This program needs talent

[anomander]

You are wrong and prove nothing with your "weeding " out. AND yup, Shafers D blows this T2 outta the water.

Too bad he had Bullough running his D

 

[sdhall01]

The most important recruits are the two 4 star offensive linemen coming in. Our OLine is beyond awful. Need those 2 to be the real deal and start day 1

It's difficult to imagine two true freshman linemen being successful in the ACC. I hope I'm wrong, but that seems like a lot to put on these two.

 

[Alsacs]

Shafer people? Really? Yes, i respect the man and miss his defense. Most on this board would kill for his style of D.

NFL players recruited by Shafer ? So we need NFL talent to compete? Teams like MTSU do it with very good talent, and scheme like crazy. Thats where we should be right now. But our coaches have failed at that.

As far as SS recruits with a shot:
1.Stayton
2.ED if coached and handled properly. Lester actually had ED on a better trajectory
3. Erv
4. Conway
5. Custis
6. Franklin

I am not going to waste the energy.
You are entitled to your opinion just like you think playing UAlbany would move the needle.

I don't see 5 of those 6 guys getting drafted and yes NFL talent matters.

Beyond that sorry we disagree.

 

[NineOneSeven]

Shafer people? Really? Yes, i respect the man and miss his defense. Most on this board would kill for his style of D.

NFL players recruited by Shafer ? So we need NFL talent to compete? Teams like MTSU do it with very good talent, and scheme like crazy. Thats where we should be right now. But our coaches have failed at that.

As far as SS recruits with a shot:
1.Stayton
2.ED if coached and handled properly. Lester actually had ED on a better trajectory
3. Erv
4. Conway
5. Custis
6. Franklin

Erv and Custis with a shot? At what?

 

[orange79]

Erv and Custis with a shot? At what?

Pleasedon'tsayNFLPleasedon'tsayNFLPleasedon'tsayNFLPleasedon'tsayNFLPleasedon'tsayNFL

 

[Pyle]

Talent argument is fine against Clemson, FSU, Ville, etc. MTSU? I smell male cow dung.

2015 recruiting rankings: SU - 57 per Scout, MTSU 86
2014 recruiting rankings: SU - 51, MTSU 85

Anyone claiming that MTSU was a more talented team doesn't know their elbow from a blow hole. They were coached better, and put in better positions to win, and executed better, no doubt. But they do not have more raw talent. That is complete nonsense.

 

[FasterCuse]

Talent argument is fine against Clemson, FSU, Ville, etc. MTSU? I smell male cow dung.

2015 recruiting rankings: SU - 57 per Scout, MTSU 86
2014 recruiting rankings: SU - 51, MTSU 85

Anyone claiming that MTSU was a more talented team doesn't know their elbow from a blow hole. They were coached better, and put in better positions to win, and executed better, no doubt. But they do not have more raw talent. That is complete nonsense.

You realize that they have more players on their 2 deep that are going to get drafted in the NFL than we have on our 2 deep? So talent is definitely an issue. If you can't see that Dino is all around a better head coach than Shafer, I'm not sure what to tell you. There is more to being a head coach than having your players think you are their best friend.

 

[reedny]

Talent argument is fine against Clemson, FSU, Ville, etc. MTSU? I smell male cow dung.

2015 recruiting rankings: SU - 57 per Scout, MTSU 86
2014 recruiting rankings: SU - 51, MTSU 85

Anyone claiming that MTSU was a more talented team doesn't know their elbow from a blow hole. They were coached better, and put in better positions to win, and executed better, no doubt. But they do not have more raw talent. That is complete nonsense.

They do at WR and RB ... lol. Sorry, but maybe you should review the game film. We did a good job on Lee for the most part, but he got loose for a chunk play. We also couldn't cover their WR's all day with 9 returning starters on D. Meanwhile, they had no trouble covering our WR's (not named Ish). Face it. We have a talent problem at RB and WR and our whole defensive secondary looked decidedly untalented against an FCS team. We also have no functional TE, although I'm giving Pierce a free pass because he's a new player.

 

[TheCusian]

You are wrong and prove nothing with your "weeding " out. AND yup, Shafers D blows this T2 outta the water.

Don't mean to get too nitpick-y but Ward's D at BG helped them win a game vs P5 Maryland (27 points given up). He held VaTech to their lowest output of the season last year (17). Those two wins are up there.

 

[TheCusian]

They do at WR and RB ... lol. Sorry, but maybe you should review the game film. We did a good job on Lee for the most part, but he got loose for a chunk play. We also couldn't cover their WR's all day with 9 returning starters on D. Meanwhile, they had no trouble covering our WR's (not named Ish). Face it. We have a talent problem at RB and WR and our whole defensive secondary looked decidedly untalented against an FCS team. We also have no functional TE, although I'm giving Pierce a free pass because he's a new player.

