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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1981712, member: 289"] About the Offense: [I]The key player in the new offense will be the quarterback. The incumbent is Eric Dungey, who came in as a true freshman when Terrell Hunt went down on the ninth play of the opener. Hunt had had a shaky season in 2014 and even in those 9 plays, (against a bad FCS team, Rhode Island), was playing poorly. Dungey came in and by the end of that game it was obvious that he was an up-grade. He seemed calmer and more poised. He seemed to be able to read the defense better. He didn’t have a rifle arm but threw a very catchable pass. He was mobile and could improvise when he had to. [/I] [I]One downside, and I think it will be a factor this year because of all the sideline passes in Baber’s offense, is that those catchable balls were also available to be caught by the other team on sideline plays where you’d want your quarterback to fire the ball past the defender, who will have nothing in front of him but the goal line if he could get to the ball. It was a ticking time bomb all season and it finally exploded in the Louisville game when Trumaine Washington gave the Cardinals a lead they never surrendered with a 39 yard pick six. [/I] I needn’t have worried: We threw two pick sixes this year but Dungey authored neither of them, (Wilson threw that pass that bounced around vs. Clemson and wound up in the wrong end zone and Mahoney had the second vs. Pitt.) Dungey showed a good command of the offense and made all the throws necessary, (although he wasn’t our best player: Etta Tawo was). But… [I]Another ticking time bomb was Dungey’s health. Like a lot of young quarterbacks he liked to get out and use his legs and challenge the defense. [/I] The bomb went off against Clemson when, on what appeared to be a planned run, Dungey got hit from two different direction and suffered what looked something like whiplash. It was Dungey’s 125th and last carry of the season, far more carries than Babers had intended, (he says he prefers passing quarterbacks to running quarterbacks as they don’t get beat up so much.) it cost us Eric’s services the last three games and may have imperiled his career. That left it to Zach Mahoney: [I]He’s a dual threat quarterback with a stronger arm than Dungey’s but he doesn’t have Dungey’s touch, especially on the shorter throws and doesn’t have his accuracy. Dungey also knows the offense better. I don’t know that Mahoney is the type of QB Babers is looking for, (in his offense, they QB doesn’t run the ball much). But it’s good to know that we have a back-up quarterback who allows us to hang in there against top teams[/I]. We didn’t exactly hang in there against Clemson, NC State and Florida State but Mahoney helped us put 61 points on the board against Pitt. There’s no reason to alter the above assessment. [I]The Syracuse passing records are: 471 attempts, 294 completions 3,749 yards,26 touchdowns, (all Ryan Nassib 2012). Hopefully none of those will be the record after this season. They had better not be if we are to have a good year.[/I] I wouldn’t call what we had a good year but our final passing numbers, between Dungey, Mahoney and Austin Wilson were: 332 of 522 (63.6%), 3855 yards, 24TDs, 13 int. Dungey before his injury was 230 of 355 (64.8%) for 2,679 yards, 15TDs, 7 interceptions. He was on a pace to exceed Nassib’s numbers except in touchdowns. [I]Steve Ishmael has it all as a receiver: hands, moves, speed, size. He should explode in this offense, get some All-America mention and be on his way to the NFL…..[/I] [I]A graduate transfer from Maryland, Amba Etto-Tawa, (a native of Oman - at the corner of the Arabian Peninsula- name pronounced AUM-buh EH-ta.), will be in the mix. He started 15 games for Maryland in three years and caught 61 passes for 938 yards and 3 scores, including the SU game in 2013 where he had 6 catches for a career-high 103 yards. He had fallen on the Maryland depth chart. it will be interesting how much play he gets here. He’s got good size at 6-2 202 and speed at 4.4.[/I] Etta Tawo (the correct spelling) had the season I hoped Ismael could have and then some: 94 catches for 1,482 yards and 14TDs, including 5 in the last game. Ismael seemed lost in the shuffle but still had a productive year with 48 catches for 559 yards but only 1TD. Can he become next year’s Etta Tawo – or can we find another among the grad transfers or JUCOs? [I]But you need more than one guy. The idea is to flood the defense with receivers so they can’t concentrate on just one guy. The depth chart actually lists four wide receivers along with a quarterback, a tight end and five linemen. That’s 12 guys so it has a good chance to work. The primary options besides Ismael last year were Brisley Estime and Erv Phillips….(Estime) He’s not the natural receiver Ismael is but he’s a threat to break it any time he gets his hands on the ball….(Phillips)[/I] [I]Phillips started out as a running back. He’s listed as 5-11 180 but seemed to me to be about the same size as Brisley. He doesn’t have Brisley’s speed, (4.58 in the 40) but he can turn on a dime and knows how to zig-zag through the defense. Like the SB, he’s not a natural receiver. He was a running back as a freshman and was a “slot back”, a hybrid runner-receiver last year. The question is: can he beat out guys who were recruited as wide receiver? Like Estime, once he gets the ball, he can make things happen, but does it with his moves.[/I] Phillips proved to be a very reliable possession receiver. He had an incredible year in his own right with 90 catches for 822 yards and 6 TDs. He was particularly effective on third down and at the goal line. Brisley never became the break-away threat on passes that he is on kick returns, catching 48 balls for 518 yards and 3 scores. But together they gave Dungey and Mahoney an excellent quartet of threats the defense had to worry about. [I]Jordan Fredericks made it clear early last year that he was our best running back and went up the depth chart the way he ran down the field: like a bullet. He’s got the perfect body for a modern running back: 5-10, (meaning he can hide behind the linemen) and 215, (meaning he can hit with a thump). He ran a 4.46 forty. He saw the openings and made the right cuts. He ran for 607 yards on only 107 carries, (5.7 a pop). He only scored 4 times but one of them went 75 yards. He also caught 6 passes for 55 yards, one for a score. That’s just the beginning for him. He has “feature back” written all over him and must be drooling at the thought of a defense spread out by the pass.