The play was worth celebrating until it wasn’t.

Dontae Strickland caught a pass in the flat, made a sharp inside cut and sprinted 24 yards into the end zone. Strickland threw the ball into the turf and his hands in the air in one fluid motion. He turned to tight end Kendall Moore and they flexed their muscles at each other as the cheers crescendoed. It gave Syracuse a two-touchdown lead over Central Michigan with 9:20 left in the second quarter, but it came with a catch.

Eric Dungey laid on the 39-yard line and the SU medical staff was rushing onto the field as Strickland crossed the goal line. Dungey tried to pop up but they didn’t let him. He tried again to no avail and the noise in the Carrier Dome evaporated.

“Get up!” one fan yelled.

“Throw him out!” yelled another, and that quickly turned into a full-stadium chant directed at CMU defensive lineman Mitch Stanitzek.

At the end of the play, Dungey was being wrapped up at the waist when Stanitzek leveled him with a helmet-to-helmet hit. Stanitzek was called for roughing the passer and ejected for targeting shortly after. Dungey left the field on his own power but never returned. Syracuse won 30-27 in overtime with sophomore walk-on Zack Mahoney under center, and it’s another result that could bear a more notable loss.

“Eric’s doing OK, he’s hanging in there. Upper-body injury,” SU head coach Scott Shafer said after the game. “He’s back there laughing and I feel good about where he’s at now. We’ll just keep looking at how he’s progressing as we move forward.”

Dungey was checked out on the sideline before exiting to the locker room. A reporter on the sideline said he was responsive and answering questions from the medical staff. He finished the game 3-for-6 for 93 yards and a touchdown in the air, and with four rushes for 50 yards and a touchdown on the ground. After the game, SU offense coordinator Tim Lester said he chatted with Dungey about the rest of the game and added that the freshman seemed like his normal self.

Lester said that doesn’t mean he’s not concussed or has another injury, and that the team will find out more Sunday when test results come back. When asked point-blank if Dungey has a concussion, Shafer explained why Syracuse does not release that information before saying it will be very deliberate in its evaluation of the quarterback.

“I know it’s your job to ask those questions,” Shafer said to a reporter. “The reason I don’t like that or answer them directly is because people take shots at kids and unfortunately that’s the reality of it.”

Before exiting the game, Dungey was making big plays en route to building a 14-point second-quarter lead. On Syracuse’s second possession, Dungey ran left in a triple option and was wrapped up by Amari Coleman after eight yards. But as he was going down he flipped a lateral to running back Jordan Fredericks who picked up 36 more yards. Cole Murphy knocked in a field goal three plays later to tie the game at 3-3. 

On the first play of the Orange’s next possession, Dungey faked a handoff and lofted a pass to Steve Ishmael over the middle. It hit Ishmael in stride and, one player later, Dungey rushed up the middle for a 4-yard score.

But SU’s next score, made possible by a 31-yard yard from Dungey and carried into the end zone by Strickland, came at a very high cost.

“I saw him get hit, the helmet-to-helmet thing, and you know it’s unfortunate,” Lester said. “He laid down for a minute and he started getting up and I got excited. But he’s safe and he seems to be doing good.

“… I’ll learn a lot more tomorrow. I told him to call me tonight. He’s in great spirits.”

Published on September 19, 2015 at 4:03 pm

Contact Jesse: [email protected] | @dougherty_jesse