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BOCA RATON, Fla., — DaQuan Evans sacking Braden Davis from behind off a late blitz and Tramel Logan taking the fumble back 61 yards for a touchdown effectively ended the game. The Boca Raton Bowl was supposed to be a joyous ushering in of the Fran Brown era, one that has generated more positivity around the program than its seen in over a decade.

Instead, the offense wilted, the defense sold and not even holder Jack Stonehouse did his job. With the magic spurred by a herculean effort by Dan Villari and LeQuint Allen Jr. all but dashed, all the Orange had left to do was look toward next year. All the incoming players and coaches — Kyle McCord, Brown and Elijah Robison — could do was sit on the sidelines pregame and take photos. Stonehouse bobbling the final punt with 26 seconds left, only to roll out and flutter the ball three yards was the final crescendo to South Florida’s drubbing.

Even getting to a bowl game in Boca Raton against a Group of 5 school took offensive ingenuity: one last defensive stand from a unit that was picked apart throughout ACC play and the morphing of Villari into Syracuse’s swiss army knife. The 4-0 start that saw the Orange’s offense hum and their defense lock down nonconference opponents quickly fizzled out into blowouts that exposed SU’s talent discrepancy. Puzzlingly bad losses and poor performances piled up as former head coach Dino Babers’ team once again mirrored the midseason freefall storyline that persisted for the last three seasons.

Grandiose preseason thoughts of the best finish since 2018 were dashed. Garrett Shrader tore his shoulder. Syracuse parted ways with Babers. And still, following a win over Wake Forest, the Orange sat behind 31-0 at halftime, searching for anything offensively that might work. Without Shrader, an offense in flux crumbled. The Bulls had three games and an additional three weeks of practice to scout the Orange’s new-look offense, a look that — a month and a half after first being introduced — lost its luster Thursday night.

“I think there’s a lot of positives that will come out of it for our program, probably hard to see that if you’re watching the game,” interim head coach Nunzio Campanile said.

Mistakes quickly piled up at Florida Atlantic University Stadium, further hindering a defense that was routinely perplexed and an offense that needed defensive penalties to move the ball. The flair of a wildcat, run-first offense simmered out even when Syracuse switched to passing more with Davis under center. The Orange’s road to Thursday night was full of incredible highs and unforgivable lows. But a 45-0 loss to South Florida (7-6, 4-4 American Athletic Conference) highlighted the freefall Syracuse (6-7, 2-6 Atlantic Coast Conference) suffered under Babers’ tenure.

Alijah Clark recovered Sean Atkins’s fumble at the USF 35-yard line and took off. With no one in sight, except a few Bulls quickly picked up by the Orange’s defenders, he glided into the end zone unscathed for the touchdown. But 10 yards away at the right hash mark, Jason Simmons Jr. had planted his left foot and lowered his shoulder into quarterback Byrum Brown. The referee immediately threw a flag for unnecessary roughness, negating the touchdown and starting the Orange at the USF 28-yard line.

Then Villari’s rush up the middle got two yards, and a jet sweep to Allen Jr. was fumbled on the transfer to Davis. Villari did get off a pop pass to Damien Alford on third-and-long, but it fell three yards short of the first down marker. Campanile opted for the 45-yard field goal try as the first dash of rain slowly started to dissipate, and Stonehouse bobbled the snap. What should have been a 7-7 tie with four minutes left in the opening quarter turned into Aamaris Brown nabbing the fumble and taking it 63 yards to the end zone.

Campanile understood the desire to factor Davis into the game as a passing quarterback more often. But he also acknowledged the reality that if the Orange wanted to trade the wildcat for more passing, it would be doing so with a freshman play-caller who completed his first downfield pass in the second quarter Thursday night.

“We were pretty much in a situation where we had to do what we had to do,” Campanile said.

That was as close as Syracuse got to the end zone Thursday night. After another drive moved only by a defensive pass interference call, the Bulls went right down the field and capped off their drive with a 31-yard touchdown pass to Khafre Brown. The Orange were stunned. USF coaches could hardly keep the bench off the field. Three minutes into the second quarter, SU was down 21-0.

“We needed it to be a one-score game the whole way, kind of being able to run the football. We couldn’t run the football at all,” Campanile said. “We didn’t feel like we had a better option.”

South Florida knew it was smaller than Syracuse. Competing in a now-ravaged AAC, the Bulls hadn’t seen an opponent with Power 5 size since a week 3 loss to Alabama. But head coach Alex Golesh said that to combat their lack of size, “we got to go run.” Their offense, one that many of Syracuse’s defenders said they’d never seen before, helped disrupt a strong defense and led to chunk plays. Marlowe Wax said ACC schools like Georgia Tech were fast, but no one was as fast as USF — the team that ran the most plays in the Football Bowl Subdivision this year.

Leon Lowery and Jeremiah Wilson were in the portal, two of 12 players who moved on from Syracuse following the firing of Babers. Help in the form of depth, something the Orange haven’t known for years on defense, wasn’t coming. They’d have to contain an offense that averaged 30.83 points per game this season with limited personnel and an offense that only moved the ball well in one of its last four games.

“Those two are very talented. They take a lot of focus on the defense,” Justin Barron said of Brown and Atkins. “They make you think about them maybe more than you should.”

And the pair torched Syracuse all night. The Orange haven’t been able to afford big performances from opposing offenses over their final four games of the regular season. Thursday night was no exception. No Shrader meant they were going to have to rely on a veteran defense that looked like it was on the upswing. Thirty-one points against Georgia Tech proved too steep, and a defensive stand to halt Wake Forest from reaching that point lifted SU to the postseason. So as the offense slept through the game, turning the ball over three times while USF picked apart the Orange’s secondary, the game quickly faded out of their hands.

Syracuse elected to receive the ball at halftime. But three plays into its opening drive, Villari’s rollout pass fell far short of Umari Hatcher and was picked off by Tavin Ward. He said he made a “bad choice” trying to squeeze a hole shot into the hole of USF’s cover 2 defense. Four plays later, South Florida went up 38-0 after a blown coverage left USF’s top receiver, Atkins, wide open in the end zone. Barron and Simmons Jr. were pointing at each other and yelling after the play. That was it, the last straw to make the final 30 minutes of Syracuse’s season a mere practice. The hopes of a comeback, along with all this season started out to be, were gone.

The Babers era started with a bang, but it ended with a 45-0 loss to South Florida in a bowl game that’s never hosted a Power 5 school. It ended with a Bulls fan gleefully holding up a stuffed Kermit the Frog and eating oranges in Boca Raton, Florida.

“I don’t think we lived up to our expectations, but I can tell you we’re never going to feel like this again,” Villari said.

Published on December 22, 2023 at 12:06 am

Contact Anthony: aalandt@syr.edu | @anthonyalandt