It’s a little early for Syracuse to be taking a breather. Maybe too early.

A Week 2 bye, the Orange’s earliest bye week in a season since 1996, does allow Syracuse to regroup after its ugly 27-26 win over Villanova on Aug. 29. But down the road, the Orange may very likely be wishing it had a week off when it’s grinding through nine straight games before its second bye in Week 11.

“Having an early bye week — you can say it comes at a bad time and you can also say it comes at a good time,” head coach Scott Shafer said during the Atlantic Coast Conference coaches’ teleconference on Wednesday. “We have some injuries from summer camp that I think this bye week will help.”

In addition to a few bumps and bruises — SU’s offensive line needed some rearranging against Villanova due to the absences of Nick Robinson and Omari Palmer — the off week also lets more dust settle from Terrel Hunt’s opening-night ejection.

Now it would be surprising if SU hadn’t made an attempt while planning out the schedule to place its first bye week later in the season; it’s likely that it just couldn’t work out that way.

But the fact of the matter is that the Orange won’t get another week off until the middle of November and will have to battle some of the country’s best teams along the way.

“Going to Mount Pleasant (Michigan), I’ve done that many times over my career,” Shafer said, referring to SU’s game at Central Michigan on Saturday and his time coaching at Western Michigan. “It’s not an easy tour. We have to get our kids mentally prepared for that. It’ll be a dogfight.”

But that’s just the start of it.

Nine straight weeks of collisions could enflame those bumps and bruises. And after Syracuse limps away after taking on one powerhouse, another one awaits just seven days later.

After the Orange hosts Maryland a week from Saturday, four of SU’s subsequent five games are against programs currently ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 poll.

“We’ve had some of the most difficult schedules in the country in the last eight, 10 years,” Shafer said during his press conference on SU’s media day in early August. “Nobody on the outside and nobody that is lining up against us cares about that …

“We have a great conference and great division and we understand where we’re at. We have to catch up to Florida State and Clemson and do a great job continuing to compete against the rest of them.”

Though the difficulty of the schedule has hardly wavered, SU’s distribution of bye weeks is much more challenging than it’s been in the past.

Just once in the last 22 years — 2006 being the other season — has Syracuse played a game in nine consecutive weeks. Last year’s team topped out at five straight weekends of play.

It’s a daunting task for a team that started off its second year in the ACC by playing a Football Championship Subdivision opponent to the wire. If not for a missed chip shot of a field goal by Villanova at the end of regulation, the Orange would be 0-1 before the madness ensues.

But fortune fell on Syracuse’s side, even though its starting quarterback was tossed from the game for throwing a punch at a Wildcats linebacker.

It appears Hunt won’t have many issues moving on with his season, judging by Shafer’s word of Hunt’s remorse and gauging by the Twitter community’s response to Hunt’s apologetic tweets. The extra time between games has helped that process.

If SU fields the healthy starting lineup it desires on Saturday, then it’s not a wasted bye week.

But when Syracuse is matching up with the likes of Notre Dame, Louisville, Florida State, Clemson and more, and can’t come up for air until mid-November, it’ll be late in the season.

Maybe too late.

Phil D’Abbraccio is an asst. sports editor at The Daily Orange where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @PhilDAbb.

Published on September 8, 2014 at 12:15 am