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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1578039, member: 289"] THE TEAM OFFENSE Then: For the second straight year, our leading receiver never found the end zone, something that had last previously happened in 1973, Ben Schwartzwalder’s last year. Early in the second period in the opener against Villanova, (played on the 29th of August), running back Prince-Tyson Gulley broke through the line of scrimmage, looked up and saw no one between him and the goal line. He ran 65 yards for a touchdown. It was the last touchdown any Syracuse running back ran for that season. They went 11 1/2 games without another, never running for a touchdown in any fall month. Now: Steve Ismael scored on 7 of his 39 catches. Erv Phillips scored on 5 of his 29 catches. Then: Instead our quarterbacks did much of the ball carrying, especially when Terrell Hunt was in there. Hunt a big dude at 6-3, 234, played in only 5 games but was our third leading rusher with 292 yards and 6TDs This is part of the folly of the single back backfield: the only running alternative is your quarterback, the guy you least want to lose to injury. Hunt was getting pretty beat up, although his injury actually came on a sack. It may have affected his throwing, which was awful. The record shows he did complete 57% of his passes but that’s not exceptional these days and the vast majority of his passes were short shots, such as those bubble screens that made the fans cringe. In 145 passes he produced one touchdown pass and four interceptions…. For a long time our punter, Riley Dixon, was tied with Hunt for the most touchdown passes with one, thanks to a fake field goal, (he is our holder). Eventually, A. J. Long passed them both with 4TD passes vs. 8 interceptions. Two other quarterbacks, Austin Wilson and Mitch Kimble, produced no TDs and 5 interceptions, giving us a total of 6TD passes and 17 interceptions for the season. Now: Hunt got hurt early in the opening game and got replaced by Eric Dungey and Zach Mahoney who combined for 18 touchdown passes and 7 interceptions. Then: Long and Kimble did manage to run for three touchdowns between them and defensive end Ron Thompson, who was placed in the backfield for a goal line situation, got another for a total of 12 rushing touchdowns. That gave us 18 offensive touchdowns in 12 games. We got none on kick returns. The defense manufactured four touchdowns for a total of 22 for the team. We averaged 17 points per game. Now: We had 15 rushing touchdowns, two on punt returns, two on interceptions and two more on fumble returns for a total of 40 touchdowns. We averaged 28 points per game. If we’d kicked another field goal against Louisville we would have scored at least 20 points in each game, something that has only been achieved in Syracuse history by the 1959 and 1987 teams, (although ’87 was held to 16 by Auburn in the Sugar Bowl). Then: The guy in charge of giving us an up-to-date offense is Tim Lester. He has been our quarterbacks coach... Besides alternating snap counts, Lester isn’t going to try to overwhelm the opposition by the speed with which we get off plays. This won’t work if the plays don’t work. Lester is going to search for mismatches and try to exploit them. He also wants more “downfield” running. I think it’s the blockers who make the field tilt in the direction you want it to. Now: We didn’t do much ‘downfield ‘running: it was mostly the option with occasional bursts up the middle when we caught the defense off guard. Actually, it’s hard to remember the last time we had a team that could sustain a consistent running attack. A big disappointment with this team was that we had no short yardage attack. We were back in the pistol, regardless of the play, with the quarterback handing the ball off to a back who was 6-7 yards behind the line of scrimmage. It’s hard to imagine you couldn’t spend enough practice time to put a power running package in for plays where you just need a yard or two- or run a quarterback sneak, which we used to do so well it was almost an automatic first down on 3rd or 4th and 1. Then: One of the things the team has to overcome is the staunch conservatism of the head coach. Scott Shafer is known as an aggressive chance-taking defensive coach who likes to pressure the offense to try to force big plays. But on offense he’s played it so close to the vest one gets the impression he actually prefers to have his defensive unit out there. Nowhere was it more apparent than in the season’s last game, where we were down 7-21 with about 7 minutes left. We had the ball on the Boston College 40, 4th and 6. Shafer punted, saying that he hoped to get a turnover or force a punt. It sounded like this is his idea of offense. That thought is scary. Now: This was everybody’s biggest complaint about Shafer: He’ a defensive guy and he seemed to use his offense to set up the defense, rather than the other way around. This continued until his situation got desperate and Shafer began taking chances, (like trying for two), even when it didn’t seem to make any sense. Then: Quarterbacks are often described as playmakers. Actually, when a quarterback has to “make the play”, the offense isn’t really functioning well. A quarterback is a conduit for the ball from the center to the real playmakers- the guys who take the ball and run with it and score the touchdowns. When your quarterbacks run for as many touchdowns as they pass for and score three times as many touchdowns as your running backs, (as happened last year), your offense just isn’t working. You have to surround your quarterback with talent so he doesn’t have to make the plays himself for the offense to really get going. Now: We had plenty of playmakers on this team: Fredericks, Morris, Phillips, Strickland, Ismael, Estime. But