Dino Babers fifteen minutes could be up. At one point he was the talk of the college football world, but with his Syracuse program falling on hard times over the past two seasons, the shine is starting to wear off.
And hard times the Orange have fallen on, with the low point being last weekends 38-21 loss to FBS team Liberty. Starting quarterback Tommy DeVito may be out injured but Syracuse should not be losing to the Flames, period.
As far as the Tigers, don’t count on them overlooking the Orange anytime soon. Not after losing to them in 2017 and being pushed to the brink in 2018. Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott says while on the surface things look bad for the Orange, they have actually been more competitive than some might think and that Clemson is well aware of what can happen if they don’t take this game seriously.
“I think when you go and you watch, you can’t just just look at the stats,” Elliott said. “You can’t just look at the overall record. You look at majority of their games, you know outside of outside Liberty, man those games were tight going into the fourth quarter. Defensively, they do a lot of stuff that can cause you problems. They could easily embarrass you if you’re not focused.”
Elliott says one of the biggest issues for the Orange has been inexperience but thinks it’s a team that has potential once they start to put it together.
“The biggest thing is that they’re young,” Elliott said. “You can tell that they’re a little bit inexperienced. They’re doing a lot of things on defense, which you know once they figure it out, it’s gonna cause a lot of problems.”
Clemson has arguably been playing the best football of any team in the country and the fact that they are sitting atop the polls means they will get every teams best shot and Elliott says the Tigers are expecting no different this weekend.
“This is this is a good challenge for us,” Elliott said. “Obviously for our guys we’ve got to respect the fact that a couple years ago there were 4-8 and beat us. Then two years ago here, it went down to the fourth quarter to beat these guys. So they’re going to come in and give us everything that they have.”
