Syracuse Football: A game of musical chairs saved a season and a job

Here’s how a game of musical chairs saved the 2019 Syracuse football season and most importantly a man’s job. Here are all the details.

Syracuse football was 3-6 coming off of an embarrassing 58-27 blowout loss to Boston College. It was the fourth loss in a row and seemingly a sign of things to come in the final three games of the season.

Then Dino Babers and this Orange staff decided to finally play a game of musical chairs that not only saved the 2019 Syracuse football season but arguably saved a coach’s job.

Syracuse entered the season with three gaping holes on the offensive line with three players moving on (Koda Martin, Cody Conway, and Aaron Roberts). After the first week of the season starting center Sam Heckel went down and we haven’t seen him since.

That one little itsy bitsy injury has forced the entire offensive line to shuffle around. That has resulted in the Orange possessing the worst offensive line in all of college football.

Out of 130 eligible teams, Syracuse ranks dead last in sacks allowed (46). That’s an average of 4.6 sacks per game for a net loss of over 274 yards.

Back to that embarrassing loss vs Boston College, the Orange entered the bye week looking hard in the mirror and came up with a solution.

Syracuse put Airon Servais out at left tackle and slid Carlos Vettorello inside at center. Carlos had really struggled to play tackle and now he was being asked to do even more on the inside with protection calls, lining up his teammates, and snapping the ball to his quarterback Tommy DeVito.

Somehow, someway it all came together in Durham and Dino Babers commented on that moment and that decision during his Monday press conference:

"“You know Carlos has been working at that for a long time (playing center). The one thing I always talk about is football is like baseball. Okay here is one of those analogies, what the hell does he mean by that?If you want to have a good baseball team you have to have a catcher, a pitcher, shortstop, a second baseman, and a really good center fielder. Then the rest of your baseball team you can fill out the edges.It’s no different on a football team. You want to have a tailback, a quarterback, and a center. On defense, you want a one-technique, a mike linebacker, and a free safety. If you’ve got those six guys then you can start filling in the other positions.You don’t just want to throw a guy at center. That position affects so many people. So you don’t want to do that until the person is ready. Carlos came out and did a very decent job. He’s been training for that position and moment since August.”"

By making this switch, Syracuse not only saved their season at 4-6, with two games left to play, but they probably saved an Orange coach’s job.

Mike Cavanaugh is the offensive line coach for Syracuse and a lot of fans have been calling for his job after the performance of the unit in 2019. This game of musical chairs put guys in their natural positions and allowed the unit to play up to the ability the coaching staff believed they could in the offseason.

To finish off 2019, Syracuse still has two monumental, but not impossible challenges in front of them. If they win out, perhaps this season can be salvaged and this Orange squad can go bowling after all.