ideally wants to be able to do. This was against much lesser completion so I don’t think we are likely to see numbers as prolific as this, (especially EIU season 2), playing in the ACC Atlantic. But the distribution of carries and catches, passes and runs, etc. is interesting. (Defensive numbers are a reflection of what the other team’s offense is trying to do, so I’ll skip them.)
EIU season 2:
They ran the ball 563 times and passed it 557 times. (50.3%-49.7%). Shepard Little, 5-10, 197, carried the ball 217 times, as did Taylor Duncan. Both gained over 1,000 yards. Garoppolo, ran the ball 53 times for 209 yards and was sacked 17 times. Eric Lora was again the leading receiver with 123 catches at 12.6 yards per catch. The leader for average was Keiondre Gober, 6-3 200, who caught 48 balls for 18.6 yards per catch. Adam Drake, 6-2 195, caught 85 for 15.4. Jeff LePak, 6-6 222, (but listed as a wide receiver), caught 51 for 14.2 Duncan caught 31 and Little 21. Nobody else had 20+. Garoppolo completed 66.0% of his passes for an average of 13.5 yards per catch. He had 53TD passes and 9 interceptions.
Comment: At peak efficiency, this is a 50-50 offense as far as running vs. passing. There was a #1 receiving option both years but he seems to have been closer to a “possession” receiver. They used more receivers in the second year and tended to throw deeper. Yet Jimmy completed a higher percentage of his passes. The running game was an even split between two different size runners. Little averaged 7.1 and scored 15 times, Duncan 4.6 with 10 scores. I like to think they played in tandem, a Little/Csonka combination in my beloved two running back formation. But this being modern football, they probably alternated and got such big numbers because the team accumulated 367 first downs so they could run so many plays and because the passing game opened things up for them.
BGU season 2:
They ran the ball 542 times and passed it 594 times. (47.7%-52.3%). Greene carried the ball 223 times and Coppet 145 times. They gained over 2,000 yards between them. The QB, Matt Johnson was healthy and now backed up by Knapke. Together, they ran the ball 79 times, (and were sacked 36 times). Dieter had 94 catches for 11.0 yards. Lewis had 85 for 18.2. Moore had 72 for 13.2. Burbink had 56 for 11.2. Greene again had 27 catches. Johnson and Knapke completed 67.4% of their passes for an average of 12.9 yards per catch. They had 47TD passes and 8 interceptions.
Comment: With a healthy Johnson, the balance tipped slightly in favor of passing but Greene actually gained more yards rushing (949 vs. 1298), but they did play two more games). I’d prefer to see the balance we see in the BG stats over having the lead guy getting 100+ catches. The passing attack should make the other team cover all the receivers and the whole field. In the first two years at SU, two guys have carried the load and we’ve mostly thrown to the sidelines. There’s little evidence of using a tight end here: maybe they didn’t have a Ravian Pierce. For the most part the size of the wideouts were above average so those guys could make the sort of catches you expect from a tight end.”
Now:
This team was much more of a running team than either of those teams, running the ball 602 times and passing it 460 times. That’s because our quarterback was Eric Dungey, Not Jimmy Garoppolo or Matt Johnson. Dungey ran the ball 184 times for 754 yards and scored 15 touchdowns. As a passer, he was solid but nothing like Garoppolo or Johnson: 266 of 371 (60.9) for 2,868 yards, and average of 10.8 yards per completion, 18TDs and 9 interceptions. He accounted for 33 TDs and got us 10 wins but the offense we saw this year is not really a Dino Babers offense. It’s to Babers’ credit that he adjusted his tactics to the talents of the players he had. If Tommy DeVito has a good year next year the breakdown of runs to passes will at least even out. I don’t anticipate Tommy having 53 TDs and 9 interceptions or 46 TDs and 8 interceptions against the ACC. But I would hope to see 30+ TD passes and no more than a third of that in interceptions.
Moe Neal had 869 yards and 5 scores on 155 carries. Next year’s team will rely on the conventional running game much more and Neal and Abdul Adams will give Dino the kind of production he got at EIU and BG, although, again, duplicating those numbers in the ACC will be harder. They might be able to approach the 2,000 yards the top two runners at BG had. Of course with one running back positon, they will have to do it alternating rather than acting in tandem, so that would be a huge year. Dungey provided a second running back in the same backfield. .
Despite the numbers at EIU and BG, Dino said during the season that he prefers to have a #1 receiving options like Amba Etta Tawo or Steve Ismael but he didn’t have anyone that good so Sean Riley had 64 catches for 756 yards, Jamal Custis 51 for 906 yards Nykiem Johnson 41 for 565 yards and Taj Harris, who came on strong at the end, had 40 for 565 yards. I prefer a set up where the defense has to cover everyone and with all our young receiving talent, it would be a shame to target one guy all the time.
