CLEMSON, S.C. — Everything was calculated except the one thing that offensive coordinator Tim Lester couldn’t control.

Cole Stoudt had just gift-wrapped an interception to Darius Kelly and Syracuse lined up at the Clemson 42.

Freshman quarterback AJ Long rolled right to move the pocket before Clemson’s front could collapse it. Lester ran the play right at All-American defensive end Vic Beasley to give Sean Hickey a chance to seal Beasley inside. Long jumped up and tried to drop a pass over Stephone Anthony’s head.

But Anthony reached back and clawed the pass out of the air with his right hand, cradled it into his chest and turned upfield with one of SU’s last real chances at a touchdown that never came on Saturday night.

“Everyone on the sideline was saying it was the most unbelievable catch they’d ever seen,” Lester said of Anthony’s interception. “I was still fired up upstairs.”

Long also called Anthony’s nab one of the greatest plays he’s ever seen, but that didn’t stop him from listing it off as one of his many mistakes in Syracuse’s 16-6 loss to the No. 21 Tigers (6-2, 4-1) at Memorial Stadium. Long threw two interceptions, was sacked four times and completed just 12 of his 27 passes for 82 yards, as each pocket seemed to last a little bit shorter as the game wore on.

A Long-led offense never had the complementary punch to the defensive effort that kept Syracuse in the game.

“There were a handful of mistakes, mostly mine, that cost us this game,” Long said. “They didn’t care what we did because they weren’t interested. They were man up, and were going to blitz the young quarterback until he makes a mistake, and tonight I made mistakes.”

Clemson’s pass rush affected Long from the opening play.

Lester said after the game that Long had the first read open on the play and it was exactly what he wanted. But Long missed it and ended up ducking his head into an Anthony sack that lit up the sold-out crowd.

At the start of the second quarter with the Orange leading 3-0, Long fumbled a snap that hit his hands and recovered to scramble for 8 yards and a first down. He fumbled another snap a play later, and picked it up and tried to sneak a side-arm pass to Ervin Philips with his chest still tracing the ground.

And while one broken play turned into a positive result, the second turned into an interception that would have led to Clemson points had C.J. Davidson not fumbled on the SU 10.

“He looked like a true freshman playing against a good defense,” Lester said.

Long jogged into the locker room at halftime with another mistake fresh in his head. He had missed a read on a screen play and fumbled on a sack, which was recovered by Omari Palmer to set up a 50-yard field goal by freshman kicker Cole Murphy.

Then SU head coach Scott Shafer asked Long to think about the best game of his life, and Long looked back to one of his high school games.

“Didn’t the game seem slow?” Shafer asked.

“Yeah, it sure did coach,” Long answered.

“So I said, ‘All right, now it’s faster,’” Shafer said. “Being a freshman I said, ‘Slow this thing down, slow this thing down a little bit.’”

But Long never controlled the game’s tempo. He led the Orange to seven first downs in the first half but just three in the second. He helped SU earn 118 yards before halftime and just 52 afterward.

The Tigers’ front continued to work its way into the backfield, forcing him to make quick decisions, none of which yielded many tangible results for an offense that spoiled the performance of a defense that could only bend so far.

When Stoudt found Stanton Seckinger for a 19-yard touchdown at the start of the fourth quarter, everything to that point hinted that Long couldn’t rally the Orange to a counterpunch.

And everything to that point of the game was right.

“I can’t look them in the eyes,” Long said of facing SU’s defense after the game. “ … You can’t look them in the eye and say I’m sorry because at the end of the day you have one job.

“And if you don’t get that done I mean, what are you really doing?”

Published on October 26, 2014 at 1:44 am

Contact Jesse: jcdoug01@syr.edu | @dougherty_jesse