Ah, to play the role of Monday morning quarterback. The time when we look and think back to the weekend’s game and second guess every wrong decision.

If only I had … It’s clear I should have … I wish I could have …

It’s perhaps the easiest position in football. So from the comfort of my apartment I look back at Syracuse’s 19-16 double-overtime loss, and one play continues to irk me. Faced with a fourth-and-1 at the Rutgers 2-yard line in the first overtime, SU head coach Doug Marrone opted to kick the field goal instead of going for it.

It was the wrong decision.

‘There, I just wanted to make sure I got the points knowing that they’re (Rutgers) going to take the field and a lot of things could happen,’ Marrone said. ‘They could fumble the snap. They could fumble the football, which we ended up doing in overtime. So I wanted to make sure I took the points and moved on and got to the next overtime period.’

Well, let’s think about that for a second. Couldn’t SU long snapper Eric Morris have a poor snap on a field goal attempt just as easily as Rutgers could fumble on its own possession? Couldn’t holder Charley Loeb fumble the snap as he tries to set it down for kicker Ross Krautman?

What guarantees the success of a field goal but makes running a normal fourth-down play so risky? Especially for a team that had two kicks blocked during the course of the game.

But that’s surface-level stuff. Marrone furthered his explanation as to why he opted against lining up and pounding the ball up the middle for a potential first down or touchdown.

‘My philosophy as a football coach is to never take the game away from the players,’ Marrone said. ‘What I didn’t want to do is get stopped, and we’ve been stopped before. Rutgers is very good on defense for tackles for loss, so why not kick the three points, which I felt comfortable about.’

Marrone is absolutely right that the Scarlet Knights defense is great at getting tackles for loss in the backfield. Rutgers came into the game in a tie for second in the nation in tackles for loss per game with 9.3.

But that was absolutely not the case on Saturday. The stellar RU front was kept in check by the Orange offensive line, only managing three tackles for loss throughout the course of the game. And two of those were sacks of Nassib.

The only time an SU running back was stopped behind the line of scrimmage was when Rutgers cornerback Logan Ryan met Antwon Bailey in the backfield for a loss of 1 yard on a first-and-10 play with 14 seconds left in the third quarter.

In other words, Syracuse hadn’t been stopped before like Marrone said — at least not in this game.

The Orange faced exactly two third-and-1 situations prior to overtime against the Scarlet Knights on Saturday. The first such situation came in the second quarter, and Syracuse opted to throw. Nassib’s pass intended for Bailey out of the backfield was too far in front of him and fell incomplete.

The second short-yardage situation came with less than 10 minutes remaining in the game. This time, SU opted to run. Jerome Smith got the carry and ran up the middle, bouncing off tacklers to get the first down.

Marrone even applauded that run by Smith.

‘He hit the pile, and got bounced a little bit, and then he found a crease and ended up gaining extra yards,’ Marrone said. ‘I thought it was a great effort trying to get the first down.’

In overtime, Smith gained a half-yard on third-and-1 to set up the crucial fourth-down play.

And for some reason, on the game’s most important short-yardage situation, Marrone decided against handing the ball to Smith or Bailey — even though the team needed less than 1 yard for a first down and only 2 yards for a touchdown.

It’s puzzling, and I don’t understand it because Rutgers had shown no ability to stop the run. Of Syracuse’s five games this season, Saturday marked the highest yards-per-carry average by SU running backs. Bailey and Smith combined to average 5 yards per carry against the Scarlet Knights, more than any other game in 2011.

‘We knew we were going to be able to run the ball, and that’s what we showed coming out of the second half,’ offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett said. ‘They were going to try and stop Ryan in the pass game. We came out running and did a really good job.’

Had Syracuse gone for it, it’s unclear how the rest of the game would have played out. But it was shocking for me to see Marrone — a former offensive lineman who loves to overpower opponents with his stellar offensive line — decide to go the other way and kick the field goal.

To the observer, it displayed a lack of faith in his offensive line. And for a team supposedly built on running the ball first, running the ball second and throwing the ball third — that’s not the message you want to send.

Michael Cohen is the sports editor for The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at mjcohe02@syr.edu or on Twitter at @Michael_Cohen13.

Published on October 1, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Michael: mjcohe02@syr.edu | @Michael_Cohen13