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SYRACUSE - 20

WASHINGTON - 41

Well, it all started out so promising. Syracuse got the ball on the opening possession, took it downfield, and grabbed a 7-0 lead on a big 28 yard run from ryan nassib. Surprisingly, syracuse d came out and got us the ball back. SU then added to their lead, a 29 yard field goal from ross krautman. 10-0 orangemen, we're in business!

From there the game took a very different direction than the orange faithful had envisioned from this point. jake locker and the huskies (mainly this dude jermaine kearse who absolutely torched us) rattled off 27 unanswered points.

The real turning point of this game?!? Syracuse down 13-10 with time winding down in the 1st half. Cuse has driven deep into husky territory, has the ball inside the 20 with under 10 seconds left. instead of calling timeout or spiking the ball, ryan nassib scrambles around and throws an incomplete pass with no time left. cuse doesn't even get to try a field goal (krautman missed a fg earlier so I can sort of see why they didnt send him out right away) and what happens to open the 2nd half??? First play from scrimmage Kearse takes a 57 yard touchdown pass from jake locker. just great, 20-10.

The huskies would never look back.

In my pre-game post I said that the cuse will win or lose this game in the secondary. It seemed at times jake locker moved the ball at will through the orange defense. Locker's final line was 22 of 33 passing attempts for 289 yards and 4 touchdowns. Three of those touchdowns were to the aforementioned jermaine kearse. i'm sure that his performance will only further solidify his place atop draft boards.

Another knock against the secondary? tackling, or lack there of. any time a husky receiver got the ball they were running for 30 after the catch. open field tackling was brutal. the corners were soft. syracuse has to get better or we are going to regress to the days of grob..

So, syracuse is 1-1. Heading home. the undefeated season will have to wait for another year. coming up on the syracuse schedule are back to back home games v. maine and colgate. assuming all goes according to plan, syracuse should be 3-1 heading into conference play. the big east has looked beatable. lets just get some momentum going!!

things that need to be worked on :

1. THE OFFENSIVE LINE!!

2. Pass coverage!

3. Open field tackling by the secondary!!!

4. Red-Zone offense.

pre-game post. beat washington.

we're hours away from this week's syracuse game and anticipation is running high. personally, i'm sitting watching the florida-south florida game hoping for a big east win. last week the conference gave an overall disappointing showing, but the orangemen of syracuse managed to represent the conference proudly.

rolling into washington with a 1-0 record feels pretty good. syracuse made their mistakes week 1, but they weren't mistakes that you couldn't correct in practice this week. I trust doug marrone addressed it and corrected it. its already been a pretty solid day (I passed wayne gretzky on the street this morning in nyc) and a syracuse victory will really tie the weekend together nicely.

An article on syracuse.com previewing the game this morning said derrell smith lead syracuse in 2007 v. washington with 19 rushing yards. NINETEEN!?!? how can it be that syracuse's leading rusher in a complete game had 19 yards? just that fact alone makes me want notre dame to win even bigger this week v. michigan. and I never root for notre dame.

Jake Locker this. Jake Locker that. Time for syracuse to kick this guy in the teeth. starting with the first play of the game. get in his face and put him on the turf. shake him up. this is going to be a very different syracuse team than the last one washington saw and they wont know what hit them. i hope. jump on them early!

Last week the secondary did a great job holding Akron to only a couple big passes and we are going to need a repeat of that today if cuse wants to win their 2nd west coast game in 13 tries. I am confident syracuse's rushing defense will rise to the occasion. this game will be won or lost by the secondary!

delone carter, we need a big play! I think we're all ready for a 60 yard touchdown run tonight. make it happen.

LETS GO ORANGE!! Rumor has it there will be a lot of syracuse fans there from the nunesmagician.com website, lets hope they all go home happy.

And now we're gonna party like its 2003!!!

SYRACUSE - 29

AKRON - 3

YES! The Syracuse University football team has done it! For the first time since the 49-47 double overtime victory at chapel hill in the fall of 2003 the orangemen have opened their football season with a VICTORY. The quarterback on that day was RJ Anderson, on this day we had first time starter Ryan Nassib under center. I for one liked what I saw for the most part, but he needs improvement if he wants to win any games in the Big East.

Syracuse lost the coin toss but for some reason akron deferred possession to the 2nd half. Syracuse promptly took the ball downfield led by Ryan Nassib and eventually connected on a 23 yard pass to Aaron Weaver (hofstra transfer), who picked up some YACs and ran it into the endzone for a 7-0 cuse lead. They would never look back.

First impressions of weaver: damn that kid is big!! and he's fast too! watching him cut across the middle of the field finding open space was a welcome change to the dropped passes and 6 yard screens that go nowhere we've grown accustomed to. Cuse fans should look for him on gameday #87 and expect to see him as a primary target for Nassib. He's 6'3" and he has some hands (picked up a nassib fumble on the 2nd drive of the game). Welcome to the team!

Another WR that I was impressed with was Van Chew (#82). 3 catches for 79 yards and a TD. His TD catch was a beautiful diving snag in the endzone to end the 1st half.

