This past year of Syracuse football was just about as lousy as things can get. 1-10 after a 10 win season that seemed to be brimming with potential and the possibility of Syracuse becoming some kind of a football school was all flushed away when Dino Babers and company trotted out and spat on any kind of hope SU fans had. Tommy DeVito looked awful, the offensive line was not good, the defensive line was worse, the running game was non-existent besides Sean Tucker, the only talented receiver on the team flipped off a camera and the new coordinators didn’t seem to help all that much. Though there was at least one bright spot.
Last season, in the wake of departures from Trill Williams and Andre Cisco, Syracuse showed off it’s young secondary talent. Names like Garrett Williams, Ja’Had Carter, and Rob Hanna became well-known to Syracuse fans not far into the season. Will they be able to keep it up in 2021? Williams believes the unit will be more cohesive:
Obviously the Orange had quite the veteran secondary lineup this past year. Cisco, Melifonwu, and Williams will all play their next games in the National Football League. To replace them Babers went out and recruited the aforementioned young studs, and they played incredibly last season, they were really the only positives aside from Sean Tucker. Looking back on a 1-10 season usually isn’t an incredibly positive experience, but the stats of these young bucks still hold up as wildly impressive:
#8 Garrett Williams (5-11, 188 lbs): 11 Games
- 64 Total Tackles (3.0 TFL, 1 Sack)
- 2 Interceptions (70 yds, 1 TD)
- 9 Passes Defended
#11 Ja’Had Carter (6-2, 191 lbs): 10 Games
- 65 Total Tackles (3.0 TFL)
- 2 Interceptions (34 yds)
- 3 Passes Defended
- 1 Forced Fumble/1 Fumble Recovery
#19 Rob Hanna (6-0, 166 lbs): 9 Games
- 51 Total Tackles (2.0 TFL)
- 1 Interception
- 1 Fumble Recovery
In the last article I wrote last football season I concluded by saying, “the future is bright on the hill.” I very much still believe that and a lot of that is due to these three guys. They might not be returning to a bowl game next season but they will be better. The argument can be made that their stats were inflated due to the fact Cisco and Williams opted out, giving them plenty of snaps, and Iffy played all year so none of the three ever had to face the best receiver of any team. That’s an entirely fair argument and there’s a lot of truth to that, but even still, results are results, each of these guys played far higher than anyone expected them too and that’s still something to be hopeful for. You should absolutely be excited to watch these guys play, they’ve got the potential to become the faces of this program, this season will show us whether they’ll do that.
