Syracuse Football: Top 3 nuggets for Week 1 vs Liberty Flames

Syracuse football opens its season on the road. Here are the top three nuggets to keep an eye out for from our Paul A. Esden Sr vs the Liberty Flames.

First up on the slate for the Syracuse football squad is the Liberty Flames in Week 1.

Now before you chalk this one up in the win column let me fill you in on a few key pieces of information.

Liberty moved from the FCS to the big leagues last year but they bring with them a legacy of success. Spending 30 years in the FCS they had 21 winning seasons, they are also just one of 9 teams to post a winning season in their first year in FBS; not posting a losing season since 2005.

A few nuggets on the Flames:

• First-year coach Hugh Freeze (who may have one of the coolest names ever) is no stranger to coaching at the highest level. Coaching Ole Miss from 2012-2016. Despite have success at Ole Miss, Mr. Freeze (cue Arnold Schwarzenegger voice here), had to get to the choppers as he exited Ole Miss abruptly under NCAA allegations of failure to control his coaching staff.  This resulted in self-imposed loss of wins and forfeiture of shared bowl earnings for Ole Miss to the tune of approx. 8 million.
  • He had other impulse control apparently as the father of three girls used his University provided cell phone to call an escort service. Despite his questionable ethics, Hugh brings a Liberty team to the field that could be termed an Orange is the New Fast spin-off. The Flames averaged over 30 points per game and 423 total yards last year.
• Senior QB Steven ‘Buckshot’ Calvert is one for the vaunted Orange secondary to be on the lookout. He threw for over 3,000 yards last year, although he is prone to throw an interception or two (18 last year). Is it just me or between Mr. Freeze and Buckshot the Flames have the inside track on ‘coolest names in college football award’?
• The Flames have a solid combination of running backs.
  • Kentory Matthews is the returning starter who went down in the third game of the season.  Frankie Hickson was able to step in and accomplished a feat that no Syracuse running back has done since 2012, eclipsed 1,000 yards. Throw in Peytton Pickett who stepped in as the No. 2 back and rushed for 470 yards. Key stat here is all three backs averaged over 4.2 yards per carry with Kentory averaging an eye-popping 7.2 yards!

Now before we have any jumpers out there let me talk you off the edge.

The Flames have the talent and that is what I wanted every fan and member of the Orange Team to understand; however, they were not playing the crème de la crème of college football winning games against Old Dominion, Idaho St, and Norfolk State while losing to North Texas and Massachusetts.

So to summarize this is a game to watch and a perfect game for Tommy DeVito to get some experience but this game will be a solid win to kick off the Orange season.