Three takeaways from Syracuse football’s spring game

Linebacking corps shows potential

The Syracuse Orange were left with a good bit of uncertainty at linebacker after Kielan Whitner and Ryan Guthrie graduated from last year’s squad. However, the linebacking corps played solid against the first team offense in the scrimmage.

The running game showed early success with Moe Neal, but as the scrimmage went along the linebackers all played a big role in stuffing rushes up the middle and keeping backs from advancing past the second level.

The lone glaring problem the linebackers had was crossing routes. In a nickel defense with only two linebackers, the offense has more real estate to work with over the middle and the offense capitalized. Notably, Sean Riley burst out for a long catch and run on a throw right down the pipe and the rising senior just turned upfield and was off to the races.

Tommy DeVito and the offense settling in

Projected starting QB Tommy DeVito started the day off rough with an interception on the scrimmage’s first possession, but it didn’t take long after that for him to get rolling.

He showed consistency on all of his throws throughout. In fact, he only had one or two off-target throws for the rest of the scrimmage and tossed a couple of TDs as well.

There was also a lot of promise from the receivers and backs. The usual suspects showed up along with some solid outings from RB Jawhar Jordan and WR Courtney Jackson.

SU has a lot more in the arsenal

Don’t expect what fans got to see in the Dome to tell the whole story of what to expect.

“There’s a lot of things on defense that we didn’t show because we don’t want everybody to see it,” Babers said after the scrimmage. “There were a lot of things on offense we didn’t do.”

Still plenty of time until the season opener on the road at Liberty.