Syracuse Football: Top 5 bittersweet oranges from loss to MTSU

4. Not going to stretch the ball down the field?

What the heck happened to this offense? When players weren’t faking injuries for the Blue Raiders, the Orange offense still couldn’t get it moving. This isn’t the 2000 Baltimore Ravens defense we’re talking about here. It wasn’t just the execution, which was obviously poor, but the play calling was suspect.

A lot of screens, bubble plays, crap run plays, and dangerous quarterback running (more on that later). So what could be the reason for this? Are the Orange not as good as we thought they were? Did we underestimate the ‘Scott Shafer‘ emotional factor?

That’s what Dino Babers suggested in his postgame comments. The only long ball I saw was when Dungey got knocked out of the game and Zack Mahoney came in. Like I don’t agree with the notion SU isn’t talented enough because they have the horses clearly. Look at Steve Ishmael, look at Erv Philips.

These are both players who could and should break the all-time reception mark at Syracuse. This is a University that has Pro Football Hall of Famer’s at the position. I know it was a little bit ago, but that’s significant. There’s no excuse not to adapt when things aren’t working. The Orange weren’t making things happen and enter halftime and things continued not to work.