What do we know after last night’s game? Lamar Jackson is legit, and probably even better than we all anticipated. Syracuse is in fact improved, but there is still a long way to go.
Let’s go with the first one first. Lamar Jackson put on a show. So much so that it makes you think Louisville has a pretty good shot at knocking off Florida State next week and maybe that talk about Louisville making a run at a College Football Playoff spot coming out of Louisville was more justified that previously thought.
From the Syracuse perspective, what can we take away? Well, oddly enough, I felt the team was better this week than it was last week. That may sound crazy because this week Syracuse lost 62-28 and last week Syracuse won 33-7, but think about the level of competition. Colgate is a good FCS team, Louisville is arguably a top 10 caliber FBS team. That’s totally different.
Yes, the defense has major problems. There were blown coverages and missed tackles all over the defense. And it is possible those same problems existed last week and simply weren’t exploited. The defense has a long way to go. Part of the problems come from the change in scheme. As we’ve heard, the Cover-2/Tampa-2 defense is a drastic departure from what Scott Shafer and Chuck Bullough ran. With the coaching staff implementing its own defense, they are now asking players to play in a style that they were not brought in to play and a style they really don’t fit into.
The defense is going to take some time.
The offense on the other hand put together some good drives, and did show some flashes that could and should get you excited. However, there were too many drives that ended as 3 and outs, or ended in punts. 10 punts to be exact. In reality, it’s fine to punt, but you need to pick up a first down every time you have the ball. This becomes important because of the speed of this offense. If you are going to go fast, you’ve got to be able to pick up at least one first down so you can give the defense even a short time to catch their breath.
We should take all of this early season stuff with a grain of salt. Of course the Orange isn’t as good as it looked against Colgate, and SU isn’t as bad as it looked in the fourth quarter of last night. Remember, it was a two touchdown game in the 4th quarter before Louisville outscored Syracuse 20-0 over the final 13 and a half minutes or so. Syracuse was there, before it all fell apart.
Just like after the Colgate game, there are things to work on for Dino Babers and his team, they are just more obvious after being exploited by a much higher level of competition.