Syracuse v. Clemson 9/30/23 Game Thread
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Cuse 31
Tigers 28
Schrader leads the Orange to a last minute field goal for the W.
Confidence level is low though. How's that for a hedge?
Tigers 28
Schrader leads the Orange to a last minute field goal for the W.
Confidence level is low though. How's that for a hedge?
I am so over this team and its insistence on making everything more difficult than what it has to be by constantly helping their opponents with their decisions.
Just a frustrating game because it seemed like they could have been competitive. Starting with that first drive. It seemed like they were moving and were gonna be able to score but then, of course, the fumble. Then a few drives later another. Finally, scoring their first touchdown seemed like they may have woken up. But after spotting Clemson 14 points it was gonna be tough playing with their backs against the wall. Overall, it felt like Schrader never had time. He was getting killed in the pocket. Also, can someone answer, why do they always throw to the sideline when every time its incomplete?
I think they have shifted the pass offense to include more of the deep sideline passes after the Gadsden injury. It seems they are looking to exploit the size of Alford and Hatcher on the outside when they get 1-on-1 opportunities (Alford against Army last week sticks out). They just don't normally cluster them so close together.
I also like the assistants (Long for sure, jury is still out for me on Beck, but he has shown some positives).
That said, I’ve decided I need to start researching football coaches due to my “if you think the coach should be fired, you need to know who you want to replace him” rule. To be clear, I’m not 100% there with Babers yet, as there is enough there to keep him employed. The quick hits coming to the site will get into some of the less-than-ideal parts of Babers' tenure.
In any case, I'm going to start paying a little attention to Charles Huff, the head coach at Marshall. He has bounced around, as many coaches do, but is 40 years old and has assistant spots at Penn State, Mississippi State, and Alabama (assistant head coach/RB coach - I expect the first part is the promotion needed to hire him away from MSU) before getting the Thundering Herd job. He is highly thought of as a recruiter and is 19-10 at Marshall coming into today, including defeating Notre Dame last season.
Very frustrating that they gave Clemson so many free points. You CAN'T turn the ball over and expect to win against anyone, never mind Clemson.
Self inflicted wounds (penalties and turnovers) always hurt SU in these big games. I commend the defense for doing its job for the most part.
As far as personnel issues go, defensive backs are not a problem, and I say that knowing that both starters, Johnson and Wilson, got beat on multiple occasions today. Johnson started about half of last year and is a special teams captain, Wilson started the bowl last year and absolutely played his ass off against Purdue, especially with how they went after him. The safeties and rover (Barron, Clark, Simmons) all have plenty of starting experience. Barron probably had the best game on the team today. They've also worked depth players in who have made contributions (Bellamy and Farmer on the fumble today, Gould has a pick).
If I were to build a wish list of where to improve the roster, based on positional unit, I would start at offensive line every year. It is very hard to get legit Power 5 linemen to come here. There's a reason there were three transfers listed as starters on the week 1 depth chart for the offensive line, two of them who had never played D-I.
Defensive line would be second. Darton's a great story, but you cannot make a living on undersized, overachieving nose tackles, no matter how high their motors run. Six linemen are in the rotation and one of them is listed above 280 pounds. No surprise it's Ingraham, who transferred from Alabama.
After the Gadsden injury, I would probably put wide receivers third (he's a wide receiver listed at tight end who mostly lines up in the slot to get mismatches on safeties and linebackers and the rest of the position looks significantly different after today), but that could also probably have been the case every year.
Since switching to the 3-3-5, they've been better than average at linebacker and defensive back, usually with a couple guys in each group who are very good or better. I don't worry about those position groups at all.
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