Almost no one had this game on the 2022 radar as a big one for either Notre Dame or Syracuse prior to October of this year. Well, things change! It’s arguably the biggest Syracuse home game in freaking forever–and while a win doesn’t help their ACC standing–taking out the Irish would put the Orange on a course toward a possible major bowl bid.
Head coach Dino Babers has been through an incredible up-and-down career since taking over this job. One of the hottest coaches on the market after a brief 18-9 stint at Bowling Green (which looks better and better with each passing season) he struggled out of the gates with only 8 wins combined in his first 2 seasons with Syracuse.
Then, Babers went 10-3 in 2018 and was back as one of the hottest coach’s in the country again, only to recede back to a 11-24 record from 2019-21. Things were dark enough that Syracuse fans were putting Babers squarely on the hot seat coming into 2022 and dismayed at the reported $10 million buyout to get out of his contract.
Notre Dame (+2.5) at Syracuse
JMA Wireless Dome
Syracuse, New York
Date: Saturday, October 29, 2022
Time: Noon ET
TV: ABC
Series: 6-2-0 Notre Dame
Despite a close loss to Clemson last week and now possibly out of the running for a division title as a result, the Orange come into the weekend 6-1 with a great shot at 10 wins if they can take care of business inside the Carrier Dome JMA Dome with the Fighting Irish coming to town.
Notre Dame comes in shaking off the bad Stanford loss with a decent victory over UNLV. They will head to upstate New York hoping seeking more momentum before attempting what Syracuse couldn’t do: Beat Clemson.
Syracuse’s Offense
The offensive coordinator position at Syracuse had been a mess throughout the Dino Babers era. At first it was Sean Lewis and Mike Lynch as co-OC’s before Lewis took the head coaching job at Kent State. Then Lynch took over solo for a couple seasons before being demoted to running backs coach.
For 2020, the Orange brought in Sterlin Gilbert but he was not retained following last year after the offense sunk to a ghastly low 125th in FEI and only marginally improved in 2021.
Instead, Syrcause took Virginia offensive coordinator Robert Anae (and quarterbacks coach Jason Beck) who so far has done a masterful job reinventing quarterback Garrett Shrader from a run-heavy signal caller into an efficient passer. Heading into the weekend, Shrader is completing 69.7% of his passes (2nd in the ACC) and is averaging a healthy 9.0 yards per attempt on 228 yards per game through the air.
Syracuse is still running the ball a lot, too. Shrader is averaging roughly the same attempts per game (14) as last year while 2021 AP 2nd-team All-American running back Sean Tucker (2,194 yards and 18 TD’s since the start of 2021) gobbles up nearly all of the other carries in the backfield. Tucker is a prototypical NFL built running back and has very good speed (he had a solid debut on the Syracuse track team as a sprinter last year).
While improving their passing game, the Orange were also looking to develop a bunch of young receivers too. In addition to feeding Tucker through the air a lot (28 catches, 2nd most on the team) they have witnessed true sophomore Oronde Gadsden II have a breakout season with 37 receptions, 593 yards, and 5 touchdowns. Senior DeVaughn Cooper (234 yards), sophomore Courtney Jackson (168 yards), and sophomore Damien Alford (138 yards) are heavily in the mix, as well.
Shrader has transformed his passing skills this year.
But, it’s really Gadsden that the Irish need to worry about. He’s all of 6-5 and plays a lot in a flex tight end role where he creates a ton of mismatches on linebackers in the middle of the field and has proven to be a weapon down field making back shoulder catches and and contested catches over smaller defensive backs.
This is a very solid and experienced offensive line for Syracuse. Senior left tackle Matthew Bergeron (6-5, 332) is in his 4th year of starting as is 5th-year center Carlos Vettorello (6-4, 292). At the guard positions, sophomore Kalan Ellis (6-6, 375) is a big boy with 5 starts as a true freshman on the left side and on the right side 5th-year senior Christopher Bleich (6-6, 326) will be making his 22nd start after a 2021 transfer from Florida. At right tackle, 6th-year senior Dakota Davis (6-5, 335) is making his 32nd career start this weekend.
That’s a pretty large group that could give Notre Dame a lot of problems in run defense.
Syracuse’s Defense
Coming into 2020, Syracuse took a chance on hiring Tony White as defensive coordinator who had been an assistant at San Diego State for a number of years prior to 1 season at Arizona State before arriving in upstate New York. He installed a 3-3-5 defense that was making very slow progress until this year when it finally started to click. After finishing 2020 and 2021 with the 71st ranked FEI defense, the Orange come into the weekend with the 39th ranked unit.
