Syracuse Football: Don’t overreact to offensive line woes says Dino Babers

Syracuse football head coach Dino Babers says don’t worry about the offensive line issues at Spring Football Saturday. Here’s why you shouldn’t worry.

The key for the 2019 Syracuse football squad starts and ends with the offensive line.

If Tommy DeVito is going to have a good season, he’ll need a steady offensive line. Especially considering his tendency to stay in the pocket.

If the Orange are going to end their 1,000-yard rushing drought in 2019, they’ll need the hogs up front creating lanes. Syracuse hasn’t had a 1,000-yard rusher since 2012 and that’s paramount to DeVito operating a balanced offense.

If you attended Spring Football Saturday you may have walked away a bit concerned about the trenches heading into 2019. But before that image is burned into your minds, please don’t overreact to what you saw.

Here is just one example of the offensive line folding like a used lawn chair on Saturday:

"Although the context is always important, per Syracuse football beat reporter Stephen Bailey: “only two 2019 starters played on Saturday in Airon Servais and Evan Adams.”"

After the scrimmage Dino Babers spoke to the media and reiterated that point:

"“We had the two young tackles going against Kendall Coleman and Alton Robinson, I mean there was no contest. You have to train your mind for what you’re really looking at. You have Kendall who came in as a freshman and beat everyone else for the job. Then you have Alton who came in as a sophomore and has been destroying people.So in the scrimmage you have both of those guys as seniors going against two kids who have never played. How do you think that looked? It looked like it was supposed to look like (laughter from the room). It looked BAD! But the good thing is those young kids are only going to get better. I mean if you’re covering Michael Jordan and you aren’t stopping him at all, you’re getting better even though he’s scoring all those points. The offensive linemen are getting better but Coleman and Robinson are so good you can’t tell. There may be a better pass rushing duo in college football, but I bet not many are.”"

In other words, the offensive line is only going to get better. More pieces are coming via transfer and guys are getting healthy for when it really counts in the Fall. While at times it may have been ugly on Saturday, it’ll be better in the long run.

Also a quick side note, Dino is right, Kendall Coleman and Alton Robinson are arguably one of the best pass-rushing duos in the country. They made light work of Syracuse’s offensive line and I imagine that’ll likely be the case vs any opponent in 2019.