Syracuse Football Camp: The Not Ready For Primetime Players

I'm running a little behind (as you can see) so bear with me while we power through what I missed this weekend...

In a word, the Syracuse Orange football scrimmage that closed out the Fort Drum Week seems to be "disappointing." At least offensively and at least according to Doug Marrone.

"I think today showed we have a long way to go," coach Doug Marrone said. "We’re not ready to play right now in game-like situations. Obviously, we need to make vast improvement."

"What I want to see is better execution," Marrone said. "There’s dropped balls. There’s people open. Again, not very good."

Noticeably absent were the "big plays," which clearly weren't attempted quite as much as in practice. Clearly the team still needs to work out the kinks on the regular stuff first.

So what happened out there?

QB: Ryan Nassib mostly took it easy, looking for the short passes and quick dumps, though not much else was expected of him.

RB: Ashton Broyld didn't do much but spent the day mostly coming out of the backfield. He did score a touchdown, so that's nice.

Overall, it continues to look like a RB-by-committee approach until someone steps up.

In Saturday’s scrimmage at Fort Drum, five backs got carries, with junior Jerome Smith and freshman George Morris getting seven apiece. Freshman Ashton Broyld carried five times, scoring once, junior Prince-Tyson Gulley carried three times and sophomore Adonis Ameen-Moore carried twice.

"Right now, I don’t see a separation of ‘this is the one’ guy."

WR: Jarrod West continues to shine and is almost certainly looking like WR #3. He had six catches on the day.

Ben Lewis had the catch of the day, laying out for a 20-yard touchdown catch from Charley Loeb.

Adrian Flemming suffered some kind of significant injury though it remains unclear exactly what. He hit the ground and screamed in pain after going up to catch a ball and landing awkwardly. His ankle lower body was bandaged and he was removed from the game.

TE: If David Stevens plays like this every game, those TE records are going by the wayside. He made three TD catches, a two-point conversion and a 35-yard scamper where he split defenders like Swiss cheese.

Ron Thompson came back to Earth on Saturday, dropping lots of passes. Hopefully, it was just an aberration.

OL: Ivan Foy and Rob Trudo are basically locked in a battle for the starting right guard spot. For the time being, Foy is slightly in the lead.

DL: Look out cause Markus Pierce-Brewster is making his presence felt. The JUCO transfer is already playing with the first-team defense, though there are a lot of injuries.

LB: Dyshawn Davis looks to be back in form. He had an interception and 3 "touch" sacks, since you weren't allowed to tackle the QB.

Cameron Lynch nabbed an INT as well and looked solid.

DB: Ritchy Desir, Durell Eskridge and Jeremi Wilkes all had interceptions on the day.

Special Teams: Despite being inconsistent in camp, Ryan Norton showed why he's going to be our kickoff specialist this season with some big boots.