Syracuse (1-1) suffered its worst loss since November of 2017 this past Saturday at Maryland, 63-20. This weekend, the Orange have to move forward to prepare for their toughest challenge of the season: hosting No. 1 Clemson (2-0) on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Here’s what our football beat writers had to say about the matchup and how SU will bounce back from this past weekend’s blowout.

See transcript below.

Josh Schafer: And we’re back. Josh Schafer here on the DO Sportscast with Andrew Graham and Eric Black, who are also on the football beat, covering Syracuse football, and they made the trip down to Maryland. I did not. Guys, didn’t look like I missed too much of a positive experience for Syracuse.

Andrew Graham: For Syracuse no, but gosh, if I were a Maryland fan right now, I would be so happy. They won the lottery with Mike Locksley, I mean, not only because he is A, a really good coach as we saw, but also he is like from the area and views the Maryland job as a top-tier job, so he seems like he’s going to stay. And if they keep playing like they did Saturday, they will be quite good.

Eric Black: I just want to say that, that offense of Locksley’s made Syracuse’s defense, which held Liberty, they shut out Liberty last week, they made them look like an FCS team. They made them look like a Howard defense. Obviously not quite to that extent, but Syracuse’s defense, which we thought might be and what Dino Babers thought might be a strength of this team was the weakness of it on Saturday.

JS: So I’ll open it up with a little bit of a non-football question. You guys made the drive down to College Park, in about what, six-and-a-half hours maybe?

AG: Six-and-a-half, yeah.

JS: That was my MapQuest guess off the top of my head. Six hours, we’ll call it four-and-a-half. Andrew Graham drives a little fast. Favorite part of the trip in general? Anything that stood out about the Maryland campus, the atmosphere, perhaps something you ate would normally be something I lean toward.

AG: Food was not a real seller on this trip.

JS: So the trip was terrible. OK.

AG: By your standards, yes. I’m going to say, I like Maryland’s campus a lot. Just it’s a good combination of, you want a college campus to feel sort of tight-knit, but also have those lawns and trees and shady areas. And it was just a very pretty campus. I liked it a lot. I feel like you could film a movie there or something.

EB: I’m going to defend the food that we had on the trip.

AG: It wasn’t bad.

EB: You’ll hear more about that in the 30-second sound off, but right now I want to talk about.

JS: A preview! A preview of the 30-second sound off.

EB: Stay tuned. Don’t touch that remote. But the College Park diner which we went to, I got biscuits and gravy with sausage. Graham got a ham and cheese omelette, which he literally didn’t take a bite of, by the way. He got it, asked for a box, left it in the car during the game, and then we threw it out once we got back to my car cause it smelled bad. Anyways, the biscuits and gravy with sausage, cleaned that plate in five minutes.

JS: When you get a ham and cheese omelette and you put it in a warm car, for about six-and-a-half hours, what did you think was going to happen to it? Did you think it would get better? Did you think it would ferment?

AG: You are applying the verb think, when that verb was not applied in that situation. I’ll give another shout out. A cool feature of the College Park diner, they had a sort of fume hood above the flat top. And all along it are different dollar bills or currency from all sorts of different countries, if someone comes in from a country. Seriously everything from Malaysia to Iran to Zimbabwe. I mean, I don’t know what 20 million Rwandan (Franc) is worth, but I can’t imagine it’s actually worth anything in the more than two figures USD.

EB: Also, after not touching his food at all, I don’t think he wanted to mess with the waitresses there.

JS: Yeah they must have been weirded out by that. I know at a restaurant you see a lot of weird things, and that’s something that they’ve probably seen like twice a week, but wow.

AG: I just wasn’t vibing with breakfast on Saturday I guess.

JS: If you still get to expense that meal, I’m going to be sad.

AG: Oh I 400 percent will.

JS: I know our general manager totally listens to this podcast and I hope that he doesn’t allow you to expense that meal.

AG: I’ll take Mike out for breakfast if he expenses that meal.

JS: On the game, Syracuse lost 63-20. There was a lot of issues when you lose 63-20. Eric, what was the biggest issue for you, something that really stood out and oh my gosh, Syracuse needs to fix that now.

