Syracuse Football: How a Dino Babers Offense Changes Things

As new Syracuse University head football coach Dino Babers talked the audience through a short visualization exercise at his press conference Monday, I received four text messages from four friends within seconds of each other. Each one of those text messages said basically the same thing (paraphrased): “I never heard of Dino Babers before, but I’m pumped up to see some points on the scoreboard.”

These friends are fellow CNYers and lifelong Orange fans. Three of them have played high school football, two played in college, and one currently coaches junior varsity football. The fourth actually works for his local newspaper covering high school sports in Florida. Are these guys football geniuses? Not by any means, but they do know a little more about the game than your average fan. So, the two things each of them expressed struck me.

None of them knew who this new coach was. They didn’t know he was tied to Baylor until the week before he was hired. Until the seven days leading up to the hire, they had never heard his name or that he was the head coach of Bowling Green. In fact, only one of them even knew that Bowling Green was putting up serious offensive numbers (the coach).

The second thing that got me was how each one of them, as life long fans of the Orange, craved offense. I can understand this sentiment. After all, the Orange went through more quarterbacks in the last three years than most colleges need in a decade and during that time, the offense has spit and sputtered under a different scheme each season. The most amusing part of it was how the only time the offense ever seemed to work in the last three years was when one of the multiple quarterbacks was running around like a crazy man because it was a broken play.

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With these thoughts in mind, I started trolling all of the websites that Syracuse fans vice their opinions on. What I found was two types of fan. First, the fan who has an itching desire to see 40 and 50 point games, 500 yard offensive days, and so much speed it makes your eyes water from the breeze. These are the ones who, almost without exception, are excited about Babers. The second type of fan sees the hire as a bust-in-waiting because Syracuse allegedly can’t recruit the necessary speed, so it should have found a pro-style guy who would have a solid defense and win low scoring affairs. The kind of guy that would have taken Syracuse over the top in close games against Clemson and LSU this season.

Let me address that second type of thinking. If you are a fan of Syracuse football and you watched two or more games this season, you wouldn’t be caught dead claiming that Syracuse lost to Clemson and LSU because Scott Shafer was bad at clock management. Those games were only close because the players went out there and left it all on the field. A real fan can tell you the three reasons those games were about as unwinnable as it gets: consistent execution miscues, playing slower than you are because of confusion, and good ‘ole talent difference.

That’s not to say the games couldn’t have been won, just that they couldn’t have been won with a team put together the way this year’s Orange were.

Nov 7, 2015; Louisville, KY, USA; Syracuse Orange quarterback Eric Dungey (2) looks to pass the ball against the Louisville Cardinals during the first quarter at Papa John

It was painfully obvious the second Eric Dungey touched the field that the Syracuse Offense was built for Terrel Hunt and his capabilities, or lack thereof. I am a Hunt fan, but he was far from a perfect quarterback. He struggled with short and intermediate accuracy, deep timing, out-routes, hot reads, and sometimes the pace of the game seemed to surprise him (read: scrambled too quickly and too often because of non-existent pressure or getting through his reads too fast). What he lacked in polish from the pocket, he more than made up for in ingenuity and gamesmanship. When a play needed to be made, and it didn’t need to be with his arm, he could make it more often than not.

It’s this type of player that makes running the pistol and zone read such a perfect harmony. Colin Kaepernick was able to make people the world over think he was a good quarterback after running the pistol in college and then the zone read in the NFL. Offensive Coordinator Tim Lester knew what he had and put together a textbook way to win with Hunt. But, without Hunt, the offense would hold back a quarterback with more advanced pocket presence. Which is exactly what happened with Dungey and the offense as a whole showed it. It was very easy to key in on what the offense was planning to do before they even did it. Too much of the offense was based on quick misdirection as opposed to good ‘ole fashioned execution.

This discussion of the Syracuse offense sets us up for the point of this article: can the spread work in Syracuse.

