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NEW YORK — At the end of the 2022 Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium, Syracuse walked off the field losers in six of its last seven games to end the season. The loss and experience remained fresh in head coach Dino Babers’ as he remembered the seat he sat in during the press conference, looking down in it again.

Eleven months later, SU returned to the same venue in hopes of ending a five-game losing streak against a middling opposition in Pittsburgh. Only this time around, doubts of who would start for the Orange at quarterback still swirled 30 minutes before kickoff.

Yet, Syracuse (5-5, 1-5 Atlantic Coast Conference) found a way to utilize its prowess on the ground to win, despite finishing with just eight total pass attempts. LeQuint Allen Jr., put together a 102-yard rushing performance and Dan Villari, the quarterback turned tight end, led the team in rushing yards with 154 in the Orange’s 28-13 victory over Pittsburgh (2-8, 1-5 ACC). SU strung together 382 rushing yards on Saturday, the most recorded since last season against Wagner (388).

“We ran the ball very well. The o-line did a phenomenal job,” Shrader said.

Throughout the week, there was no indication of who would start as SU’s signal caller, especially after head coach Dino Babers said he wasn’t sure if starter Garrett Shrader would play again following the loss to Boston College. Babers didn’t say who would start during his weekly presser, saying Shrader and backup Carlos Del Rio-Wilson had to see the doctor. Babers made no updates before the team traveled to The Bronx. Following the game, Babers said Shrader had practiced at least half of the week.

As Shrader sprinted out of the first base dugout during warmups, he held his jersey and helmet in his hands. Although backup quarterbacks Braden Davis and Luke MacPhail practiced with the centers and receivers and primarily threw the ball, Shrader was named the starter minutes before kickoff.

On the Orange’s opening drive, they showed off what they would the rest of the game. Shrader ran up the middle on the first play for 34 yards. Allen Jr. then got a handoff in a wildcat formation, the first of five straight carries for 23 yards. Once Ike Daniels got a handoff for four yards, Villari executed successive direct snaps in the red zone, picking up a combined 13 yards on two plays.

Babers said the shift in the run-heavy approach was not based off of Shrader’s availability. He said he and the team want to be more physical and play “old school.”

“You can win football games throwing the ball. We’ve done it. You can do it, there’s a lot of ways,” Babers said. “But there’s something about running the football that is what football is all about.”

Syracuse’s offense displayed a mixture of a wishbone offense, a wildcat offense, direct snaps to tight ends and a variety of sweeps. Babers even delightfully took questions about the Orange’s gameplan being a “Pop Warner offense.”

That was not including Shrader’s first throw. On a fake handoff to Allen Jr., Shrader rolled to his right and threw a 5-yard touchdown to blocking tight end Max Mang. After the pass, though, Shrader held his chest and seemed in pain.

In the second quarter, as Villari completed a pass to Allen Jr. Shrader performed an impromptu backflip. By the end of the first half, Shrader had an equal amount of acrobatic flips as completed passes. The play, which Shrader said was “spur of the moment,” eventually went viral after the game.

“Normally on plays like that you had an offensive lineman, do to a cartwheel out there, act like they’re having a heart attack,” Shrader said. “(I said) ‘I’ll just do a backflip.’”

Syracuse continued to implement a run-heavy offense with Shrader seemingly nursing a sensitive arm. On the sixth play of the Orange’s second drive, Allen Jr. was poked in the eye by Pittsburgh’s Brandon George. The poke kept Allen Jr. out for a play.

Then, when Shrader kept the ball two plays later, Pitt’s Dayon Hayes forced a fumble which was recovered by defensive tackle David Green. Shrader’s costly mistake led to a Ben Sauls 35-yard field goal to make the score 7-3.

On Monday, during Babers’ weekly press conference, the head coach brought up SU’s matchup with Pitt in 1923. He referenced the 3-0 scoreline from a century ago and said he was sure that Saturday’s matchup would be a “defensive game.” After Sauls’ first made field goal, there were three straight punts.

But on Pitt’s fifth drive, quarterback Christian Veileux threw deep over the middle to Bub Means Jr., who cut across the field to zoom to Syracuse’s 15. Three plays later, Veileux found his favorite target, Konata Mumpfield, on a short curl near the goal line. Mumpfield leaped over the line to give the Panthers a 10-7 lead. After the Orange stalled again, Sauls made another field goal to end the half.

When Syracuse’s rushing offense needed to improve, it did it in strides in the third quarter. The Orange received a lifeline as Velieux and running back Daniel Carter fumbled a handoff after a jet sweep. Jayden Bellamy recovered the loose ball, setting SU up at its own 48-yard line.

To start the second half, Villari and Allen Jr. combined for 31 yards on the ground before Shrader began to find success rushing. The offense stayed on the field on a 4th-and-1 when Shrader faked a handoff to Allen Jr. and ran up the right side untouched until the 3-yard line. Pitt’s Shayne Simon made a last-ditch effort to bring Shrader down, but the quarterback lunged for a score as SU retook the lead, 14-13.

“It’s hard to just change your offense in the middle of the season like that,” Villari said. “But I’m used to running the ball, wildcat like that, so I was confident.”

SU had another big drive, which featured a Villari run of 38 yards up the middle. But the offense came up a yard short as Pitt made a goal-line stand. Allen Jr. tried to reach the ball across the left pylon but got hit out of bounds less than a yard short.

One member of the Syracuse sideline threw up a signal of touchdown. But the rest of the sideline was resigned to a loss of downs. However, the defense made up for it.

On the first play of the ensuing Pitt drive, Bellamy intercepted an errant Velieux pass for pick six, the team’s first since Jeremiah Wilson had one to end the first half against Western Michigan in Week 2.

With Syracuse now up eight at the start of the fourth quarter, it forced another Pitt turnover off of a botched Velieux handoff. Terry Lockett regained the fumble to give the Orange favorable field position.

Two plays later, Villari got his 27-yard rushing touchdown where he took a direct snap and cut up the left side and burst away from defenders to increase the lead to 15 points.

For the rest of the game, Villari quite simply took over the offense. He received even more direct snaps and rushes and had a copy of the play sheet on his wrist, something usually reserved for starting quarterbacks like Shrader.

While Allen Jr. went for rushes of four or five yards, Villari would power through for 12 or more. Though Syracuse went scoreless on one of its last drives due to a missed Denaburg field goal attempt, Villari had put the Orange there in the first place following a 40-yard gain.

Syracuse had put together one of the program’s finest rushing performances off the backs of Villari, Allen Jr. and Shrader — even without its starting quarterback at full health.

“We just came with the mentality from the beginning of the week that we were going to pound these guys and that’s what we did tonight,” Allen Jr. said.

Questions still persist, however. Can Syracuse make another bowl game? Is Babers fit to lead this program into future? When Babers got asked this after the loss to Boston College last week, he said the definition of faith is belief in things unseen. He said he believed in the team he had.

After the win over the Panthers, Babers extended this belief metaphor to the run-heavy offense the Orange utilized today. He and Villari said there wasn’t as much belief at times during the week, but the team eventually got on the “same direction.”

“We asked them to do something that was drastic, extremely different,” Babers said. “And you can’t pull that off without belief, and belief in the scheme.”

Published on November 11, 2023 at 7:31 pm

Contact Henry: [email protected]