With Syracuse football training camp approaching, The Daily Orange beat writers, Sam Blum, Jesse Dougherty, Matt Schneidman and Paul Schwedelson, will reveal the top 15 preseason storylines with a new one every other day. Make sure to check dailyorange.com and click here to see all the posts as we count down to camp.

Continuing the theme of defensive overhaul, that task stands larger in the secondary than at any other position group. Syracuse lost three starters and one significant contributor and will have to rely on a pieced-together group of unproven elders and inexperienced youth.

Durell Eskridge, Darius Kelly, Brandon Reddish and Ritchy Desir have all departed from an SU defense that will face elite quarterbacks such as North Carolina State’s Jacoby Brissett, Clemson’s Deshaun Watson and Florida State’s Everett Golson.

That’s three starters and one significant contributor that made way for a crop of youth that will be tasked with improving last season’s ninth-best pass defense in the conference. Chauncey Scissum, Antwan Cordy, Rodney Williams, Cordell Hudson and Corey Winfield are all redshirt freshmen and sophomores listed as starters or co-starters on the preseason depth chart.

Scissum or Williams is listed as the first-string free safety, Hudson is listed in line with senior Julian Whigham as one of the starting cornerbacks, Cordy is the first strong safety listed and Winfield is listed in line with junior Wayne Morgan at the other corner spot. Granted, that may just be to push competition in training camp for the likely cornerback starters in Whigham and Morgan, but young players are in the fold regardless.

Head coach Scott Shafer even said at ACC Media Day that Whigham, a returning starter, hasn’t locked up a starting spot just yet.

If Hudson, a redshirt freshman, does surpass the senior, the lineup across SU’s secondary will be vastly inexperienced. And though Morgan is a junior, he’s coming off a season in which he missed nine games due to injury so Winfield could make that back line even more raw if Morgan isn’t 100 percent.

With a month to go until Syracuse opens the season against Rhode Island, Shafer has plenty of young options to fill out his defensive backfield. But among the defensive departures he has to compensate for, those in the secondary may be the most daunting.

 

Published on August 3, 2015 at 8:00 am

Contact Matt: mcschnei@syr.edu | @matt_schneidman