Syracuse Football: Two challenging games revealed versus former ACC championship foes

On Friday, the Atlantic Coast Conference leaked a small preview of the 2025 ACC football schedule. The full schedule will be released in a two-hour special on the ACC Network and ESPN2 on Monday night from 9 pm to 11 pm.

As it pertains to Syracuse football, they had two games announced as they will open up their ACC portion of the schedule on the road at Clemson on September 20th. And then on October 4th, Syracuse football will head to the Dallas area to play SMU for the first time in program history. Both teams played each other in the 2024 ACC championship game before making the College Football Playoff.

And speaking of those playoffs, don't forget that the Orange will officially start their 2025 season on the road in Atlanta against Tennessee on August 30th. So not only will three early games be on the road (though one is technically a neutral-site game that just happens to be a lot closer to Tennessee than Syracuse, NY), but they will play three early games against teams good enough to have made the latest CFP.

On paper, Syracuse football has a challenging 2025 schedule.

So in recent years, the Orange tended to start heavy at home and this year they make up for it by going really heavy on the road. And don't look at me to complain because I love it. I don't buy into the schedule light and hopefully, you get enough wins to get a bowl bid.

I subscribe to the theory of "to be the man, you've got to beat the man" so bring it on. The road part kind of sucks though because at least one of these games at home would have been awesome for Syracuse fans but this is the schedule before them.

And while the 2025 Syracuse football team will look a lot different than the 2024 Syracuse football team, in an era of NIL and transfer portals, so will just about every other team's roster. So a schedule like this could also favor the Orange for those who care about polls and strength of schedule.

Get at least two wins in those games and you have to believe this team is in really good shape for a chance to win the ACC. Win all three and now you are amongst the elite. But even if you only win one or zero but play competitively, there is a lot of season left against tough teams to pull out wins and you can still win over fans, but how sweet would it be to win three games on the road against teams like SMU, Clemson and Tennessee?

Then play a heavy home schedule the rest of the way in front of excited fans who are seemingly buying into the Fran Brown era of Syracuse football? Let's see on Monday night what the schedule looks like for sure but I think there are reasons Syracuse fans should be excited going into the 2025 season starting on August 30th.