Syracuse

Sophia put on her costume and headed out. Her brother Timmy was not old enough to go on his own and so he had to trick or treat with Mom and Dad. That was gonna slow him down, and Sophia needed speed and the most candy possible. She killed it and in two hours had two pumpkin bags stuffed to the seams. Timmy was only five, loved Snickers and fell asleep after 6 houses. She came home and starting separating her spoils while siphoning off her favorites for some quick stomach rewards. She had 11 Snickers, and quickly decided that she liked Snickers more than Timmy. Better luck next year young man, every man for himself.

This is exactly how this Seminole team operates. They are all costumed up and ready to go. But the offense, defense and special teams have almost nothing in common or even pretend to work together. This is a team that clearly does not know how to win, but more importantly does not feed off of each other at all. The offense scores a big touchdown and the defense rolls out the orange carpet for a quick opponent score. The defense with a double digit lead gets the stop that should put the game away, and the punt return team slips on a banana cartoon style to give the ball right back 50 yards downfield. The defense has a once in a decade goal line stand and the offense punts the ball back in less than a minute. Even after a stadium shaking score, the kickoff coverage team repeatedly let deep, high kicks be returned for 30 plus yards. As a fan, it is just a delight to have almost every great sequence immediately followed by dousing from a bucket of arctic saltwater. Every home game this season has come down to the last seconds, and for the first time all year, we gloriously felt relief at double zeros in Doak. 

Jordan Travis has started all four of Coach Norvell's wins since he arrived in Tallahassee and in most of them, he has pulled a Houdini act to deliver the dub. This one was a showstopper. Those two finishing scampers were nuts. Both of them were just rocket launchers down the sideline and each one had an Orange defender regretting not hitting him as he cut for fear of a personal foul - and then Zip - he has gone tightroping the team to a win. Jordan gives us the best chance to win today, but we have go to find a downfield passing game somehow because this sideline screen mess is not a recipe for longterm success. I can still see a situation where we choose UMass as the right time to launch Chubba. Let's not throw him to the wolves next week at Carolina and kill his confidence forever.

A few live observations for you. You can see why the coaching staff likes Malik McClain so much even though he has dropped as many balls as he has caught. He was wide open on a number of deep balls. He drew one penalty and Jordan missed him badly on another. But, other than Helton, he appears to be the only wideout that can win a single coverage battle on this talent-challenged team. Inserting Mo Smith in the second quarter and seeing the running game take off were not unrelated items. He is the best OL we have and having him play - even at 50% - was the reason we had any sustained drives. 

Kier Thomas had his best game as a Nole, and Jermaine Thomas just does what he does. But, good golly what a drop-off when the second team enters. It is like an Elvis impersonator that comes on stage and has the fat down, but can not sing a lick. Almost every big QB run in this game had the backups in (Johnson just uncharacteristically whiffed on one) and they failed to contain a lumbering six four dude from breaking around the outside making him look like Lamar Jackson running after the ice cream truck. I know these backups DE's are young, and we have to continue to use them when the opponent has a long field, or 4th quarters a going to be a consistent issue. 

Yeah, we had the winning kick, but what in hell are we doing in special teams practice every day. We absolutely could not cover any kickoff all day. If a team in college football is stupid enough to return a kick inside the 5, you have to reward that with a dunce cap on the 15. Instead, we gave up 150 return yards and would have been better off kicking it out of bounds. Meanwhile, our kick returner always thinks he is the second coming of Devin Hester and somehow believes that jogging slowly into the scrum is the right recipe for peanut butter pie. Well, my friend, we could put a sumo athlete back there and jog that slow and ineffectively. Figure it out Coach. Our punt return team absolutely never blocks the other teams gunners and we dropped the biggest punt of the game. It is a travesty. We are giving away 1/3 of the game every week notwithstanding our young punter whose world class mullet and holding ability made him a half dozen helmet stickers this Saturday. 

Just like every other homer in the stands, I am completely convinced live that every official on the field is being paid gratuitously to help the other team. I am wrong almost invariably as most true fans are. During the dynasty, the chronicled disparity in holding calls was fodder for every Nole that the All Carolina Conference was trying to even the playing field. Memo to the ACC office, it is time for massive payback, and this game was exhibit A. There was a line judge in this contest that was absolutely yard shaving. On almost every downfield run, he marked the ball a yard in Syracuse's favor and in some cases it was much more. I was anxious to check out the replay to see if I was a fanboy again...welp this time, I was not angry enough. Not only did he steal about 20 yards, he was also responsible for three horrific calls in a facemark that wasn't, a personal foul that wasn't, and a shank of a punt that was marked 12 yards in the wrong direction. This dude needs to cash his last check this week. 

Umm, winning is better than losing. I am very happy not to hear any more of the Oh and whatever stats that ESPN has fun with over the last few weeks. This group of coaches and players desperately needed to build some confidence and even with a DC that is doing all he can to not coordinate some talented players, they are a group that is building just that. Two keys stops at the end of the game, a goal line stand and a scoreless first quarter is starting to feel like a foundation. The Oline has to get healthy, but if they do, they can build off of the three backs that are a backbone of strength as well. Maybe, maybe we can squeeze some life out of 2021 yet.