Early Signing Period: Recap of Dino Babers’s Press Conference

After a day of comic book graphics flying and a “secret” recruit, the Syracuse Orange football team added 19 new players to its ranks in one way or another. Once all the paperwork had come in, head coach Dino Babers spoke to the media and answered questions about this class and recruiting as a whole:

“I feel like this is one of our better classes. It has a lot of length and what we were trying to do is get a lot taller and a lot bigger. I think it’s really imperative in this conference — and especially on the ACC Atlantic side — that you have the type of size that you need to withstand the pounding that’s going on.”

Every single non-transfer recruit Syracuse signed aside from safety Chase Atkinson, who was previously slated to wait until National Signing Day. That’s fine. But recruiting remains an area for the Orange to focus on improving. It’s usually the most notable difference when playing juggernaut opponents like Florida State and Clemson, so matching them in those areas serves to take that advantage away a couple years down the road.

On signing German recruits (tight end) Maximilian Mang and (offensive tackle) Mark Petry:

“Based off of what’s been going on in the trend, that I’m sure (signing more international players) is going to be happening more and more not only at our university, but universities all across the country.”

I’m not sure coaches are going to start chartering planes to Europe to bring in the next big boy from Berlin tomorrow or even next year. That said, football is clearly spreading, particularly in Germany where we saw Bengals TE Moritz Böhringer become the first player drafted from Europe just three years ago. Who knows, maybe Syracuse will soon be #GermanysCollegeTeam.

On not signing a QB:

“You want to make sure you get the right QB and we’re gonna go after the right ones... I think that’s a little bit more important than just having one in an early signing period. We definitely would like to have a QB in this class but it has to be the right type of QB and not just someone that plays that position”

This is sound philosophy, but it still requires bringing in a signal caller. Syracuse has yet to sign a high school QB in the 2020 class and missed out on UNC transfer Cade Fortin, who announced Tuesday his choice to attend USF. Last year, Syracuse missed out on multiple targets and had to settle for bringing in David Summers (who they flipped late from Maryland).

The Orange would’ve been bound for a similar fate the year before had it not been for a last-minute flip from Chance Amie. Right now, Summers is the heir apparent to DeVito on the roster. We don’t know what he’ll bring, but ideally some competition would be ideal considering right now, the QB room for 2021 looks to be just him and Tommy.

On recruiting defense:

“We based out a little bit to make sure that we can cover two different avenues, so to speak. The first part of the recruiting period we kind of handled one and we have enough wiggle room in the backend to take care of any changes if we need to do those.”

Seems like Babers has planned out his recruits to be versatile enough to cover whatever scheme might be implemented under a new defensive coordinator and leaves wiggle room to recruit better fits once that DC is hired. Well played, Dino.

“There’s something that I’m not really at liberty to talk about. Yeah, coming to a theater near you.”

That was in regard to the “mystery” 19th player. It’s probably Florida offensive line transfer Chris Bleich. But maybe not.

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Got any of your own thoughts on the recruiting class? Let us know in the comments.