we still relied on Dungey and Mahoney to make plays themselves. Dungey was our second leading rusher with 91 carriers for 351 yards and 5TDs while Mahoney had 41/151/2. Dungey got badly beat up and his future is uncertain. Mahoney seemed to avoid contact better but any time your quarterback is carrying the ball that much, the clock is ticking. I know the spread is all the rage and quarterbacks who both run and pass the ball are the keys to it. But with so many other playmakers I wonder if we aren’t better off with more of a pro-style offense where the quarterback’s job is to get the ball to the playmakers. Who would you rather have the ball at the end of the play? Then: Part of the problem was the type of receivers recruited in the Marrone era. Doug clearly preferred big targets and we had some tall guys with average speed or less running patterns for us. This is an era where offenses tend to run short routes with a high completion percentage and fewer sacks and turnovers and rely on the receivers to turn their route into big plays with speed and elusiveness. If you can get a big guy who can do that, great. But we had relatively stationary targets who rarely got much farther when they did catch the ball. Last year the recruiting started to turn in another direction but the veteran receivers were still in the Marrone mold. Now: Ismael, Estime and Phillips were clearly an upgrade, although Estime and Phillips were still learning to catch passes down the field. Now if we could only get a tight end who could catch the ball. Then: I like our running backs. Devante McFarland has decent size, (6-0 193) and speed and is nifty picking his way through defenders to find an opening. He had an 86 yard non-scoring run vs. Wake Forest. Everybody has raved about George Morris, a back we got out of Georgia a couple of years ago. He’s the same size and speed as McFarland. He’s gained 435 yards in two years to McFarland’s 461 but DeVante has averaged 6.1 yards per carry to 3.8 for Morris, who has to start showing those practice moves in games. Erv Phillips showed some moves and some speed in bursts last year that got the fans excited. He looked like a sort of running back version of Estime. The thought of having them both out there at once, (and healthy), is fun but Phillip’s numbers weren’t all that eye popping: 4.3 yards per carry and 3.8 per catch, (and, of course he didn’t score). But he sure looks interesting. Also interesting are our three tailback recruits. Jordan Fredericks, (5-10, 205), was the player of the year in New York State. Dontae Strickland (5-11 180), from talent rich New Jersey, was rated higher than him nationally and then there’s Tyrone Perkins,(6-0 175), who missed his senior year due to an ACL tear but was descried as a “steal” by one recruiting expert. Looking at their film, they all look pretty dynamic. (Frankly they look at least as good as Robert Washington). Fredericks seems more of a straight-ahead runner while Strickland and Perkins are more “gliders” who make dazzling open-field moves. But all three combine power and speed and could become feature backs here. (Their speed and elusiveness might be more useful in a wide-open offense than Washington’s power-running style.) Now: They all look better than Robert Washington who isn’t coming here. McFarland had physical and emotional troubles and fell behind Fredericks and Morris, gaining 102 yards on 35 carries, a 2.9 average and never finding the end zone. Morris, who had seemed promising but was a disappointment his first two years, ran with power and determination all year and gained 326 yards on 66 carries, a 4.9 average, although he didn’t score either. The bright new star was Fredericks, who gained 607 yards on 107 carries (5.7) and scored 4 times, including a 75 yard burst. The real reason they didn’t score more is our lack of a power formation for short yardage: we were always passing to score down close to the goal line. I think our failure to get first downs in running situations also limited their carries and thus their yards. But all three have talent and all three will be back next year. Strickland proved an exciting young player. He had 21 carries for 81 yards and a score, caught 9 passes for 137 yards and two scores, returned 4 kick-offs for 82 yards and looked like he could go all the way at any time. He also showed he could run with power when he couldn’t avoid the tacklers. Perkins was barely used with 1 carry for 5 yards. You wonder why they blew his redshirt for that. Then: But last year, injuries cut down the offensive line as if by a machine gun. All the starters got hurt and all the reserves got hurt and line coach Tim Doast had to put together a line with gum, spit and duct tape. One silver lining, (the only one), was that in playing a lot of guys, we now have a lot of guys who have played, so maybe the depth will be better this year. But one wonders if the continuity of having 3-4 returnees from proud, successful lines has now been broken. At least we will have four seniors and a junior eyeing the defensive line before the snap. LT Ivan Foy, LG Nick Robinson and center Rob Trudo have seen a lot of action, although Trudo has not been a center before. RT Omari Palmer, the one junior has also played a lot. RG Seamus Shanley is a surprise: he was a walk-on from West Genesee High School. Behind them are two freshman, a sophomore and a junior. Now: This was my biggest disappointment on the year. I thought a line full of juniors and seniors would have a strong year but they were mediocre at best. I think they protected the quarterback in the pocket fairly well, (we suffered 21 sacks in 12 games, 51st in the country). But the failure to consistently run the ball, especially on first down, plagued us all year. [/QUOTE]

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