As for the return of Delone Carter, he picked up 91 yards on 26 carries and a 1 yard TD run. He ran strong but I think we all would like to see some big yardage plays from him against a weak opponent like Akron. He didn't participate in spring practice due to some off the field issues (something involving a snowball???) so maybe he was just getting the rust off..

Antwon Bailey had himself a nice day as well. 9 rushes for 55 yards and 4 catches for 30 yards gave him 85 yards on the day. Frankly, I would have liked to have seen more of him in the 1st half. Delone Carter runs hard and gets the yardage but it'd be a nice change of pace to bring Bailey in for a few more touches early. Maybe thats something Marrone can look for later in the season. Bailey opened the 2nd half for cuse with a 24 yard reverse and punished Akron's defense, even going as far as to make #49 cry at one point!!

It wasn't all pretty for the cuse though. Botched extra points!? unacceptable!! mike holmes' punt returning? AWFUL! honestly i think mike holmes is afraid of catching punts. He looked scared out there when the ball was coming down and could have turned the ball over 3 times himself if not for some fortunate bounces. Another area of weakness was the offensive line. They have GOT to do a better job of protecting nassib, if they can't stop akron's pressure than how can we expect them to block defenders against stronger big east teams?

The defense was as good as I've seen it in a long time. Akron was held to 3 points all night. Those 3 points came after a nassib fumble at his own 18 yard line and the Cuse D held the Zips to 3 points. Way to respond! the zips had 166 yards of total offense. The run D picked up where it left off last season, limiting the zips to 55 yards, and even the defensive backs who have been the weakest link on the su team for sometime, held akron to only 1 big play. As long as they can limit the big plays, the deep passes, then this team can be successful.

My critique for Ryan Nassib is this : put some damn arc on your passes bro! yes, you have a cannon, but you cant just throw the ball through cornerbacks and safetys! you have to throw it over them and lead your receiver downfield. if he had done that we would have seen at least 5 more completions for nassib and for big yardage. you can't just throw the ball on a straight line like you're brett farve and expect to complete passes. Syracuse ran the option 1 time in this game, and frankly he could have done a better job selling the run. He has the legs and he can make defenses pay for not paying attention to his scramble but he has to sell it better. Overall I was impressed with Nassib's play, he just needs to put a little more touch on the football!

This week we travel to Washington to play Jake Locker and the Huskies. The defense is going to need a HUGE game if we want to win. Especially since the huskies are 0-1 after a loss to BYU this week they will look to avenge that at their home opener. Jake Locker is an early heisman candidate and some "experts" say he could be the first QB taken in the 2011 NFL draft. Cuse best be up for the challenge!!

Syracuse Football season is alllllmost back!

We are 2 weeks from Syracuse University's opening game of the 2010 football season. Saturday September 4th at 6pm the Orangemen will be taking on the Akron Zips in Lebron James' ohio hometown. [Everyone else has been talking about Lebron this summer so why should we leave him out of this post?]

Training camp is up and running on campus and so are the familiar faces. Among those is Delone Carter, one of syracuse's biggest concerns coming into the season. In a rare pleasant surprise for the football team we were all VERY pleased to hear DC3 was re-admitted into the University and on campus for the 2nd day of camp.

With Carter back in the fold syracuse can at least remain somewhat competitive on offense with their 1000 yard rusher returning for his final season. Carter will not be suspended for any games, meaning he will be available for his homecoming to his native ohio opening day. The running back position went from stacked to scarce with Carter's future in jeopardy. Averin Collier is apparently ineligible this season, in what appears to be some kind of academic eligibility issue. That would have left Antwon Bailey, back for his junior campaign, to be the starter but with DC back, there's suddenly some stability at the position. Freshman Prince-Tyson Gulley (another great name on this team) seems to be turning some heads in practice as well.

Ryan Nassib is starting quaterback, delighting the fans awaiting the Greg Paulus "experiment" to be over. At the same time this news is also letting down literally dozens and dozens of Orange fans at NunesMagician.com hoping to see Charley Loeb's "ridiculous handsomeness" in the huddle this season. We can look forward to sideline shots I guess. Nassib's arm is far superior to Paulus' in terms of arm strength and this will allow SU to open up the field if they can ever get a receiving corp together.

I'm not even going to write about the wide receivers, because frankly we dont know what to expect to get out of them. Mike Williams has departed for the NFL, leaving behind aptly named junior Van Chew, Alec Lemon (so), hofstra refugee Aaron Weaver (sr), and apparently struggling Marcus Sales junior from local high school CBA. Last season the WR unit dropped plenty of passes and will need to hold onto the pigskin when called upon in order for the offense to consistently perform up to par.

At tight end, syracuse has an experienced player in another hofstra transfer, Jose Cruz. He's a bit of a journeymen by ncaa standards, and I don't have too much else to say about him other than he's played some football in his day. Also on the team is senior Nick Provo. He had some good "flashes" last season but battled injuries. Other than those two players not sure what we should expect from this group. There's always the possibility of a new player to step in and shake up the position.

Some more good news is that internet sensation Shamarko Thomas was supposed to practice today for the first time since suffering a hamstring injury earlier this summer. Rumor had it he was excited to be back. Look for my post about the SU defense in the coming days.