RB? They averaged 2.8 yards per carry in our game. And their best RB is avg the same as Strickland.

 

[reedny]

RB? They averaged 2.8 yards per carry in our game. And their best RB is avg the same as Strickland.

But that's game performance, not talent. Talent-wise, I'd take Lee over Strickland. Strickland's shown me nothing. I think our RB situation is almost as dire as WR. JMO.

 

[Pyle]

But that's game performance, not talent. Talent-wise, I'd take Lee over Strickland. Strickland's shown me nothing. I think our RB situation is almost as dire as WR. JMO.

The only people who think we are less talented than MTSU are the ones posting on this forum. Vegas didn't think so, nobody on this board thought so before Sat, Dino didn't think so(see his comments when we lost to Clemson vs MTSU), nobody but the Dino apologists who can't fathom that there might be a problem with our new staff. Defensively we stink. This wasn't Shafer/DM type stuff where we had a guy covered and they just beat our guy. Their guys were wide open in the secondary. Nobody within 5-10 yards. They weren't getting beat, they weren't in proper position to be successful.

 

[Cuse'91]

But that's game performance, not talent. Talent-wise, I'd take Lee over Strickland. Strickland's shown me nothing. I think our RB situation is almost as dire as WR. JMO.

This is the one thing that disappoints me about Dino; you have to know when to cut your losses and move on. It's like driving on the Interstate, even with traffic it's still your best bet, but at some point, getting off and taking a surface route is the intelligent thing to do.
Enough with the Strickland @ rb, and Riley @ returner experiment...

Edit: Throw in Murphy @ Kicker, McGloster @ RT...

 

[reedny]

The only people who think we are less talented than MTSU are the ones posting on this forum. Vegas didn't think so, nobody on this board thought so before Sat, Dino didn't think so(see his comments when we lost to Clemson vs MTSU), nobody but the Dino apologists who can't fathom that there might be a problem with our new staff. Defensively we stink. This wasn't Shafer/DM type stuff where we had a guy covered and they just beat our guy. Their guys were wide open in the secondary. Nobody within 5-10 yards. They weren't getting beat, they weren't in proper position to be successful.

First of all, if questioning our talent AT CERTAIN POSITIONS makes me a "blow-hard", you might want to scan the FB board more often - there's a long line. Second, you're overgeneralizing. I never said MTS recruits better than SU or MTS is more talented OVERALL than we are. They don't and they aren't.

Our problems, mainly, are as follows: On defense, our cover guys are either not playing well or they're just not up to the talent level we need. I can't decide which at this point, but there's clearly a serious problem that carries over from last year's sieve.

On offense, our OL is (again) a WIP - MTS sacked Dungey 6 times and our running game is non-existent (42 yards on 17 carries). Even as the OL gets better, the running game is unlikely to improve, since we have no RB prospect with the size, speed and moves to make plays this season at that position. At this point, I think it's fair to say that Ty Lee is better than anyone we have at RB, even though most of the time we were able to contain him. He's fast. He has moves, and he can catch the ball -- 3 qualities that our staring RB doesn't have.

Receiver and TE are two more positions where we're deficient. I think Pierce has some talent, but he's NRFPT. At WR, we're in trouble. We have no vertical passing game. None. Ish is an excellent route-runner and is a solid possession receiver at the college level. He gets open deep on occasion, but he's certainly not going to instill fear in Clemson, Florida State or Louisville. In fact, while he had lots of short yardage catches against MTS (long of 16 yards), he was always well-covered and had a number of drops. By contrast, MTS repeatedly gashed us for big receptions by isolating their players against our secondary guys mono a mono and getting wide separation. Not only did they rack up receptions of 49, 29 28 and 26 yards; they missed 2 more big (potential TD's) plays because of bad luck (an overthrow and a trip). I concede that one of their chunk receptions was to a RB (lee). Still ... as a group in terms of field speed and talent right now, I'm taking MTS's WR's and RB's over ours. That's a sad statement for an FBS team in a p5 conference. Good thing our recruiting is taking off .. not a moment too soon.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Dino is bringing in talent.
The younger players on this roster are talented.

Next year's recruiting class has talent.

We need Dino to hold onto that class and develop the young talent on this roster.

Plain and simple talent has been a major problem at Syracuse for awhile. Dino is working on it.

What we could REALLY use is a team doctor with the medical qualifications to make a REAL determination whether a player's career should be over, not some senile family doctor who is on the verge of retirement. Well, that and kids who would stop breaking the law while they are here. If you kept all our DQ'd players on the roster from the last few years, we would be loaded with talent right now.

