The SU football bandwagon seems to have a few more empty seats this week than it had earlier this season after the Orange 1-2 start. But if you listen to Dino Babers speak, there is still plenty of reason to be optimistic in 2019 with nine games left on the schedule.

Nine games Babers says his team will have an opportunity to win.  But not if things don’t start improving dramatically on offense, where the Orange have totaled 50 points in three games after averaging more than 40 per game last season.

So what gives?

Babers is blaming the non-production on inconsistency borne from too many bumps and bruises.  The coach said Monday he didn’t want to “throw anyone under the bus,” but the amount of injuries sustained by an undisclosed group (Wide receiver? Offensive line?) has hampered the offensive unit’s ability to build chemistry in the early part of the season. 

Babers says it may be time to start addressing the team’s training methods in order to fix the issue.  But that’s only part of it.

Sophomore QB Tommy DeVito continues to display a tendency to throw the ball into coverage after extending the play, and it has cost the Orange interceptions in each of the first three games.  DeVito has now started three games in his career and failed to throw a TD pass in two of them.  But he’s thrown at least one interception in each of the three, and three of his four INTs have occurred inside the red zone.  The most recent example of this came in Saturday’s blowout loss to Clemson, and even more frustrating than that it happened on the first play after Syracuse had gained possession on an interception of its own.

And yet, Coach Babers is standing by his man.

Babers said Monday he’s seeing growth out of his young gunslinger and defended DeVito’s decision on the play against Clemson.  After initially thinking it was a mistake, Babers blamed the interception on bad luck after reviewing the game film, saying a defender who’d fallen down happened to get up at just the moment DeVito made the throw.  Instead of landing in the waiting arms of a barely-open Abdul Adams, the ball was taken back by the Tigers quashing any brief surge of momentum the Orange had.  The SU coach says football players are trained to keep their eyes focused on the field and not on the ground for their own safety, so DeVito never saw him.

Despite the offense’s troubles, Dino Babers says his team is “just fine” confidence-wise and the remaining games on the schedule are ones his team will have a chance to win.  But as one of his predecessors used to say, time will tell, starting with Western Michigan this weekend.