Syracuse Football Report Card: How did Orange Players do against LSU?

If Syracuse wanted to win, most people knew that they were going to need a big game out of their third year quarterback. The quarterback who has had well documented injury problems at Syracuse is capable of doing big things both in the air and on the ground. Dungey is a flat-out play maker and has played great at times in his Syracuse career.

But Dungey did not play all that well this past weekend. I’ve always subscribed to the idea that

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Dungey is the Orange’s best option at quarterback and plays the position quite well. The past two seasons Dungey has turned out great numbers in his first two college seasons, and I thought he would make an even bigger jump this season.

In his first two seasons at Syracuse, Dungey complied 3,977 yards passing, 644 yards rushing, and 37 total TD’s, and 13 Int’s in just 17 games. Pretty impressive numbers but Dungey also has one his fair share of turning the ball over and beating up on some of Syracuse’s weaker opponents.

One of his biggest problems has been neglecting to look at of his primary receivers. This was a huge problem this week as Dungey’s interception, handing LSU all the momentum, came on a play where he never looked off his No. 1 option.

Throughout the remainder of the first half, the Syracuse defense was doing their job limiting LSU and winning the field position battle. This is where I thought Dungey would elevate to this season, that game was up for grabs and he took some bad sacks, called some premature time-outs and never was able to put up more points for the Orange.

Syracuse had an opportunity to score some points when Dungey aired it out 50-yards to WR Sean Riley who dropped it in the end zone. Dungey and the Orange offense had a chance to put up points and take control from the 7:58 mark in the first quarter to the 2:45 mark of the second quarter neither team scored. This is when Dungey needed to step up and score some points, grabbing control of the game.

Overall on the day, Dungey was 32/55, 265 yards, 1 TD, the big INT while also rushing the ball 13 times for 24 yards including 1 TD. These aren’t bad numbers but over the next eight games of the season I would like to see some improvement out of Eric Dungey. His offensive stat line isn’t terrible; but he needs to get rid of the ball, look through his progressions for the true open man, and stay in the pocket longer rather than looking to run.

Dungey’s decent number keep his grade up, and the aforementioned Riley drop hurts those numbers even more. I just see too much potential in the Oregon native, I would like to see him take over some games and really lead this offense down the field.