 

[corpjet]

Coaches aside, as the title of this thread reads, the CUSE needs talent/warm bodies all over the place.

Whether its O-Line, D-Line, RB, we need athletes who we can coach up. This program has been hurt the last couple of years with injuries, suspensions, medically disqualified players etc. Lets be honest though all college football programs deal with this, we aren't unique.

What hurts us is when we don't have depth which this program is lacking bad right now.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Coaches aside, as the title of this thread reads, the CUSE needs talent/warm bodies all over the place.

Whether its O-Line, D-Line, RB, we need athletes who we can coach up. This program has been hurt the last couple of years with injuries, suspensions, medically disqualified players etc. Lets be honest though all college football programs deal with this, we aren't unique.

What hurts us is when we don't have depth which this program is lacking bad right now.

Why is it that every new coach purges 20 players from the previous coach's roster? Shafer obviously didn't do that, but Marrone and Dino did, and where did it get them? An undermanned roster, forcing you to play players who are too young, especially in the lines. I can understand if you don't think a player is talented enough, but you can only bring in 25 guys per year anyway. I completely fail to understand why you chase off 15-20 guys, like Marrone and Babers both did in year one, when it leaves you without a full roster for a couple years after. Why not let other players outperform those you deem expendable until you can get a couple classes in?

 

[RF2044]

Dino is bringing in talent.
The younger players on this roster are talented.

Next year's recruiting class has talent.

We need Dino to hold onto that class and develop the young talent on this roster.

Plain and simple talent has been a major problem at Syracuse for awhile. Dino is working on it.

Clarification: the program needs an infusion of talent at a few key positional units. The coaching staff has already begun to improve the talent / size / athleticism at several other positions.

If we had a better OL, then the talent on hand would be more than adequate. But it isn't, so it has a compound effect on the offense not performing as well as it should. Improved OL alone would make a world of difference for this team.

Seems as though the coaching staff has improved the talent / depth in the pipeline at several positions over what they inherited, via recruiting in the classes of 2016 / 2017 / what they are lining up for 2018:

QB
RB
WR
DE
LB
CB
S

They're still behind and trying to reload at the following positions, for a variety of reasons:

TE
OL
DT

Please note, I'm not suggesting that we're all the way there yet at the positions noted in the first list above. Just that through recruiting efforts, we've improved at those positions--in some cases, substantially so. It takes 2-3 years for most recruits to really start to make an impact, so it might take a bit for the results to manifest. But once we straighten out TE and recruit up the OL / DT positions up to the extent that we have several other positions, things will pop.

And if we had a better OL, things might have popped this year given the improvements we are seeing on defense.

 

[RF2044]

Why is it that every new coach purges 20 players from the previous coach's roster? Shafer obviously didn't do that, but Marrone and Dino did, and where did it get them? An undermanned roster, forcing you to play players who are too young, especially in the lines. I can understand if you don't think a player is talented enough, but you can only bring in 25 guys per year anyway. I completely fail to understand why you chase off 15-20 guys, like Marrone and Babers both did in year one, when it leaves you without a full roster for a couple years after. Why not let other players outperform those you deem expendable until you can get a couple classes in?

It got them rid of players who weren't willing to buy into the cultural changes that the new coaching staff was seeking to instill.

Bill Parcells famously once described that the majority of the locker room is neutral and easily influenced. Whether it falls in line behind the 5% who are leaders and set a positive tone or the 5% at the bottom who are distractions / malcontents depends is a function of leadership, and could swing either way depending on how strong those influences are.

It is unfortunate when it happens, but completely understandable. When the staff is preaching optimized conditioning in order to play fast, and a key player comes in out of shape and substantially overweight when others have busted their butts in the offseason, its no wonder that said player gets made an example of.

 

[Alsacs]

My overall point was the roster needs a couple of high end 4 star guys.

Dino is getting that done. We got a QB last year, we got some WRs and OL.

Our middle of the roster can compete with peer schools but we need a couple of blue chippers.

Dino is doing that. Our underclassmen are the most talented players on the roster.

 

[Pyle]

First of all, if questioning our talent AT CERTAIN POSITIONS makes me a "blow-hard", you might want to scan the FB board more often - there's a long line. Second, you're overgeneralizing. I never said MTS recruits better than SU or MTS is more talented OVERALL than we are. They don't and they aren't.

Our problems, mainly, are as follows: On defense, our cover guys are either not playing well or they're just not up to the talent level we need. I can't decide which at this point, but there's clearly a serious problem that carries over from last year's sieve.