The simple answer is yes. It absolutely can. If it couldn’t 48 FBS teams wouldn’t have run some variation of the spread in 2009 (per ESPN) and even more today (even Stanford runs a version of it now). The spread has many variations, but what it comes down to is making the defense cover as much territory as possible to create passing and running lanes.

There is another part of Babers’ offense that goes deeper than the spread: speed. He teaches a form of offense that requires all 11 players on an offense to be on the same page, without interaction with a coaching staff or each other in order to run as many plays as possible. Yes, it is a bit gimmicky, but the results are so good that even the most talented teams in the nation try to run as many plays as possible.

This is how it looked this year: offense finishes a play, huddle, play call from the sidelines, QB tells everyone the play (or even two plays with a line call based on the defense), line up, offensive line calls protection changes, QB modifies play (if need be), calls for motion, snap, something happens.

This is how a Babers offense looks: offense finishes a play, offense lines up, offensive line calls protection at the same time the skill positions decide on their route/blocking duty based on the defense, QB makes any adjustments, snap, something happens.

If you are keeping score, that’s 10 things being done per play for the first option and six for the second. The reason a classic pro-style offense doesn’t work as well as a spread in a fast offense is because too many players are bunched up on each other and misdirection is too important of a component to ignore. A spread gives each player enough space and enough options to let each player make their own decision (which if done correctly, is the same decision as the quarterback and the other nearby players). This allows for less time from play to play and what happens when the offense runs plays? They have the potential to score. So, wouldn’t you logically try to run as many plays as possible to score as many points as possible?

There is a reason Chip Kelly has been coaching the mantra “touchdown, first down, get down” to his quarterbacks since he was at New Hampshire. Line it up, run the play, and score, or move forward, or at least don’t get dead, then do it all again before the defense knows what hit them.

Of course, this style of trickery only works at the collegiate level. That’s why the New England Patriots run so few plays a game. Yes, that’s sarcasm. Arguably the best offense in the last fifteen years in the NFL has belonged to the Patriots, who are coached by a guy (Bill Belichick) who was brought up teaching the pro-style, run first offense. Interesting how a failed attempt to coach the Cleveland Browns would lead him to glory running a team that runs more plays that most stat trackers can count.

Sep 4, 2015; Syracuse, NY, USA; Syracuse Orange running back Dontae Strickland (18) carries the ball against the Rhode Island Rams during the third quarter at the Carrier Dome. Mandatory Credit: Rich Barnes-USA TODAY Sports

I say all of this to hopefully answer the question of whether or not Babers’ brand of football could be successful in Syracuse. Will it be successful? Maybe, maybe not. Only time will tell. But what good does it do any fan to decide it will be a failure before the games are even played? It works for other teams, some who were just as bad off as Syracuse. It works in college and professional football. So many teams at the professional level employ spread and speed qualities that an argument can be made that a fast spread-based system is the new pro-style.

Remember, there was a time Baylor, Texas Tech, Washing State, Cal, Utah, Clemson, SMU, Houston, Northwestern, Oregon, Hawaii, South Florida, UCF, and Duke were in a similar situation as Syracuse right now. Take a look at what the biggest change in their programs was when they began winning again. It was offense. It was a high-powered offense. It was a high-powered offense built on fast plays, spreading the field, and athletes that didn’t measure up (allegedly) to the recruits the powerhouse schools got.

Although some fans out there will make the claim that Babers trickery won’t work in Syracuse because of a bunch of perceived reasons, I recommend you let history do the talking. Babers’ brand of football can be successful in Syracuse. And if it does, the naysayers will point at Babers taking a better job. Maybe that’s the case, but in four years, after three straight winning seasons, a couple of bowl wins, an offense in the top 25 nationally, consistently around the top 25, and all the money that comes with that success, wouldn’t it be a little easier for Syracuse to find and pay for the right new head coach that it was these last four times?