Despite early struggles, Syracuse football head coach Dino Babers still believes in his quarterback Tommy DeVito. Here are all the details.
For the third consecutive game, Syracuse football fans covered their eyes as Tommy DeVito rolled out of the pocket and made mistakes.
It was a familiar place that Tommy has found himself in this season.
The Orange are replacing three starters on the offensive line from last season. That inexperience and lack of chemistry has been painfully evident thus far.
In Week 3 vs the Clemson Tigers made it rain hellfire from all different kinds of angles thanks to defensive coordinator Brent Venables. The exotic blitz schemes confused Syracuse’s front line and DeVito didn’t have time to do much.
Clemson tallied an outstanding eight sacks, 15 tackles for loss, and held the Orange to 15 yards rushing on 42 attempts.
The Orange’s starting center Sam Heckel has missed the last two games due to injury, which has forced the team to play musical chairs at the position.
Grad-transfer Ryan Alexander has gone from the bench to the starting lineup. Carlos Vettorello is a redshirt freshman and Dakota Davis filled the last remaining hole. Airon Servais who has been the Orange’s starting center the last two years flipped over to tackle at the beginning of the season, but due to the Heckel injury has slid back inside.
So the front line hasn’t been ideal for the first time starter Tommy DeVito, that’s fair, but there’s no other way to slice it he struggled mightily in this game.
He finished 15-of-27 from the field for 172 passing yards no touchdowns and one terrible interception. Tommy had a paltry 5.2 quarterback rating to boot.
The final score is atrocious, Syracuse lost 41-6, but the game had many turning points where the Orange had an opportunity to make it a one-score game but failed to maximize the opportunity.
With the game hanging in the balance, Syracuse finally broke through thanks to Chris Fredrick who tipped and intercepted a pass giving his team the ball inside the opposing 10-yard line.
On the very first play he rolled out to the right, instead of throwing it away he appeared to force the ball into a spot that simply nothing was there, Clemson intercepted it and a few plays later took it 87 yards to the house to blow the game open.
"“When you touch the oven and it’s hot, you get burned, you don’t touch the oven again. I was disappointed that it kind of happened in the same place, in the same situation.”"
On top of that Babers expanded saying he had a long conversation with Tommy about it and he truly believes that DeVito will grow from this and he won’t continue making that mistake.
The Orange is the New Fast offense has looked anything but. Something has looked off about this offense so far this season, with so many new pieces being incorporated in 2019, this offense is going to take time to gel.
But the biggest piece, Tommy DeVito needs to find a way to make some plays for his team and not continue to shoot themselves in the foot. The defense played well enough to win this game, but the offense couldn’t deliver when it mattered most.
Up next for the Orange they continue their homestand vs Western Michigan at noon in the loud house on Saturday.