Syracuse, N.Y. — Dino Babers looked both of his quarterbacks in the eye a couple hours before Friday’s game in the team hotel and delivered the news that has given this season its first major inflection point.
Garrett Shrader would start at quarterback.
In doing so, Babers abandoned both the predictable and the familiar, sending a message in a 24-21 victory against Liberty just as ACC play is about to begin: Expect something different this year.
Babers has a gifted running back who is yanking at the No. 44 jersey in the rafters and a tenacious defense that stood up a potential first-round quarterback on fourth-and-goal, then forced a back-breaking fumble in the final four minutes of the decisive quarter.
SU bludgeoned Liberty with stretch runs to the outside, and when Shrader wasn’t sticking the ball in the belly of Sean Tucker 32 times, he was cudgelling his way through the Liberty defense, either by design or a little improv, to move the first-down chains and keep that attacking defense rested for more.
Forget Orange is the New Fast.
Orange is the New Mass.
“There’s one thing when you’re on this football team and Sean Tucker is running the ball the way he is,” Babers said. “Our No. 1 job is to find ways to make sure he gets the ball, and I think it’s pretty evident that we have coaches and players and everybody working to try to find ways to make sure he doesn’t just disappear in a football game.”
Syracuse is 3-1 heading into conference play next week at Florida State, and the only separation between the current record and an unblemished mark is a 10-point loss to Rutgers in which Tucker didn’t get enough touches in the second half.
Babers has overcorrected the two past weeks, riding his talented second-year back with a career-high 32 carries in Friday night’s victory. It was the third time in four games Tucker amassed at least 130 rushing yards. He’s already more than halfway to becoming the school’s first 1,000-yard rusher in nearly a decade.
For a school known for a trinity of No. 44s in Jim Brown, Ernie Davis and Floyd Little, the program’s single-season rushing record is held by a guy, like Tucker, who’s built like a stump. And Joe Morris’ mark of 1,372 yards in 1979 certainly looks to be within Tucker’s reach at this rate.
Syracuse, once hellbent on running as many plays as it could in 60 minutes and gassing the opposition, appears quite comfortable lowering the shoulder, controlling the ball and giving its aggressive defense time to rest and reload.
Still, Shrader stated the obvious after the game: It wasn’t pretty in the pass game.
Missed chances on home-run balls to Damien Alford and Taj Harris kept the score down in the 20s.
“I just gotta hit those throws,” Shrader said. “For some of them, it felt like I was waiting a little bit long.”
He’ll get another shot next week. Babers said after the game Shrader will start the ACC opener at Florida State.
The decision to pivot to Shrader before the season was even a month old amounts to as bold a move as it was inserting Tommy DeVito for Eric Dungey in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter against North Carolina three years ago.
Like that night, Babers found the right guy who had the right skills at the right time, even though it came at the expense of benching a third-year starter.
The coach said Shrader and DeVito split reps in practice this week because he wasn’t sure who he was going to play in Friday’s game. He informed them of his decision moments before arriving at the dome.
DeVito did not take any snaps on Friday. Syracuse did not make him available to answers questions after the game.
“I’ve got to do things that’s going to help us and allow us to win football games,” Babers said, “and the one thing the team that we were playing this week, we really felt like there were certain things we could take advantage of with Garrett Shrader’s legs.
“We can’t guarantee that we’re going to be able to do what we did (Friday) vs. some other opponents that are on our schedule, and we have to have the flexibility to be able to move in and out of offenses and do it in different ways.”
That could keep opponents guessing week to week as to how Syracuse might adjust.
That could send DeVito back into the game as a change-up if the offense isn’t moving.
But there’s a very distinct style that is working right now.
And given where we were a month ago, it’s different from what everyone expected.
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