Sitting in front of the media, the concrete underbelly of the Carrier Dome bleachers slanted overhead, Dino Babers laid it on the table for Syracuse football.

“Those young men are hurting,” Babers said of his team. “And so are the coaches.”

The Orange had just suffered another demoralizing near-miss — this time to Pittsburgh, 27-20 — in which SU gave up the most sacks in a single game since Nov. 24, 2007, its running game again struggled to do anything and another solid defensive performance was wasted.

“We need to regroup and we need to go back and we really need to check ourselves,” Babers continued. “And we will do that. As a family. And then we will come out and we will try to do a lot better than what we’ve been doing.”

But trying harder won’t be enough for a Syracuse (3-4, 0-3 Atlantic Coast) team off to its worst conference start in 10 years. The issues — namely a nonexistent run game, an inability to protect the quarterback and inconvenient injuries — run deeper than week-to-week game-planning and scheme. SU doesn’t have the personnel to fix its pass protection issues, and whatever subsequent run game it tries to establish will be stymied. As for injuries, that comes down to good luck, and that’s been hard to come by for the Orange.

Syracuse can’t fix what’s bogging it down fast enough to win three out of its last five games. The only hope of getting better seems to be spending time the Orange don’t have practicing what they thought they could already do.

“Well,” Babers said to the cameras, “We could not throw the ball ever again to see if we wanted to go after a record. Or, we can keep competing and getting better so that down the road we can go through a bunch of games where we never give up a sack.”

“Down the road” isn’t now and it certainly isn’t this season. Syracuse has been down an offensive lineman since center Sam Heckel left with a lower-body injury against Liberty. Babers said SU might “need to start getting some other guys in” on the offensive line, but he doesn’t have that option with SU’s roster. The group that has started every game since Liberty — Ryan Alexander, Evan Adams, Airon Servais, Dakota Davis and Carlos Vettorello — are SU’s five-best healthy linemen; yet, they’ve given up 33 sacks.

“It’s not intramurals,” Babers said. “Just because you’re the next guy you get a chance to play. It’s not like that. But if they’re good enough and they give us an opportunity somewhere down the road, then we need to give those guys a chance to see if they can do better.”

To pin the blame entirely on the offensive line is unfair. The running backs, tight ends and Tommy DeVito all play a role in pass protection. Regardless, the continual failure to execute in both pass and run schemes has entirely hamstrung Syracuse’s offense. The Orange average 24.7 points a game this season, more than two touchdowns less than the 40.2 mark of 2018.

Absent a run game — the Orange averages 2.9 yards a carry — DeVito’s taken a beating in the pocket so bad that Babers chose to keep him out of the game after DeVito took a hard shot from Pitt’s Paris Ford and fumbled on a scramble. Backup Clayton Welch, who’d already spelled DeVito a few times as a running threat under center, gave the offense an Eric Dungey-esque flavor with his running and risk-taking downfield. Welch led SU to two touchdowns, but it easily could’ve been two turnovers.

Still, with DeVito’s physical breakdown, the better quarterback might be playing in addition to the healthier quarterback. That alone speaks volumes about where Syracuse’s offense stands.

And even with a combined 30 points in two games, the Orange finished each game a touchdown short of tying. Even with a spate of injuries throughout the secondary, SU’s defense has been everything it needs to be this season. It’s allowing 26.1 points a game, almost a point fewer than the Orange surrendered a year ago.

“It’s extremely hard to win and all the small details have to be corrected,” Kendall Coleman said. “And that’s really what it comes down to.”

To some extent, things have regressed to the mean. Turnovers haven’t been nearly as profusive, same with sacks. And while SU bullied some banged up teams last season, it’s now on the other end of those beatings.

Syracuse’s remaining schedule isn’t that difficult. But Syracuse won’t beat three of Florida State, Duke, Louisville, Boston College and Wake Forest if what we saw Friday is what Syracuse is: Quarterback fleeing from the rush, run game nowhere to be found and a defense clinging on.

That Syracuse is reliant on its defense so heavily this season is a paradigm shift for a Babers-coached SU team. In his first two years at the helm, both 4-8 seasons, the Orange would try to score with opponents, only to come up short. Now, it’s a stout defense Syracuse counts on to give the offense a chance.

Unfortunately, in the same game Andre Cisco and Ifeatu Melifonwu returned from injury for that defense, both Trill Williams and Antwan Cordy left the game with injuries. Their status going forward is unknown. DeVito is still not in perfect health and McKinley Williams and Sam Heckel might not play at all the rest of this season.

You can’t preemptively coach for injuries, but SU’s had seven games and a full camp to improve its offensive line and figure out a run game. It hasn’t.

Instead of ironing out its issues, Syracuse has been rolled by all four Power 5 opponents its played to date, and that trend isn’t changing the rest of the year.

“No one is going to feel sorry for us,” Babers said.

Andrew Graham is a senior staff writer for The Daily Orange where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at aegraham@syr.edu or on Twitter @A_E_Graham.

Published on October 20, 2019 at 10:33 pm