Syracuse Football: Dino Babers' Strategy a double edged Sword?

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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While head coach Dino Babers brings an exciting brand of football to the Carrier Dome. It does come with some side-effects.

So let’s start this off with, I get it. Syracuse football head coach Dino Babers’ takes over a Syracuse football team without a lot of groceries in the pantry. So he is trying to make his meals with someone else’s ingredients. As you can imagine the dishes don’t always stack up too expectations. In another analogy, is he is putting jet fuel in a smart car and stomping on the pedal in a drag race… yup didn’t work out as he hoped.

I also understand the purpose behind his fast paced offensive strategy. Similar to Navy and Georgia Tech with their frustrating quadruple option that keeps defensive coordinators up at night. None of these teams have the caliber of players to win week in week out without doing something to level the playing field.

For us it’s ramping up the pace to try and wind the opponents. Running a play every 20 seconds can gas out your opponent who isn’t used to that level of activity. However at times this season it seems like we are trying to break the NCAA record for number of 3 and outs and punts.

Here are some statistics for you. Syracuse ranks 73rd in the nation in time of possession. So this may seem intuitive if we are running plays quickly the time of possession should go down. Except that it isn’t the case and it’s not what we are hoping to accomplish. We want to score quickly, wear out the opposing defense and get the ball back to our ‘scoring machine’.

What we are actually doing is wearing out our defense. For the purpose of this discussion I am throwing out the stats associated with the Colgate game. We are averaging 127 rushing yards per game not great but not too bad. On the other hand we are giving up … wait for it … an average of 309 yards per game rushing?!?! Yikes that’s terrible. We are also nearly doubling our opponents in penalties.

The other part of this is when we do have a lead (listen up please Dino) it’s ok to slow the pace down and run the clock out.

In summary I understand what Dino wants to do but at times he needs to remember that he is driving a smart car and not a jet engine. Wait until you can shop for the groceries before you decide to cook all of the items on your menu. Or our season will be cooked.

Sep 2, 2016; Syracuse, NY, USA; Syracuse Orange head coach Dino Babers looks on from the sidelines against the Colgate Raiders during the second quarter at the Carrier Dome. Mandatory Credit: Rich Barnes-USA TODAY Sports