Then:
“In Shafer’s last year we averaged 157 yards passing a game, 116th in the country. Overall we gained 320 yards per game, 119th. Our 27.4 scoring was 77th. In 2016 we improved to 321 passing yards, (11th) and 441 total yards per game (42nd) but only scored 25.7 (90th). In 2017 we passed for 295 yards per game (18th) and gained 456 yards, (23rd) but only scored 27.4 (75th). How can you gain so many more yards and not score any more points?
Well, points don’t just come from the offensive unit. They can also come from the defense and the kicking game. In 2015 we scored 34 offensive touchdowns, returned 2 interceptions, 2 fumbles and 2 punt returns for scores. We kicked 16 of 22 field goals and 37 of 37 extra points. That’s 238 offensive points, (I’ll assume 34 extra points) and 87 points by other means. In 2016 we had 39 offensive touchdowns. The only ‘return’ TD we had was on a punt return. We scored one safety. Our place kickers made only 10 of 18 field goals and 36 of 39 extra points. That’s 270 offensive points, (adding the 36 pats to offensive scores) and 38 points by other means. If we’d gotten 87 points by other means, that would have been 357 points or 29.75 per game, an 8.5% improvement off of a 37.4% increase in yardage. In 2017 we scored 36 offensive TDs. We again had a single, (punt), return score. We also returned a blocked PAT for 2 points. Our kickers had a much better year, hitting 22 of 30 field goals and 35 of 36 extra points. That’s 251 offensive points, (adding the 35 PATs to offensive scores) and 74 points by other means, very similar to 2015.”
Now:
We were 36th in FBS in rushing with 200.1 ypg, (Cucse.com says we averaged 199.2, which would have been 41st). We were 31st in passing (264.7: Cuse.com agrees). We were 19th in total offense (464.8). We were 11th in scoring offense (40.2ppg). Our yards per game in the Babers Era have gone from 441 to 456 to 464. But our points have gone from 26 to 27 to 40. We didn’t have a defensive touchdown. We blocked one punt for a score, (Trill Williams got credited with a 21 yard punt return TD) and Sean Riley returned a punt for a score. We ran for 38 touchdowns and passed for 22 for a total of 60 offensive touchdowns, up from 39 and 36 the first two years. Szmyt was 61 for 61 on extra points and made 30 of 34 field goals to become the nation’s second leading scorer with 151 points, (and he had a higher average than Travis Etienne, who passed him in the national title game with 156). Cole Murphy scored 101 points last year. But the big thing was field position, produced by being +13 in turnovers, as opposed to -12 the year before, plus the excellent punts and kickoff of Sterling Hofrichter. We were an average of 106 yards per game closer to the goal than our opponents when our possessions began. That’s 106 yards of hidden offense, so it’s as if we gained 570 yards per game instead of 464.
THE TEAM
Then:
“Good morning, Coach, Babers. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, (and you already have), is to get Syracuse University’s football team to a bowl game this year. You must do this while playing in the Atlantic Division of the ACC, which may be the most difficult division in college football. You are unanimously projected to finish last in that division, as you did last year, when you were the only team in the division that didn’t have a winning record.
You must open your season on the road playing Western Michigan, a school that went 13-1 two years ago and is coached by Tim Lester, your predecessors’ offensive coordinator. One of his defensive backs will be Juwan Dowells, who played at Syracuse last year, (he’s a grad transfer) and thus knows our defense- and our offense, having practiced against it. The defensive coordinator, Tim Daoust, also used to coach here and knows our most experienced personnel. The memory of last year’s Dome loss to Middle Tennessee State, whose defensive coordinator was you predecessor Scott Shafer, is still fresh in people’s minds, as is the memory of Shafer lighting up a victory cigar after the game. Historically, we don’t do well in games like this, (Paul Pasqualoni beat us the first time he coached Connecticut).
In your third game, you will play Florida State, a perennial national power who had a down season last year, in part because they lost their talented young quarterback, Deondre Francois, early in the year. We still couldn’t beat them and Francois is back. We’ve beaten the Seminoles exactly once in our history Floyd Little had one of his biggest days. It was 1966, 52 years ago.
In game five, you will travel to Clemson, another perennial power who beat you don there two years ago 0-54. You had the greatest victory of your career so far against them in the Dome last season, 27-24. They are expected to contend for the national championship again this year and your team will be right in their cross hairs.
Then you will travel to Pittsburgh, where we last won in 2001. We end with games against NC State, Wake Forest, Louisville, Notre Dame and Boston College. Four of those teams beat us last year and the other is Notre Dame. You team has been 1-15 in November the last four year and you didn’t get the ‘1’ – Shafer did.
