Villanova head coach Andy Talley thought his team was running out of steam. 

That’s why, after quarterback John Robertson threw a 9-yard touchdown pass to Gary Underwood to pull the Wildcats within one in the second leg of overtime, Talley kept his offense on the field. Robertson took the snap out of the shotgun and shuffled in place, but the Syracuse front collapsed on the pocket and squandered Talley’s roll of the dice. 

“It was a QB run,” Robertson said of the game’s last play. “It was a good designed play, it just got blown up.”

Talley had good reason to put the ball in his quarterback’s hands. Before Syracuse (1-0) used a fake-field goal pass by punter Riley Dixon to ultimately beat Villanova (0-1), 27-26, in the Carrier Dome on Friday night, Robertson was driving the game toward a different conclusion. The dual-threat quarterback counteracted Syracuse’s blitzes with his legs and did even more damage with his arm, a performance that was only overshadowed by the Wildcats’ overall misfortune. 

Robertson finished 16-for-27 with 199 yards and a passing touchdown while adding another 115 — the most of any Villanova rusher — on the ground. 

“What we tried to do was we tried to spiral him, but that was hard,” said SU safety Durell Eskridge through some laughter after the game. “He’s a very good quarterback. Coach Talley and his team put together a very good offense, and we tried to go out there and spiral him. 

“But he was out there making plays and we just had to play football.”

That’s what it came down to — just one play that pitted Robertson against a front seven that sniffed it all out. But for most of the game, when Syracuse wasn’t sacking him or stuffing him for the win, Robertson exposed some of the Orange’s defensive weaknesses. 

Facing a Football Championship Subdivision offensive line, SU’s defensive line had no problem generating pressure. Yet wrapping Robertson up proved a much harder task. When the pocket tightened up, Robertson hightailed it to the edge or danced inside to give himself enough room to unleash one of his 27 throws. 

A lot of it was improvisation, but some was part of the plan. 

“When you blitz a team like us with (Robertson’s) running ability, you have to really spy him and know where he is going to be,” Talley said. “They ran past the line and he was going north and south, and he kept us in the game with his feet.”

The space that Robertson created for himself in and around the pocket also opened up space downfield. 

When plays broke down in the backfield, the Syracuse cornerbacks and safeties had a hard time sticking with their assignments. And it didn’t get better as the game went on.

Every Robertson scramble opened more holes than the last, before his last attempt fell a bit short. 

“They’ve got all types of trick plays, different plays that they run that throw you out of your defense, try to mess with your eyes and knock you off your keys,” Eskridge said. “There wasn’t really anything we could do but play the defense that our coach taught us and give 110 percent effort.”

Published on August 30, 2014 at 3:09 am

Contact Jesse: jcdoug01@syr.edu | @dougherty_jesse