The offensive line is the most important piece of any football team. Sure, you could argue that’s the quarterback, but with a bad offensive line the quarterback can’t possibly be good. Put Tom Brady behind a line of high schoolers and see how he does. Syracuse needs its offensive line to step up this year so Eric Dungey has time to find his receivers. But the line also needs to be able to open up holes for the running backs.

The running game is the more important aspect of the o-line this year. As noted, Syracuse struggled on the ground last year. The rushing attack needs to be better. While some of that has to do with the performance of the running backs, there is also blame to be shared with the offensive line.

If the line can open up some holes and give the backs better chances to gain yards, the offense will hum better. Even in an up-tempo offense, it would be nice to have the option to slow the game down or drag the game out with some runs.

The problem is that the offensive line is full of question marks, and that was before Aaron Roberts suffered a season ending knee injury over the summer. SU is looking at starting multiple redshirt freshmen along the line, along with potentially a redshirt sophomore. The line is going to be young and inexperienced.

Bottom line, the o-line needs to play above that youth and inexperience and put together a solid year. Health is a huge issue here as well as the Orange is not deep along the offensive line.

You can tell from the SU recruiting strategy, and from comments made over the last 20 months, that the coaching staff knows this is a need. Just this week, the Orange picked up another 4-star offensive line recruit— the second of this recruiting cycle. Reinforcements seem to be on the way, but for this year, this group needs to play well for the team to succeed.