You will have to beat these teams with a quarterback who has yet to finish a season due to injuries, a receiving corps that has been deprived of two receivers who caught 194 balls between them and your entire linebacking corps and your place-kicker gone.
Should your mission fail, the secretary will not disavow any knowledge of your actions but it will become harder to recruit because nobody will view Syracuse as a coming program anymore and rumors of you being on the hot seat will increase. If you can’t recruit, you can’t get better and your eventual self-destruction will be made more likely. And, if that happens, we won’t know where to go next and our reputation as a bottom-feeder will be cemented.”
Now:
The Mission did not fail. We almost won the Atlantic Divisions and went to an won a good bowl game. We blew out to a 34-7 halftime lead at Western Michigan and held on to win 55-42. We dominated a disappointing Florida State team, 30-7. We almost upset eventual national champion Clemson. We stumbled against Pitt and got handled by an undefeated Notre Dame team, (we lost Dungey but were being dominated even when he was in there. But we beat everybody else, including West Virginia in out bowl game to finish 10-3, our best record in 17 years. We wound up ranked #15 in the polls. Dungey did finish the season and had a great game in the bowl, ending his career with the “victory” play. It took a while for someone to emerge in the receiving and linebacking corps but Taj Harris and Ryan Guthrie had strong years. And Andre Szmyt came out of nowhere to become the best place-kicker in the country. After a lot of years were everything seemed to go wrong at the wrong time, all kinds of things went right this year and it was the right time. Our coach signed a contract extension, confirming that he doesn’t see Syracuse as a stepping stone to somewhere else. And recruits are lining up to come here and play for him. The future hasn’t seemed this bright in a generation.
Then:
“Let’s look at his Eastern Illinois and Bowling Green teams to get a glimpse of what Babers ideally wants to be able to do. This was against much lesser completion so I don’t think we are likely to see numbers as prolific as this, (especially EIU season 2), playing in the ACC Atlantic. But the distribution of carries and catches, passes and runs, etc. is interesting. (Defensive numbers are a reflection of what the other team’s offense is trying to do, so I’ll skip them.)
EIU season 2:
They ran the ball 563 times and passed it 557 times. (50.3%-49.7%). Shepard Little, 5-10, 197, carried the ball 217 times, as did Taylor Duncan. Both gained over 1,000 yards. Garoppolo, ran the ball 53 times for 209 yards and was sacked 17 times. Eric Lora was again the leading receiver with 123 catches at 12.6 yards per catch. The leader for average was Keiondre Gober, 6-3 200, who caught 48 balls for 18.6 yards per catch. Adam Drake, 6-2 195, caught 85 for 15.4. Jeff LePak, 6-6 222, (but listed as a wide receiver), caught 51 for 14.2 Duncan caught 31 and Little 21. Nobody else had 20+. Garoppolo completed 66.0% of his passes for an average of 13.5 yards per catch. He had 53TD passes and 9 interceptions.
Comment: At peak efficiency, this is a 50-50 offense as far as running vs. passing. There was a #1 receiving option both years but he seems to have been closer to a “possession” receiver. They used more receivers in the second year and tended to throw deeper. Yet Jimmy completed a higher percentage of his passes. The running game was an even split between two different size runners. Little averaged 7.1 and scored 15 times, Duncan 4.6 with 10 scores. I like to think they played in tandem, a Little/Csonka combination in my beloved two running back formation. But this being modern football, they probably alternated and got such big numbers because the team accumulated 367 first downs so they could run so many plays and because the passing game opened things up for them.
BGU season 2:
They ran the ball 542 times and passed it 594 times. (47.7%-52.3%). Greene carried the ball 223 times and Coppet 145 times. They gained over 2,000 yards between them. The QB, Matt Johnson was healthy and now backed up by Knapke. Together, they ran the ball 79 times, (and were sacked 36 times). Dieter had 94 catches for 11.0 yards. Lewis had 85 for 18.2. Moore had 72 for 13.2. Burbink had 56 for 11.2. Greene again had 27 catches. Johnson and Knapke completed 67.4% of their passes for an average of 12.9 yards per catch. They had 47TD passes and 8 interceptions.
Comment: With a healthy Johnson, the balance tipped slightly in favor of passing but Greene actually gained more yards rushing (949 vs. 1298), but they did play two more games). I’d prefer to see the balance we see in the BG stats over having the lead guy getting 100+ catches. The passing attack should make the other team cover all the receivers and the whole field. In the first two years at SU, two guys have carried the load and we’ve mostly thrown to the sidelines. There’s little evidence of using a tight end here: maybe they didn’t have a Ravian Pierce. For the most part the size of the wideouts were above average so those guys could make the sort of catches you expect from a tight end.”