[/I] This is the great mystery of the season. Fredericks was relegated to second string in the spring and then became third string behind freshman Moe Neal in the fall. Neal show flashes of speed but as Babers admitted, “He’s still got a high school body”. Dontae Strickland was the starter and struggled mightily to make any headway as a ball carrier, averaging 3.5 yards per carry. Fredericks, when he did carry the ball looked much the same as he had the year before, averaging 5.0 yards per carry. Babers dismissed this as being late-game heroics in games that had been decided. There was speculation that he’d shown up over-weight and thus gotten off to a bad start with the coaches, and/or that he hadn’t learned the offense and didn’t know how to call out the blocking schemes, which the back does in Baber’s offense. Whatever the problem was, it deprived us of what was clearly our best runner and we never did get any kind of consistent running game going. This had a domino impact on the team. Because we couldn’t run the ball effectively, it became easier to defend the pass and we faced more third and long situations, which allowed the defense to take a bead on our quarterbacks, who were sacked 38 times. It also caused the staff to draw up more running plays for the quarterback in order to get some deception and versatility into the rushing attack. It was on one such play that Dungey got injured. The lack of a running attack made it harder to “move the sticks” and caused us to punt 80 times, (13 more than the previous year under the punt-happy Shafer). It also made it difficult to punch in the touchdowns once we got in the red zone and the pass defense had less territory to cover. And, in turn, these problems made it more difficult for our defense. Coaches do things for actual reasons. If we don’t know the reason, it doesn’t mean there isn’t one. The less logical the decision seems to us, the better the reason is likely to be. Still, Babers desperately wanted a running game. He said that it’s necessary in football to run the ball and stop the run so many times, he sounded like Vince Lombardi. And it just seemed to many of us ignorant fans that the answer he was looking for was sitting right there on his bench. The design of the running game seemed faulty as well. For much of the season we tried to establish the run with a draw play in which the ball was immediately given to the running back and the quarterback made a show of passing a phantom ball afterwards. This never fooled the defense and the plays repeatedly went nowhere. A draw play, unlike a normal running play, has to be set up by the pass first but we were trying to use it to set up the pass. I realize all teams want a balanced offense but I had assumed that Baber’s system was to come out passing and use that to spread out the defense and then run the ball in the gaps that opened up as they tried to cover all the receivers. For much of the year we were in “run first, then pass” mode and I never understood why. We had some success with this in the first quarter against USF but the other times when the offense functioned well, (Connecticut in the first quarter, Notre Dame in the first half, Virginia Tech and Pittsburgh), we came out firing and it was much more effective. We passed more and ran better because of it. Then there is my perennial pet peeve about the number of backs in the backfield. I maintain that you can do anything the Babers offense is trying to do with two backs in the backfield because those guys can both catch passes, even running pass patterns from the backfield to do it. But they can also be available to block for the quarterback, (and our guys needed it), and for each other and to run the ball. The defense doesn’t know who you are going to pass to and that’s a good thing. Why wouldn’t it be a good thing for them not to know who would be running the ball? In fact this was acknowledged when the coaching staff started using the quarterback as the second running back, (with eventual disastrous Results for the quarterback). They needed that second runner. The most amazing thing was when we got to the goal-line early in the season, we were still in the shotgun with one or no backs at all because we had no running package for goal line situations. [I]One poster suggested that it won’t matter what happens up front because we’ll get the plays off so fast and get rid the ball so fast that the blocking won’t matter. That’s as naïve a statement that has ever been uttered about the game of football.[/I] As we found out. It doesn’t matter what offensive concept you have: you’ve to win the war up front to be really successful. [I]We’ve certainly got size upfront, based on the spring depth chart, (the fall one isn’t out yet). The projected starters are 6-5 318 Michael Lasker and 6-7 330 Jamar McGloster at tackles, 6-4 300 Aaron Roberts and 6-3 321 Omari Palmer at guard and ‘little’6-3 284 Jason Emerich at center. That averages 6-4 311 pounds.[/I] But Babers wasn’t satisfied with dimensions. He wants muscular development and quickness and that will take more and better recruiting and physical training to achieve. [I]I suspect the younger guys on the line may eventually prove to be superior to the older guys but we’ll be going mostly with the older guys to start with. Having first time starters at both tackle positions is a concern. Those are the key guys in keeping pass rushers out of the backfield and quarterbacks healthy. Hopefully the emphasis on conditioning will give our guys an edge, as well the hurry-up offense and the quick throws. But if we have problems up front, like every other football team on the planet, we are going to have problems moving the ball with any consistency. A hurry-up offense is a grand idea but if you don’t move the chains, all you are going to do is punt quickly. And with a new punter and our defense, we need to avoid that.[/I] This unit and the defensive backfield, (arguably the two most important units on the team) got wiped out with injuries. Emerich and Palmer went out at mid-season and never came back, prematurely ending their careers here. At one point we were down to our third string center, which is critical as we are always in the shotgun. If the snap isn’t true, the timing of the plays will be off from the beginning – as it was throughout the NC State game. The group also had awful problems with false starts. We had as many as 9 in a game. That’s critical because when you depend primarily on a short passing game, it’s all about getting first downs and when you have to get 15 rather than 10 yards to do it, the game gets hard. And we made the game harder than it needed to be many times this season. [/QUOTE]

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