Syracuse’s 30-13 loss to Pittsburgh last Saturday displayed much of the same troubles from earlier in the season: a rough offensive showing. The Orange have only scored 34 points in their three games since Steve Angeli’s season-ending injury, and haven’t won a game since Angeli led SU into Death Valley to beat Clemson.
Saturday provided yet another interesting episode from the quarterback position; in the second half, both starter Rickie Collins and true freshman Luke Carney saw action. It wasn’t the switch that ‘Cuse fans expected after Collins’ second interception of the night. Carney came in for a drive and half, and then Head Coach Fran Brown pivoted back to the LSU transfer to finish out the game.
After weeks of keeping a positive attitude towards the quarterback dilemma, Brown let out the qb room’s current state to reporters postgame.
“Uh, not much. I mean, Ricky, it’s not like we don’t have a large menu for Ricky either. Uh, not much. We’re in a developmental point of it, right? When it comes to the young quarterbacks and the things of that nature. So, um, there’s a lot that we’re trying to do and trying to get rolling and, um, we’ll get it back. You know, it’ll work. It just takes time. It’s a process. Um it’s a process that sometimes you got to take some of the punches, right? You kind of takes more of the punches than you give out, but uh eventually you’ll be able to land more punches than you take.”
Before Angeli became available in March due to the Notre Dame quarterback room leaving the redshirt junior as the odd man out, Collins was supposed to be the day 1 starter for Syracuse. Carney was supposed to be the backup quarterback and second option if anything happened to Collins. The fact that both quarterbacks don’t fully know the playbook by October is very troubling. Collins was a December transfer to SU and practiced with the team during spring ball. Carney, who started the season as the third quarterback on the depth chart, should’ve been studying the playbook and learning the offense in practices and on the sidelines during games. Nobody will discredit how hard of a schedule the Orange were dealt this season; struggling against top ACC competition and not knowing the playbook are two separate issues.
‘Cuse will continue this quarterback process as it heads to Atlanta to take on #7 Georgia Tech this Saturday. The Yellow Jackets are 7-0 and look to be in prime position for the College Football Playoff on the back of quarterback Haynes King’s monster season.
As the old adage goes: “If you have two quarterbacks, you have none.”
