A bag of Chick-Fil-A in front of him and another forgettable Syracuse football performance behind him, Evan Adams talked about inches.

“We’ve been close, but we need to clean up stuff,” Adams said after the 27-20 loss to Pittsburgh. “Me myself, I had a false start today. That’s inches that we could’ve used. You think about the game like that, everybody has the inches that need to contribute.”

Sure, it’s a cliché often used in football speak, but perhaps there’s a legitimate point to it all. Think about it. A false start here. A sack allowed there. Maybe a Kenneth Ruff fumble recovery isn’t overruled without clear evidence. At some point, the inches add up. At some point, enough small things overcome the mishaps and Syracuse completes the comeback against Pittsburgh instead of another one score loss.

Each misstep has been a small piece to Syracuse’s puzzling 3-4 start after finishing 10-3 a year ago. It’s easy to see how SU (3-4, 0-3 Atlantic Coast) doesn’t finish with at least three wins in its final five matchups of 2019. The Orange haven’t put together a successful offensive performance against a Power 5 school yet this season and it might not matter. The offense doesn’t need to be great for the Orange to make a bowl game. It just needs to be serviceable.

The ACC isn’t known as a football powerhouse conference and this year is a particularly down year. The conference currently has two teams in the AP Top 25: No. 4 Clemson and No. 25 Wake Forest. Though Syracuse will play the Demon Deacons the final week of the year, the rest of the Orange’s opponents are currently either one game above or below .500.

Even more notable than the opposing teams’ records is the significant dip in pass rushing ability the Orange will encounter down the stretch. Through seven games, SU leads the country with 35 sacks allowed, a majority of them coming against three ACC opponents ranked in the top-10 in team sacks prior to the matchup. None of the final five teams left on Syracuse’s schedule currently rank in the top-30 nationally in total sacks. Three of them — Louisville, Wake Forest and Boston College — are in the bottom half of the country.

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The solutions for SU’s offensive line struggles aren’t obvious. As Adams pointed out, it’s a far more complex issue than just blocking the man in front of you. Still, the Orange have found ways around it at times this year — see the Western Michigan game. Syracuse has hit quick screens that don’t require long pass drops. Empty backfields against Clemson led to open receivers. There are ways to adjust, it’s just not easy.

“We really want to do well, but just really wanting something is not enough, you have to prepare the right way,” Syracuse head coach Dino Babers said. “You have to make sure that your heart is in it and you’re going to be unselfish about it. If everybody’s willing to do that then we really do have a chance.

“It’s difficult. It’s really difficult the way some things are, the way some units are.”

For the first three years under Babers, the offense was the driving force of the team. This year’s been the opposite, as the message from the team after every loss except Maryland has been the defense played well enough to win and the offense didn’t reciprocate.

Syracuse has now forced turnovers in 21 consecutive games and its 14 takeaways this season are tied for 14th in the nation. If you’re going to win a football game, it often starts with some turnovers.

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Then come the big plays, or at least the game-pivoting ones. Syracuse has had those in recent weeks with long passes to Trishton Jackson at North Carolina State and Taj Harris’ 94-yard touchdown against Pittsburgh. Mix in some creative wrinkles, like Clayton Welch’s successful running on Friday, and at least the opponent has to match a more diverse game plan.

The 2019 version of Syracuse thus far isn’t the type of team that lines up and beats another ACC team with a straightforward game plan. Small improvements won’t turn in the Orange into a conference contender, but they can help it scrape to a bowl game.

“A few plays here and there add up throughout the game and you see the final score,” defensive end Kendall Coleman said. “So we get those small things corrected— which I said isn’t an easy fix but it’s doable — and we’re looking at a different team, definitely.”

In Syracuse’s last two games, it put together some of the worst quarters of offense on the season. Still, it had a chance. In Syracuse’s first seven games of the season, it’s dug itself a hole. Still, it has a chance.

SU doesn’t need to leap out of it. The Orange just needs a few inches.

Josh Schafer is the sports editor for The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at [email protected] or @Schafer_44.

Published on October 20, 2019 at 9:59 pm