They suffered a big loss when junior linebacker Stefon Thompson (14.5 TFL for 2020-21) was lost for the season after the opener but the program received a big boost when 1st-team All-ACC senior linebacker Mikel Jones (6-1, 224) opted to return instead of leaving early for the NFL. Over his last 19 games, Jones has totaled 164 tackles, 18.5 tackles for loss, and 7 sacks.
Junior Marlowe Wax (6-1, 239) from the All-Name Team has been very productive since 2021 while the Orange are using redshirt freshman Derek McDonald (6-4, 225) in a key role without Thompson on the field.
Babers has been through some trials and tribulations at Syracuse.
In addition to a couple very good linebackers, Syracuse has a very veteran and productive secondary with rising sophomore corner Duce Chestnut (he wears #0 so he must be good!) coming off a freshman All-American season and redshirt junior Garrett Williams also a former freshman All-American corner who has 23 pass breakups in his career.
The big question mark heading into 2022 was the front 3 where all starters needed to be replaced. At tackle the Orange turned to redshirt junior Kevon Darton (5-11, 266) who is in his first year of significant playing time and leads the unit with 29 tackles. He’ll be spelled by redshirt freshman Elijah Fuentes-Cundiff (6-4, 267) who has been limited to 5 tackles on the season after backup Terry Lockett was lost for the season after their 4th game.
On the edge, Syracuse uses 5th-year senior defensive end Caleb Okechukwu (6-4, 268) who was a backup and is playing well in 2022 with 3.5 sacks. On the other side, redshirt freshman Jatius Geer (6-6, 233) starts while redshirt junior Steve Linton (6-5, 219) leads the line with 5.5 TFL and true freshman Kevin Jobity (6-4, 247) is also in the mix.
Prediction
As usual with Power 5 competition who are having a good year but are not filled with blue-chip recruits we have to wonder how good is this team really?
This isn’t a very disruptive Syracuse defense, especially given their speed. What they have been great at this year is limiting big plays coming into the weekend with a national-best 14 plays of 20+ yards allowed. Teams have not been throwing much against them and they’ve been very good in pass coverage (5 TD’s allowed, 19th best passer rating allowed nationally).
Their run defense had been fantastic this season until this past week when Clemson ran the ball on 70% of their snaps accumulating 293 yards, 16 first downs, and 3 touchdowns on the ground. This defensive front for Syracuse is ridiculously small for Power 5 standards (using a 3-3-5 too!) and is prone to getting pushed around.
You can bet what Notre Dame’s opening game plan is going to look like, right?
Still, this is a pretty well-rounded Syracuse team with plenty of quality on both sides of the ball. You could argue both of their lines are quite weak and ready to be exploited against Notre Dame’s strengths in these areas but at most other spots on the field the Irish look at a disadvantage. Well, not tight end.
Syracuse is completing a $120 million renovation of the newly named JMA Wireless Dome.
This will be Syracuse’s 2nd straight home sellout and the crowd should be extremely lively for a noon kickoff. Working in Notre Dame’s favor is that Syracuse could have a hard time bouncing back after a tough game against Clemson* and possibly showed the country how they can be beat. Then again, the Orange could be motivated by the defeat too.
*Numerous outlets in the pre-season were calling this 4-game stretch starting with NC State the hardest in Syracuse history. Well, Notre Dame and Pitt have already lost a combined 6 games so…sorry!
Notre Dame’s offense is going to have to run the ball really well without much help from the passing game. Most of the time, that one dimensional style doesn’t work out too well for the Irish. In each of the last 2 games against NC State and Clemson they have only allowed a combined 317 passing yards on 56 passing attempts with no touchdowns.
I’m interested to see how good this Syracuse offense is against Notre Dame’s defense. Some of their traditional numbers are very good indeed. For example, 26th in yards per play and 14th in passer rating really stand out for a unit that was rock bottom a couple years ago.
Then again, FEI only has Syracuse’s offense at 39th (same as their defense!) with Notre Dame’s offense just 15 spots lower and we know there’s a sense that the Irish unit is shambolic and mismanaged. That kind of puts things into perspective.
If this is genuinely a competent Syracuse team–and not one that hasn’t been exposed to enough opposing talent yet, remember NC State quarterback Devin Leary missed their matchup with an injury–Notre Dame is going to have it tough facing a good dual-threat quarterback. I’ll predict Syracuse is pretty good and I don’t see this iteration of an Irish team winning on the road.
My head agrees with you. My heart just saw the Phils win the NLCS in person and is filled with electric vibes and boundless optimism. Irish by 20
ETA: also its my birthday tomorrow
Happy early birthday!