EB: I mean, aside from the defense which I think is the biggest thing but I talked about it earlier, I wanted to talk about the running game which a lot of us thought, I mean we knew it kind of held up the offense with Liberty, scored all three of the touchdowns when the passing game looked bad. But on Saturday vs. Maryland, the passing game kind of find its footing. Tommy DeVito could be better, specifically outside the pocket, but the running game just wasn’t there. I think the running backs averaged just about four yards per carry, which isn’t horrible, but the longest carry of the day was Abdul Adams for 13 yards, and they just couldn’t get any explosive plays on the ground.

AG: Yeah, I’m going to go a little more specifically in the defense, but giving up big plays. Cause it’s one thing when an opposing team is moving the ball on you but you’re making them, you’re sticking them with third and four and second and seven, but when they’re picking up regularly 14 to 30 yards on three plays a drive, that’s when you’re getting gashed. And we saw it bite Syracuse both against Pitt, almost bit them against NC State and North Carolina a little bit last year, but if they don’t get those big plays sorted out again, I mean, Clemson will make big plays against them. That is a big home run hitting offense that will readily take the top off Syracuse’s defense if they don’t figure that out.

JS: I thought for me, the offense seemed pretty important to me as far as the way it’s functioning without Eric Dungey. And so there’s a ton of moving parts going on right now, but one of them is the way that Dungey sort of made plays on his own all the time and would bail Syracuse out all the time. And when you’re an offense that has weapons but not necessarily the weapons of the teams that you’re playing against and the team like this week against Clemson, you kind of need the Tim Tebow-esque quarterback that is just pulling plays out of nowhere and doing crazy things. And it’s extremely difficult to expect that of Tommy DeVito and at some point it probably will come. But how far does Syracuse’s offense fall before it figures it out.

AG: I think of it a bit this way of last year, Syracuse’s best offensive playmaker was getting the ball from the snap because it was Eric Dungey. But I don’t know if Tommy DeVito is. Josh just came up with a way to set up our mic that he is very proud of right now, I just wanted a little aside.

JS: Terrible podcasting. So to give you an image here, I’ve clipped the mic on top of my laptop, right above the camera.

AG: It’s like a little lavalier you’re supposed to wear for an interview.

JS: And this might be the best thing that happens in this 20-minute podcast.

EB: And Josh was going to be humble and not say anything about it.

AG: Oh no, I have to give him the shoutout for this. This is far smarter than what we were doing previously. But back to the point about DeVito. He might not be the playmaker in this offense. It could be, I mean we saw Trishton Jackson go off for like seven catches and a 100-plus yards and two touchdowns, but it could be Sean Riley, it could be Moe Neal on a given day. I just don’t think, the offense doesn’t, it hasn’t run through DeVito yet. I’m not saying it can’t or won’t, but if they’re going to have that passing attack that they want to, it’ll have to run through DeVito and I haven’t seen the offense truly flow through the quarterback like it did when it was Eric Dungey was the offense and everything else was sort of ancillary to him.

EB: And regarding DeVito. It’s not even yes he doesn’t have the explosive plays that Dungey had. But it’s even the smart plays. There were a bunch of instances during the game which DeVito talked about afterwards where he had to chase out of the pocket and he has room to run for five, six yards, and in the grand scheme of things, that’s not that big, but when you’re taking sacks and incomplete passes instead of those five or six yards, or getting chased down from behind by a defensive end, or throwing that horrible interception on the sideline after he was chased to his right, even if you’re not making those explosive plays out of the pocket, you still have to be making the smart plays, which DeVito hasn’t quite gotten yet.

JS: Andrew, what’s a problem or something you saw from Saturday’s game that you think can and will be fixed come Syracuse’s game against No. 1 Clemson Saturday night.

