With the Syracuse football vs Clemson news breaking, the pressure is now on the Orange. Here’s why there’s so much pressure and what it means.
ICYMI the Syracuse football Twitter account officially announced the news that the Week 3 SU vs Clemson game will be set for primetime.
Also to recap, the Orange have put all their eggs in this Week 3 basket: with a legendary player having his jersey retired (Tim Green), homecoming weekend, single-game tickets are already sold out, the ACC and home opener for SU.
So it’s not that farfetched to say that Syracuse’s 2019 hinges on the result of this SU vs Clemson game. Bold move Cotton, let’s see if it pays off.
But hold your horses, everyone, before we rally for College GameDay to come to the salt city (which we did a full breakdown of here), Syracuse does have some other business to take care of.
LIKE THE FIRST TWO WEEKS OF THE SEASON?
Perhaps some Orange fans have forgotten but Syracuse vs Clemson will be taking place in Week 3, not Week 1. Before they open up the Carrier Dome for the first time in 2019, they’ll open up on the road for the first two weeks of the season.
Syracuse will play at Liberty on August 31st then will play at Maryland another week later. This is the first time the Orange are opening up with two true road games since 2010.
With SU putting so much pressure on itself for that Week 3 matchup with the weight of the entire season on the line, everyone is just assuming that Syracuse will start the season 2-0 which shouldn’t be the case.
While SU will be favored in both the Liberty and Maryland matchup, they should be circled as major trap games. What is a trap game?
"“A trap game is a game played against an opponent generally deemed to be easy to defeat. As a result, a person or team may not prepare as thoroughly as they would for a formidable opponent. Often this attitude and its attendant lack of preparation lead to a loss”, per Urban Dictionary."
We’ll get into both Maryland and Liberty in far greater detail when we get closer to the season, but here are a few nuggets to consider before we completely overlook these teams:
- Both Maryland and Liberty are welcoming in first-year head coaches in Mike Locksley (Terrapins) and Hugh Freeze (Flames). Which means they’ll still be trying to figure things out when they play Syracuse (just remember Dino Babers first several games of his Orange career).
- But also on the other side, both coaches are extremely dangerous:
- Locksley comes from some great roots and spent the last three years with the Alabama Crimson Tide, which includes a National Championship win in 2017.
- Hugh Freeze had a magical year with Ole Miss in 2015 going 10-3, although his Rebels tenure ended in controversy after some recruiting and academic violations. He was provided an ultimatum from the university: resign or be fired for violating the moral portion of his contract. He’s coached at the collegiate level for the last 13 years and is as dangerous as they come.
Long story short, Syracuse “should” win both of these games. But with all the hype around SU’s Week 3 opponent Clemson, the Orange must ensure they don’t get too cocky and overlook one of their first two opponents.
While everyone is ready to plan the parade for SU’s first ever ACC championship run, some humility should be considered. 10-3 was amazing in 2018, but all the experts are right, it’s an outlier compared to the rest of the mediocre recent history in the 21st century for the Orange.
SU still should have a chip on their shoulder as they try to prove 2018 wasn’t a fluke and it’s a sign of things to come. Their first opportunity to prove themselves isn’t vs Clemson in Week 3, it’s actually vs Liberty and vs Maryland in the first two weeks of the season.