NFL
By: Rick O’Donnell
After a lopsided loss against the Pittsburgh Panthers Thursday night, Syracuse football fans had an all too familiar feeling. It has been a staple of the Syracuse Orange football program to start of the season hot, only to fall apart at the end. No one likes it, but somehow, it happens. With a 41-13 loss, where do the Orange go from here?
Coaching Is Key.
This was good for first-year Head Coach Fran Brown, especially when “accountability” is one of his main messages. One game might not make or break your season, but one bad loss will change your perspective. Syracuse has a good football team but they needed this loss and what happens next is all on the HC. Will he write it off as just a bad game? Can the team make adjustments on mistakes that have been lingering in the background of a balanced football team? A loss this bad highlights a lot of needs as you work toward your postseason hopes.
Not only does it show exactly where adjustments need to be made in terms of the rest of the season, it also draws attention to offseason recruiting. If the Orange continued to barely win /lose, they might go into the recruiting process with a different mindset. College football is all about player development and now they’ll go into recruiting with maybe a better idea of which players need better development and which position they need to take a bigger swing on upgrades.
The truth of the matter is, that’s the hardest part about coaching. Believing in your players is key. However, you have to decide if it was truly one bad game or if there’s a bigger issue. The wrong move can push players off the path or set the team back altogether. Is it just the playbook/playcalling that needs adjustments? Are there tweaks that can be made to clean things up? Do they need to lean more into their bread-and-butter plays with a more conservative approach? That has to be heavily processed as this is now their second time coming out of an off week with a loss.
The most heartbreaking part of this Syracuse Orange loss the path they were on might have led them to a mid-season ranking in the polls. While that doesn’t define a good or bad football team entirely it’s a nice feather in the cap of the team who put in the work this season. It gives fans the hope they’ve been waiting for. It’s a hope for the future that the Orange won’t be an average team that fades back into college football obscurity. It didn’t need to happen in year one, but it sure would quite plenty of naysayers.
Losing to a tough opponent shouldn’t derail hopes for the season, it’s how Syracuse comes out of it that matters. That responsibility falls on the shoulders of Fran Brown. This will set the tone for the rest of his tenure at Syracuse. He has the right mindset and energy, now it comes down to how he and the team handle this type of adversity.