AG: This is a little nebulous, but I think, and this is a point where I do, I tend to agree with Syracuse’s players and coaching staff, is they, in their first two games, more or less didn’t have much of a clue as to what they would consistently see from their opponent. Liberty, obviously, no game film. Maryland, you get one unrepresentative sample against a clearly not good Howard team where they had two special teams touchdowns or one and a blocked punt for a safety and a kick return for a touchdown. So they didn’t really know what to expect. That will not be the case with Clemson. They have plenty of film on Dabo Swinney’s Clemson. They played Dabo Swinney’s Clemson with Trevor Lawrence last year. There’s no secrets about what they’re going to get, and that helps a bit at least in terms of, we saw the defense get lost on assignments on Saturday, not just get beat deep on a route because they didn’t turn their hips quick enough and a guy ran past them. They were running to the wrong player and two guys were covering one guy when a safety was supposed to go deep with the outside receiver and he just got wide open. That sort of thing. I don’t think we’ll see that as much with Clemson because they are more familiar. The issue then, is well they might be scheming them correctly, Clemson just has the athletes and the players that it doesn’t even matter and they’re going to make plays anyway.

EB: My biggest improvement they need to make and I think they will improve because it really can’t get much worse is the big play chasing the defense did. You kind of talked about it earlier Andrew, talking to Andrew Armstrong and Kendall Coleman after the game, they both said, the whole defense as a whole needs to be more solid, play their roles, don’t go big play chasing is what Kendall Coleman said. Because that’s when leaks happen and that’s when big plays happen. I don’t know how many 50-plus yard plays Maryland had but it had to be 5-10.

AG: Not 50 plus. They had two 50-plus yard plays and one of them was a run which is always not good.

EB: By Funk, Jake Funk. Great name by the way.

AG: Who’s their fourth string running back.

EB: And still ran for 92 yards on one drive.

AG: 94.

EB: 94. Either way, that’s one thing that has to get better and will get better just because, I don’t know, some of it’s game plan dependent, but they’re just chasing too many plays trying to create too many turnovers.

JS: Yeah, that part to me, I mean I was thinking that as well just with the tackling stuff that Dino’s been talking about. That’s a little bit more mental and a little bit more being focused.

AG: Not trying to force a fumble but maybe just understanding that giving up four yards on first down isn’t the end of the world.

JS: Those are things that the guys can figure out on their own and it’s not like a systematic issue. Missing tackles is not like, oh my gosh this team is done. You can just not miss them the next time. Cause we saw that last year like you said.

AG: Ryan Guthrie and they just started tackling better.

JS: The Pitt game it looked like it was over for Syracuse football because they couldn’t stop the run.

AG: And then they figured it out.

JS: Then they went on a run of their own. But I also think that the defensive line’s a big thing here because they played well the last two games against Clemson, there’s no reason to think that they can’t get more than one sack which they had against Maryland last week. I understand, Dino today was very fair in the fact that Clemson’s offensive line is very good. The protection is very good. They beat ‘Bama by a lot of points. Every part of Clemson is very good, but I think in the Carrier Dome, at home, with one of the biggest crowds they’ve had in 20-some-odd years probably going back to the McNabb era, I think there’s a chance that the defense gets rolling a little bit. It’s all the first quarter and we’re getting into predictions I think a little bit here which I wanted to do here anyway. But to me this game, Syracuse probably loses by two to three touchdowns. I’m in the 17 point is what I’m thinking. But I think it’s a game for maybe the first half, maybe even three quarters. It’s the same concept where Syracuse thinks that if they get over 80 plays, they can turn on a team right? That’s when the guy, if you’re going straight at and blocking a guy, that’s when he starts to fold at the hips a little bit because he’s tired. That’s when Clemson having all five-stars and backup five-stars and just a deeper depth chart than you starts to fold you like it happened last year. And I think that could happen again this year but I don’t think that Syracuse can’t hang around at all, it’s just having it not be Lamar Jackson in 2016.

AG: He scored three touchdowns in the first six offensive plays.

JS: It’s how can you not let the No. 1 team in the country jump on you. Cause if that happens, yeah, you can’t play from behind. Like they did the other day.