On offense, our OL is (again) a WIP (they sacked Dungey 6 times) and we have no running game. It's not likely to improve, since we have no RB prospect with the size, speed and moves to make plays this season at that position. At this point, I think it's fair to say that Ty Lee is better than anyone we have at RB, even though most of the time we were able to contain him. He's fast. He has moves, and he can catch the ball -- 3 qualities that our staring RB doesn't have. Receiver and TE are two more positions where we're deficient. I think Pierce has some talent, but he's NRFPT. At WR, we're in trouble. We have no vertical passing game. None. Ish is an excellent route-runner and is a solid possession receiver at the college level. He gets open deep on occasion, but he's certainly not going to instill fear in Clemson, Florida State or Louisville. In fact, while he had lots of short yardage catches against MTS (long of 16 yards), he was always well-covered and had a number of drops. By contrast, MTS repeatedly gashed us for big receptions by isolating their players against our secondary guys mono a mono and getting wide separation. Not only did they rack up receptions of 49, 29 28 and 26 yards; they missed 2 more big (potential TD's) plays because of bad luck (an overthrow and a trip). I concede that one of their chunk receptions was to a RB (lee). Still ... as a group in terms of field speed and talent right now, I'm taking MTS's WR's and RB's over ours. That's a sad statement for an FBS team in a p5 conference. Good thing our recruiting is taking off .. not a moment too soon.

So either I'm getting posts/posters messed up or idk but at one point somebody stated that they were better than us at almost every position, i thought it was you. I don't see that claim anymore and many posts have been edited, if you think they are better at a few key positions then that is indeed a different argument. But I take issue with the person who claimed they were more talented than us up and down the entire roster. It's a blanket excuse, puts all the blame on the previous staff, and is the main issue I've been trying to take up here all week. Dino right now is hype. His stuff worked before. We've seen flashes. We've also seen disasters. The fanbase needs to stop the hand-holding around the fireplace and evaluate this thing honestly. We are barely sputtering along, this year might be worse than last.

 

[reedny]

So either I'm getting posts/posters messed up or idk but at one point somebody stated that they were better than us at almost every position, i thought it was you. I don't see that claim anymore and many posts have been edited, if you think they are better at a few key positions then that is indeed a different argument. But I take issue with the person who claimed they were more talented than us up and down the entire roster. It's a blanket excuse, puts all the blame on the previous staff, and is the main issue I've been trying to take up here all week. Dino right now is hype. His stuff worked before. We've seen flashes. We've also seen disasters. The fanbase needs to stop the hand-holding around the fireplace and evaluate this thing honestly. We are barely sputtering along, this year might be worse than last.

You're not going crazy: here was my post Free pass? What I said was:

Sadly, I agree MTS was better at nearly every offensive skill position: QB; RB; WR; and TE.

And that is true IN THIS GAME. Talent level is a different story ... and I explained that in another post.

 

[RF2044]

My overall point was the roster needs a couple of high end 4 star guys.

Dino is getting that done. We got a QB last year, we got some WRs and OL.

Our middle of the roster can compete with peer schools but we need a couple of blue chippers.

Dino is doing that. Our underclassmen are the most talented players on the roster.

Agree, across the board.

So far [playing loose and fast across the recruiting services], we've added a 4 star QB, a TE, and two OL. Need more, but that's a solid start.

The key was elevating the caliber of recruit. Before, we were getting 2 star guys with a handful of 3 stars. Now we're getting all 3 stars with some 4 stars sprinkled in. Trending in the right direction.

 

[reedny]

My overall point was the roster needs a couple of high end 4 star guys.

Dino is getting that done. We got a QB last year, we got some WRs and OL.

Our middle of the roster can compete with peer schools but we need a couple of blue chippers.

Dino is doing that. Our underclassmen are the most talented players on the roster.

So true. We're trending up, but this might be a long season unless the OL really improves. I hope that's soon, since we don't have the talent at RB to establish a running game without really good blocking.

 

[TheCusian]

The only people who think we are less talented than MTSU are the ones posting on this forum. Vegas didn't think so, nobody on this board thought so before Sat, Dino didn't think so(see his comments when we lost to Clemson vs MTSU), nobody but the Dino apologists who can't fathom that there might be a problem with our new staff. Defensively we stink. This wasn't Shafer/DM type stuff where we had a guy covered and they just beat our guy. Their guys were wide open in the secondary. Nobody within 5-10 yards. They weren't getting beat, they weren't in proper position to be successful.

I'm only going to say this a few more times, because it seems to not sink in. When we say "they had more talent at a couple of skill positions" we're not saying its THE reason we lost. It was one of the reasons.

The coaching contributed too. But just like it wasn't just talent or refs or bad luck or mental hang ups - it wasn't all coaching. It's literally all of those things.

This isn't First Take, no need to be Skip Bayless. We can have nuance.