Last time we saw the Syracuse Football team take the field, the Orange notched their first victory of the season in the newly-renovated Dome against Georgia Tech 37-20. In that matchup, star free safety Andre Cisco did not take the field. The junior was banged up pregame. Earlier this week, Head Coach Dino Babers confirmed that Cisco had suffered a “lower-body extremity injury” in warmups. Despite giving some insight, Babers did not give a timetable for Cisco’s return.
Coming off the bye, now we flip the page to Duke. The Blue Devils are yet to win a game this season and sit at the bottom of the ACC. One intriguing aspect of this team is its quarterback Chase
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Brice. The redshirt junior comes to Durham after spending the beginning of his collegiate career at Clemson behind superstar Trevor Lawerance. Syracuse is familiar with Brice. If you remember, back in
2018, the Tigers handed the Orange their first loss of the season led by, then backup, Chase Brice. Then, a freshmen, Brice only threw one touchdown, but also had one of the best running backs, Travis Etienne, behind him leading the scoring. Flashing forward to this next edition of the matchup, Brice has had a rocky start to the season. It took the signal caller until game three vs. Boston College to throw a touchdown. Sounds familiar right? But we’ll talk about Tommy DeVito and the SU offense later. Back to Chase Brice. Turnovers have been a big concern. Brice has thrown seven interceptions already this year. Four of them came against Virginia. In three of the first four games, when the QB throws a pick in the game, his team lost. The only exception was against nationally-ranked Notre Dame in the opener.
Chase Brice is going to have to eliminate the mistakes when facing the Syracuse defense. The Orange leads the entire FBS in forced turnovers with 10. In addition, the unit is in the top five for interceptions per game among all other teams in college football, averaging two. This was on full display against the Yellow Jackets on September 26th. GT quarterback Jeff Sims threw four picks and SU capitalized, returning one of them for six. Look out for Mikel Jones, Trill Williams, or Rob Hanna to make some opportunities happen in the defensive backfield against the turnover happy Chase Brice.
On the offensive side of the ball, the Orange hope to build off the momentum found in the game against Georgia Tech. Freshmen Sean Tucker was a revelation for Sterlin Gilbert and the offense. Feeding the first-year back will be pertinent in taking the pressure off DeVito and helping the unit find success. At least that’s the result we saw against GT. Tucker rushed for over 100 yards and two scores, which gave DeVito the chance to finally throw his first touchdowns of the season. In addition, DeVito had more time in the pocket to toss a few deep passes down field, something we hadn’t seen yet this season.
Overall, this matchup leans in Syracuse’s favor. The defense is stout and constantly gives the offense great field position through takeaways. Duke is prone to give the ball up. Those two truths together create a lethal combination against Blue Devils. The only thing that could potentially hinder the Orange is, what was holding them back before beating Georgia Tech, the attack. Tommy DeVito and the offense need to build off the progress made for this team to secure the victory.