Immediate post-Game 1 win vibes overreaction: Irish by 50
“Irish by 20” ended up being close!
i just cannot be moved by this syracuse team man
they are so poorly coached and undisciplined
i think being away from home should help (and maybe they’ll only give tucker 5 carries in the 2nd half again)
watch out for their sneaky boeheim inspired dirtiness too, they stepped on and fucked up the hand of Clemson’s QB and had a bunch of other personal fouls after the play
ND 21
SYR 20
I think the line (settling in around Cuse -2.5 to 3) shows that no one really has a clue. This could go a lot of ways from our OL pushing them around and a Pyne revival to something fairly ugly worst-case.
Guessing it will be close but I’d lead to the Orange too. I don’t have a ton of faith in our run defense against a very good RB + mobile QB. They’ll be vulnerable to the pass rush but we need to be able to get them off schedule to force those, which hasn’t been a strength.
On the other side of the ball, I’m also kinda pessimistic. On paper we should have run all over small-ish Marshall, UNLV, and Stanford teams and given the talent advantages those were all bad to so-so efforts. While I’m holding out hope on Pyne recapturing his out of South Bend magic, my guess is the common denominator is how bad the BYU and UNC defenses are. Syracuse is not that, especially on the back end, and I think we will struggle whenever we get into passing downs.
My predictions are usually terrible, so hopefully that streak continues…
Good work on the RakesReportPodcast this week!
“I don’t see this iteration of an Irish team winning on the road.”
Idk about this, they’ve played their best games of the season (UNC and BYU…also the first three quarters of tOSU) away from ND Stadium. I’m more concerned about the noon start than the venue.
Tucker worries me a ton with the inconsistent LB play and the fact the ND defense tends to randomly give up 20+ yard runs on any given down. I’ll say 24-21 Notre Dame if they can stop the run, but I could see a world where they lose by 10+ if they can’t.
I am very pessimistic about this game. Syracuse is balanced and pretty good team. Which we are not.
This is basically where I’m at.
Of course anything could happen but realistically the holes at QB/WR are just too much to overcome uneven play at OL and the whole defense. An average team beats us most of the time and Syracuse is at least average.
The only thing that gives me hope is that there is actually something to us playing better on the road.
If that is the case, Freeman may want to revert some of the changes away from BK’s game day that he has made. BK was nothing if not a very good program manager, who worked hard at dragging ND into a modern era of football.
Besides the macro end result in games, what specific changes would you like to see Freeman start doing that Kelly did that has dropped off since Kelly left? (Not asking as a gotcha, genuinely curious about the actual items that have slipped through the cracks)
I agree with the concept though, this off-season Freeman is simply going to have to do a tremendous amount of self-scouting and come up with process improvements and make changes.
I have no idea what exactly. It’s more of a MF should reconsider changes he made from what BK had done.
Kelly changed a lot about the program, the stadium, and home games. The sum of his changes had a very positive effect, and we were at least as good at home as away (who knows if we were technically better given opponent and what not).
Freeman at least changed some pre-game stuff with mass and the walk. I personally hated going to mass before games, so I thought ending it was smart and bringing it back dumb, but only because of my preference. No idea if that actually made a difference.
Freeman should have some idea of what he changed from Kelly’s time, and he should take a long hard look at all those changes.
I’m thinking we get Decent Road Pyne and catch Syracuse with a hangover from last week. Ugly game with penalties and turnovers galore, but ND squeaks out a win 22-18.
5 FGs and a TD? Seems about right.
4 FG’s and 5 Foskey blocked punts through the back of the end zone.
11 safeties
irish go digging for gold just like old jim b
I think that this is the game where the Irish’s strength at long snapping leads them to victory. However, if the long snapping ends up being only average, I expect an Irish loss.
ND 23 – Syracuse 21. Estime with fumble on the final drive as we try to ice the game away, but the defense comes through with a big stop to save the victory.
Ha! You think Estime will actually get a carry? I’m thinking 20-25 for Diggs, 5-10 for Tyree, 5 or so jet sweeps, no Estime
Take away 4 really godawful plays (3 fumbles at key moments and an atrocious 4th down carry), and Estime is probably the 2nd best offensive player this year. I know, every player looks a lot better if you take away their worst moments, but this team is so devoid of playmakers, I think you really need to stick with the kid and hope he sorts things out.
I think I’m with you in that the defense comes up with a big stop late. I have no valid reason to think ND will win, but I’m going to say ND 27-20 Syracuse. I’m almost assuredly incorrect here lol
Their defense is young, small, well-coached to get the most out of them, challenged Clemson and will be in front of a hyped home crowd. I’m thrilled for them. Now, just RTDB again and again. No jet sweeps. Nothing fancy. No deception. TE for a FB in a two back set. We’re coming at ya. All day.