AG: I think even looking at the way Clemson beat Texas A&M this weekend is like, Texas A&M didn’t let Clemson jump on them, but you still knew who was going to win that game after the first quarter. And that’s kind of what I see happening. I think it’s, you’re right in that all Syracuse has to do is not get beat early. If you’re in this game halfway through the third quarter, I think you’re OK with that result.

JS: That’s your best, not best-case scenario but that’s you’re like, ‘This is OK.’

AG: That’s like, you can walk away from that game and not seem like, if you’re down 21-0 at the end of the first quarter, I know it’s the No. 1 team in the country but that’s two weeks in a row that you’re getting run off the field fast. And I just don’t think you can do that. I don’t think that they need to even take a leap. If you go to the end of the first quarter down 7-0 to Clemson at home, good job. You did what you needed to do. You are perfectly in that game.

EB: I’m with both of you guys. I think work on the defensive line, I don’t think they’ll have a game as irrelevant, probably the wrong word, but irrelevant as they did versus Maryland. One sack like you mentioned, Curtis Harper. But I don’t, the RPO’s that Maryland threw out there. The quick passes that they did that Locksley threw in there. Like you said, Syracuse just wasn’t ready for them. And they just completely negated the defensive line. Alton Robinson literally recorded only one stat and it was an assisted tackle in the whole game. And that’s first-team All-ACC, or preseason first-team All-ACC Alton Robinson. I don’t think, even against the top team in the country, the defensive line will have as bad a game as they did against Maryland.

AG: And I asked Dino about getting pressure today and he wouldn’t say whether they would be reliant on the four-man and maybe five-man rushes or if they are going to bring some packages and looks to bring more pressure, understandably so, but he did basically say, if they’re not going to get pressure on Trevor Lawrence, if they’re going to let him stay in there in the pocket, almost no point in playing the game, cause that’s an NFL quarterback.

JS: Eric, what’s your score differential? I’m assuming you’re picking Clemson.

EB: I’m with you on two to three touchdowns. I don’t know if you want like a specific score, I could.

JS: No, I haven’t really thought of one myself. We’ll save that for the written Beat Writer Predictions on Dailyorange.com.

EB: The spread’s 24 right now?

AG: They opened at 24.5.

EB: I think it’ll be less than that. I can see them losing 17-21 range. Same as you guys said, I think it’ll be a game at least for the first couple quarters before Clemson ultimately pulls away.

JS: Alright, well we’ll have coverage all week with that and we’ll have In The Huddle coming out on Thursday with a couple stories leading into the game and some other things, and for now, we’ll do 30-second sound offs, starting right now, 15 minutes, go Andrew.

AG: Oh wow, I guess I’ll have to do a sound off about College GameDay is not coming to Syracuse. Not a surprise to anybody after the showing on Saturday but I have to say, just from the perspective of being a student at Syracuse and seeing what that environment could have been for the first time they ever came to campus, ESPN’s marquee college football programming, that would have been really cool, and I’m definitely bummed out that that’s not going to happen. Even the GameDay guys last week, like Lee Corso was like, ‘Yeah, I want to go to Syracuse, I’ve never been there, and it’s kind of a bummer.’

EB: Okay, I teased it earlier. Sardi’s pasta salad, they had it in the media room at the game. I just found out that their two founders names are both Phil which is incredible. But Sardi’s pasta salad, I’ve never been a big pasta salad guy my whole life, probably never had it more than once a year. I had like two or three servings, kept going back for more tupperware.

AG: You were like taking it out of the steel boxes.

EB: I was just stealing it. It was the best pasta salad ever. Sardi’s.

AG: Much better than the dry turkey sandwich in the box that accompanied it.

JS: Pasta salad.

AG: Stephen Bailey will attest to this pasta salad if you ask him about it.

JS: I’m a fan, if it’s too heavy on the Mayo, I’m out.

AG: It was like an Italian dressing.

JS: Oh wow.

EB: Tomatoes, cucumbers. So good.

AG: That’s the right way to make it. I don’t mess with the Mayo.

JS: Well it’s Monday evening and we’re all pretty hungry, so this has been the DO Sportscast.

Published on September 10, 2019 at 12:05 am