As the dust settled on Syracuse football's final game of the 2021 season, Dino Babers began to lay the foundation for next year. The sixth-year head coach led a round of applause in the locker room as the program's outgoing seniors departed for a final lap around the Carrier Dome. Then he addressed the players with remaining eligibility.
There is, Babers believes, a path toward this group taking a significant step forward in 2022. And this year's 5-7 record, marred by two gutting three-game losing streaks -- one of nail-biters and one of runaways -- was a sizable improvement from the 1-10 mark the Orange finished with at the end of last year's coronavirus-affected campaign.
But the vision that Babers shared with his players before providing media with a window into it requires important context. SU athletic director John Wildhack has yet to publicly comment on Babers' job security despite requests from multiple media outlets.
"I'm not going to get into that stuff," Babers said after his team's 31-14 loss to No. 20 Pittsburgh. "You guys can write about all of that stuff. I'm more concerned about those seniors taking that senior walk around. I was addressing the 2022 team after those seniors walked out and we all applauded. And we started to set our goals for that team. And I think that those goals are goals that can be met, and I believe that this team is capable of meeting them."
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Last year, Wildhack provided a public bode of support for Babers on Dec. 18. And he may well do that again. Syracuse, easily, could have beaten Florida State, Wake Forest and/or Clemson with just one result likely shifting the perception of the tenure as a whole. Instead, Babers has five losing season in six years with the 10-3 breakout campaign in 2018 shaping up as the outlier.
That group featured six veteran offensive linemen who stayed healthy all year, two capable quarterbacks in Eric Dungey and Tommy DeVito, a veteran-laden defense, and a Lou Groza Award-winning kicker in Andre Szmyt.
The hope, Babers said, is that this 2021 season can serve as a gap year of sorts to get back to more "different" success. The six super seniors who returned to utilize their extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA due to the pandemic provided a depth boost, limited admittedly by the passing of the one-time transfer proposal.
"Really excited about the bridge that our super seniors left us," Babers said. "They gave us an opportunity to rebound from that Covid year, that asterisk year, to get us back to where we can start to do some things. I think that we have a lot of things coming back for this 2022 season.
"We're losing six warriors, six big-time football players and we're gaining a lot of young guys. They need to get bigger. They need to get stronger, based off some of the results of this game. But we've got the majority of this football team coming back and, with some additions, I think we can be extremely different and exciting in 2022."
With record-setting running back Sean Tucker expected to return -- barring a coaching change -- and a 3-3-5 defense heading into Year 3 under Tony White, the glaring weakness heading into the offseason, should the staff remain in place, is the passing game.
Babers turned to Mississippi State transfer quarterback Garrett Shrader in Week 4, benching third-year starter Tommy DeVito. The mobility of the 6-foot-4, 230-pound Shrader paid dividends during the heart of the campaign, but as opponents gained more film of the signal-caller, SU faced a rising rate of not only heavy boxes to slow Tucker, but tight coverage on the perimeter.
In the 31-14 loss to No. 20 Pittsburgh on Saturday, the Panthers adopted that approach on the majority of standard downs following SU's 14-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to open the contest. Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi dared Shrader and the Orange's wideouts to win over the top against man coverage, often with no safety help -- just as No. 25 North Carolina State, Louisville and Boston College did in Syracuse's three prior games.
"What they were giving us is massive throws all over the football field which we need to be able to take advantage of," Babers said.
If Babers gets a seventh season, that will be one of the primary objectives of the offseason. He said that change is required on a macro level, pointing to the "need to go back and rebuild."
For now, though, both Babers and the players who started looking ahead to 2022 will have to wait and see whether they'll get that chance.
"exciting" - Google News
November 28, 2021 at 12:21PM
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Dino Babers thinks Syracuse can be 'extremely different and exciting' in 2022. But will he be there? - 247Sports
"exciting" - Google News
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