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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 3983832, member: 289"] - Florida State will ‘get well’ against Syracuse. Even if they don’t, Florida State will still find a way to beat us. Even if they don’t, Syracuse will find a way to lose this game. - The Seminoles may be struggling but their line-up, per Dino Babers, is full of 4 and 5 star players. How many do we have? - They seem to have the same strengths and weaknesses we do, but with better players. They are using two quarterbacks, McKenzie Milton took Central Florida from 0-12 to 12-0 in two years, throwing 37 touchdown passes and running for 8 more. Those were the numbers we’d hoped to see from Dino’s offense. Jordan Travis, a Louisville transfer, played in 8 games last year and accounted for 1,615 yards total offense and 15 scores. - We have Sean Tucker but they have Jashaun Corbin, who is averaging 9.1 yards per carry, having gone 89 yards against Notre Dame and 75 against Louisville. He’s got good size at 6-215. - They also have Jermaine Johnson, a defensive end who transferred in from Georgia and is playing like an All-American. He leads his team in tackles with 31, 7.5 for losses, 5.5 of which were sacks. Their forte is running the ball and defending the run, just like us. Who will do it better? - We are 3-1, which after going 1-10 seems just short of Nirvana. But we were 3-1 in 2006 and wound up 4-8. We were 3-1 and 5-2 in 2011 and wound up 5-7. We were 2-0 in 2014 and wound up 3-9, then 3-0 in 2015 and wound up 4-8. We were 4-4 in 2016 and wound up 4-8. When we beat Clemson in 2017, we were 4-3 – and wound up 4-8. And we were 3-2 in 2019 and wound up 5-7. - Everyone says the ACC is down this year, easy pickings. We are about to play Florida State in Tallahassee, where we have never won, then come home to play undefeated Wake Forest and then the dominant program in the league, Clemson. Then we go to Blacksburg, the scene of many a Syracuse nightmare, to play Virginia Tech. Then it’s home again for unbeaten Boston College. The ‘stretch run’ features road games against Louisville, who has beaten us 12 of the last 16 games, including 6 of the last 7, (averaging 42 points a game in those last 7) and North Carolina State, who have won 12 of 14 games against us all-time and then a home game against Pittsburgh, who has beaten us 16 times in the last 19 years. Do you see any soft spots there.? - Do you really think we’re going to negotiate this gauntlet with a ‘ground and pound’ offense that can’t pass? Garrett Shrader doesn’t. His post-game interviews after the Liberty game sounded like those of a losing quarterback. Dino Babers has acknowledged that we need to be able to pass the ball better. It’s not a subject of debate. The only issue is whether we can get our passing game up to snuff with Shrader or go back to Tommy DeVito – and if that would work. It may be that Shrader could become a good passer, (or learn the offense and co-ordinate with his receivers better, if that’s the problem), by the end of the season. That’s not good enough. By the end of the season we’ll know if this season will get the program back on track and save Dino’s job or just be another depressing disappointment. We need to win right now. - Hey! We just beat liberty, a ranked team last year. We scored 24 points! We’re averaging 30.5 points per game! Yes, but we’ve played Ohio, which has its worst team in years and Albany, a mediocre FCS team. Rutgers, a mid-level Big Ten team in their dreams, shut us down. Our grind-it-out approach worked for about 40 minutes. The game turned when Liberty realized we couldn’t pass and loaded the box. We gained 48 yards in our last five possessions. That game was going to be a loss but a reversal of a call, a goal line-stand and strip sack gave us a chance to win. Even then, we got thrown for losses and were going backwards when Shrader managed to squirt free for am 8 yard game that gave Andre Szmyt, who had bene injured early, the opportunity to barely make a 35 yard field goal. Florida State and all our other opponents have that on film and they will pack the box and dare us to pass to beat them. If we can’t do it, every game is going to look like those last five possessions. [/QUOTE]

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