Now:
This team was much more of a running team than either of those teams, running the ball 602 times and passing it 460 times. That’s because our quarterback was Eric Dungey, Not Jimmy Garoppolo or Matt Johnson. Dungey ran the ball 184 times for 754 yards and scored 15 touchdowns. As a passer, he was solid but nothing like Garoppolo or Johnson: 266 of 371 (60.9) for 2,868 yards, and average of 10.8 yards per completion, 18TDs and 9 interceptions. He accounted for 33 TDs and got us 10 wins but the offense we saw this year is not really a Dino Babers offense. It’s to Babers’ credit that he adjusted his tactics to the talents of the players he had. If Tommy DeVito has a good year next year the breakdown of runs to passes will at least even out. I don’t anticipate Tommy having 53 TDs and 9 interceptions or 46 TDs and 8 interceptions against the ACC. But I would hope to see 30+ TD passes and no more than a third of that in interceptions.
Moe Neal had 869 yards and 5 scores on 155 carries. Next year’s team will rely on the conventional running game much more and Neal and Abdul Adams will give Dino the kind of production he got at EIU and BG, although, again, duplicating those numbers in the ACC will be harder. They might be able to approach the 2,000 yards the top two runners at BG had. Of course with one running back positon, they will have to do it alternating rather than acting in tandem, so that would be a huge year. Dungey provided a second running back in the same backfield. .
Despite the numbers at EIU and BG, Dino said during the season that he prefers to have a #1 receiving options like Amba Etta Tawo or Steve Ismael but he didn’t have anyone that good so Sean Riley had 64 catches for 756 yards, Jamal Custis 51 for 906 yards Nykiem Johnson 41 for 565 yards and Taj Harris, who came on strong at the end, had 40 for 565 yards. I prefer a set up where the defense has to cover everyone and with all our young receiving talent, it would be a shame to target one guy all the time.
Then:
“In Shafer’s last year we averaged 157 yards passing a game, 116th in the country. Overall we gained 320 yards per game, 119th. Our 27.4 scoring was 77th. In 2016 we improved to 321 passing yards, (11th) and 441 total yards per game (42nd) but only scored 25.7 (90th). In 2017 we passed for 295 yards per game (18th) and gained 456 yards, (23rd) but only scored 27.4 (75th). How can you gain so many more yards and not score any more points?
Well, points don’t just come from the offensive unit. They can also come from the defense and the kicking game. In 2015 we scored 34 offensive touchdowns, returned 2 interceptions, 2 fumbles and 2 punt returns for scores. We kicked 16 of 22 field goals and 37 of 37 extra points. That’s 238 offensive points, (I’ll assume 34 extra points) and 87 points by other means. In 2016 we had 39 offensive touchdowns. The only ‘return’ TD we had was on a punt return. We scored one safety. Our place kickers made only 10 of 18 field goals and 36 of 39 extra points. That’s 270 offensive points, (adding the 36 pats to offensive scores) and 38 points by other means. If we’d gotten 87 points by other means, that would have been 357 points or 29.75 per game, an 8.5% improvement off of a 37.4% increase in yardage. In 2017 we scored 36 offensive TDs. We again had a single, (punt), return score. We also returned a blocked PAT for 2 points. Our kickers had a much better year, hitting 22 of 30 field goals and 35 of 36 extra points. That’s 251 offensive points, (adding the 35 PATs to offensive scores) and 74 points by other means, very similar to 2015.”
Now:
We were 36th in FBS in rushing with 200.1 ypg, (Cucse.com says we averaged 199.2, which would have been 41st). We were 31st in passing (264.7: Cuse.com agrees). We were 19th in total offense (464.8). We were 11th in scoring offense (40.2ppg). Our yards per game in the Babers Era have gone from 441 to 456 to 464. But our points have gone from 26 to 27 to 40. We didn’t have a defensive touchdown. We blocked one punt for a score, (Trill Williams got credited with a 21 yard punt return TD) and Sean Riley returned a punt for a score. We ran for 38 touchdowns and passed for 22 for a total of 60 offensive touchdowns, up from 39 and 36 the first two years. Szmyt was 61 for 61 on extra points and made 30 of 34 field goals to become the nation’s second leading scorer with 151 points, (and he had a higher average than Travis Etienne, who passed him in the national title game with 156). Cole Murphy scored 101 points last year. But the big thing was field position, produced by being +13 in turnovers, as opposed to -12 the year before, plus the excellent punts and kickoff of Sterling Hofrichter. We were an average of 106 yards per game closer to the goal than our opponents when our possessions began. That’s 106 yards of hidden offense, so it’s as if we gained 570 yards per game instead of 464.
