Scott Shafer couldn’t shake everyone’s hand in the Iocolano-Petty Football Wing on Thursday morning. That’s not to say he didn’t ask to.

“But let’s not talk about Villanova ever again,” Shafer said in the middle of his weekly press conference. “I know I brought it up first but let’s all agree to never talk about Villanova again.

“Can we shake on it?”

In anticipation of Syracuse’s (2-0) 12:30 p.m. matchup with Maryland (2-1) in the Carrier Dome on Saturday, Shafer was presented with a slice of recent program history. If the Orange beats the Terrapins it will be the first time an SU football team starts 3-0 since 1991.

The head coach wasn’t interested in that statistic, and said that approaching a game with that mindset was the problem in an all-too-narrow 27-26 win over Villanova on Aug. 29. The Orange bounced back with a 40-3 win over Central Michigan last week, but it seemed that the close call with the Wildcats was fresh in Shafer’s head.

“That was part of our problem in that first game. We were all diluted and we weren’t focused in on the five-second war of each play, each play is about five seconds long,” he said.

“… The best coaches get their guys honed in. I did a horrible job of that against Villanova, and got to make sure we never make that mistake again.”

Shafer continually circled back to the “five-second war” on each play and the “6-inch battles” all over the field — a rhetoric he said isn’t going to change.

Said Shafer: “Coach speak is coach speak ’cause it’s real.”

Published on September 18, 2014 at 1:19 pm

Contact Jesse: jcdoug01@syr.edu | @dougherty_jesse