The Devil Turns the Ball Over

Syracuse vs. USF football - Williams and Paulus

You don't need to be a football genius, or even breathing, to figure out why South Florida beat Syracuse 34-20 in the Dome today. Syracuse turned the ball over 7 times. It is impossible to win a football game with that many turnovers. With that said, I'm going to keep the observations brief.

The Good

Obviously Mike Williams is a rather talented wide receiver. He racked up 186 yards and 2 more touchdowns today.

The Syracuse offense moved the ball against a South Florida defense that stifled Florida State a week before.

Ryan Lichtenstein is a good kicker - a darn good kicker. Before the season if you told me an 18 year old 150 pound walk-on kicker would be serviceable I would have been ecstatic. He's much better than that. What a find.

The last touchdown drive by the Orange showed grit. In the past, this team would have folded it's tent. They kept battling, even though they repeatedly shot themselves in the foot all day.

The Bad

7 turnovers. Nuff said.

The defense has not been getting any pressure on the passer with the front four. If they aren't blitzing, they aren't getting to the quarterback. This is really disappointing, given the fact that Arthur Jones repeatedly draws double teams. This unit has to step up.

Likewise, the pass coverage wasn't good. I looked up in the second half and was surprised to see the Da'Mon Merkerson playing corner. This guy has flip flopped back and forth from offense to defense more times than Brett Favre has retired.

The running game still isn't functional. They've gone the entire season and haven't broke a run over longer than 18 yards. Yikes.

Did I mention 7 turnovers? It goes without saying Paulus can't throw 5 picks, even if a couple weren't really his fault. This team is light years ahead of where it was last year, but the margin for error is paper thin. SU blew through that margin 5 minutes into the game.

Attendance. They announced a crowd of 40,000, that wasn't close. The fans that were there were loud. Sadly there are not enough of them. Show the hell up people, this team fights its ass off. The level of support is pathetic right now.

This isn't really bad, but I don't know where else to put it - Mike Jones runs straight up and down, there's not much body lean in the young man.

The Ugly

The Carrier Dome floors. I have no idea what the dome staff did to the place, but it was like walking on ice in there today.