Eric Dungey went missing at a party in Schine Student Center.

It was fall 2015, shortly after Dungey assumed Syracuse’s starting quarterback role in the season opener because Terrel Hunt got hurt. The teammates responsible for bringing Dungey to Schine couldn’t find their true-freshman quarterback, whose career had begun fortuitously. He threw a touchdown on his first career pass. He sometimes called plays that weren’t in the playbook but somehow became first downs. He won an overtime game. With Dungey under center, Syracuse started 3-0 for the first time in 24 years.

That night, before departing for the party, right tackle Omari Palmer explained the demographics of a Schine party to Dungey. It’s almost all black and Latinx kids, said Palmer, who is black.

“You good with that?” he asked.

Dungey shrugged. He reacted similarly, Palmer remembered, when other white teammates asked him, “Why are you going?”

As Dungey danced and talked to others, several teammates saw him in a new light. He was a young, white quarterback, the son of a healthcare executive father and stay-at-home mother, from one of Portland, Oregon’s wealthiest suburbs. And here he was, weeks into college, in an environment he later described as “really different,” seeming so at ease.

“It was comforting to see him there,” Palmer said later, “because usually there’s a vibe …” He paused. “Football brings us together, but race can still divide us. It was nice to see him bridge that gap.”

Todd Michalek | Staff Photographer

In the past two years, that understanding and ability to relate has earned Dungey the trust of his teammates. SU head coach Dino Babers recently called Dungey one of the team’s “heartbeats.” This season, Dungey’s reliable presence under center has stabilized a position in turmoil since 2013 and, in turn, emboldened his teammates confidence in SU’s postseason potential. Syracuse’s (3-3, 1-1 Atlantic Coast) slog toward bowl eligibility runs through teams that are a combined 21-11 and begins Friday at 7 p.m. with No. 2 Clemson (6-0, 4-0) in the Carrier Dome.

“No one thinks we can (upset Clemson) except for us,” Dungey said. “I kind of like that. … All the fans love us, they say that, but at the end of the day, the only people who believe we can do it is us.”

In that way, Dungey has always closed ranks. During his junior year at Lakeridge (Oregon) High School, a public power-struggle between two coaches dynamited and one quit, so Dungey helped lead a discussion among the players on what to do next. On at least one occasion, Lakeridge coach Elvis Akpla said, a teammate “in need” called Dungey close to 3 a.m. and Dungey drove out to get him. At Syracuse, teammates said, Dungey’s commitment to training and film study demonstrates his willingness to work as hard as he asks them to.

“He doesn’t want to be known to take the easy road,” said Tom Smythe, one of Dungey’s high school coaches. “He doesn’t want anyone to know him as a p*ssy.”

In summer 2015, Dungey’s first time practicing with the team at Syracuse, older quarterbacks ragged on him while he called out plays in drills. “Get some bass in your voice!” they yelled. Quickly, though, the entire offense warmed to Dungey because of his play and demeanor, and they came to see him less as an outsider and more as a kid brother. When Dungey walked into the quarterbacks’ meeting room, he hiked his shorts way up high for a laugh.

His preternatural ability to connect translated onto the field. He won over teammates by approaching them individually after practice to talk about what could be improved, they said. Within six months of knowing Dungey, then-senior Jason Emerich, the center that season, called him “one of the best communicators I’ve ever talked to, football or not.” He had an air of confidence other players noticed and he never stuttered when barking signals at the line of scrimmage.

“He views himself as the alpha in every (group) he’s in,” said former defensive lineman Marcus Coleman. “That’s what you want from your QB.”

When Dungey ran into the huddle against Rhode Island after Hunt’s injury for his first-ever snap, he looked at his teammates and said, “Let’s go move the ball and score.” On his first dropback, Dungey ran for no gain. The next play, he hit receiver Ervin Philips for a 32-yard touchdown on his first career pass. By season’s end, some players called him Syracuse’s “Golden Arm,” referencing a highly sought-after quarterback recruit in the TV show Blue Mountain State.

In high school, for a final project in statistics class, Dungey’s group recorded “S.T.A.T.S.,” a parody of the song “Shots” by LMFAO, which interspersed raps about normal curves, z-scores and residual plots with video of Dungey at different times twerking, petting a border collie and showering himself shirtless in a hot-tub with double-fisted grape sodas. For days afterward, one classmate said, Lakeridge’s hallways echoed with shouts of “STATS!”

“People follow him,” Smythe said. “He’s the pied piper.”

Coleman sensed that in Dungey at the Schine party, because he hadn’t seen many people “like him” there in three years of going there. On Dungey’s official recruiting visit to Syracuse 10 months earlier, his hosts, including Coleman, Hunt and Palmer, didn’t find Dungey “uppity” or arrogant, which they sometimes saw in high-school stars. Dungey, though, had mostly sat and listened. The willingness to come to Schine, to them, went beyond that.

“Our locker room is really diverse,” Coleman said, “so to have a QB who could relate …” He trailed off. It was bigger.

Yet, at that moment, the group realized Dungey no longer was there. They had gotten separated, so Palmer set out to find his quarterback. He wanted to go home.

Palmer waded through the crowd, the sticky heat of partying people clinging shirts to their stomachs. He looked left and right. No Dungey. Then, suddenly, Palmer spied him dancing in a group of people and made his way over. Palmer then noticed the warmth had forced Dungey into a wardrobe adjustment.

“Bro,” Palmer said, laughing at his still-dancing, bare-chested quarterback. “Find your shirt and let’s go.”

Published on October 13, 2017 at 12:10 am

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