Not a very exciting game – but at least its our best chance at snapping our 7 game losing streak and notching our first win of the season. 

When: Saturday September 20thth, 2008 – 3:30 PM Eastern

Where: Syracuse, New York in the Carrier Dome

Capacity: 50,000

Television: ESPN 360 – ESPN Gameplan – Orange All Access

Tailgating information: http://www.texanmarktailgate.blogspot.com/

The Spread: Most Sportsbooks dont have this game available for wagering because it’s against a D-1AA opponnent – but Betus.com had the opening line at Syracuse -9 (it has since been taken off the books.) Either way – its not a game worth betting – just go scalp a seat for $5 and go watch the game!

Rivalry info: The two teams have never played – but Syracuse is 11-1 all time against the CAA. That lone loss came against Villanova in a 14-13 defeat. Northeastern on the other hand only has 2 all time wins against D-1 opponents (UConn in 2000 and Ohio in 2002.) Northeastern does not own one win against a current BCS conference opponent.

Coaches: Northeastern - Rocky Hager - 5th season at Northeastern (15-31 overall.) Syracuse- Greg Robinson - 4th season at Syracuse (7-31 overall.)

I for one had never even seen Northeastern football in action – thank god for Youtube. Here’s some highlights from Northeasterns game in Ball State earlier this season (fast forward to 1:01for game action.)

Syracuse Offense (ranked 114 out of 119 in FBS) vs Northeastern Defense (ranked 100 out of 109 in FCS): After a 13-32 performance against Penn State – Senior Cameron Dantley has re-sparked the QB controversy. Both Dantley and season opener starter Andrew Robinson are expected to take snaps in this weekends game against the Huskies. If there’s a time to settle a QB controversy – this is the game with Big East play beginning in less than two weeks. Problem is – the Huskie defense has been torched thus far (giving up 455 ypg) and both Dantley and ARob will probably look like Peyton out there – so expect the controversy to last into BE play unless one of them really screws up. Which may be pretty hard seeing as Northeastern is yet to pick a pass this season. If we’re going to try and make any noise or even a chirp in Big East play we have to use this game as our final tweaking session. It’s time to get Sales more involved in the passing game and do whatever you can to pump some confidence into a dissapointing Lavar Lobdell. 

Carter is nursing a pulled hamstring and should be back to practicing soon – but if he’s not 100% theres really no point in suiting him up this weekend. Brinkley and Hogue should be more than enough against a Northeastern defense that have surrendered almost 5 yards a carry thus far. You’d be lying if you said our offensive line hasnt improved and I expect even Chavers to look All-Big East at times. The Northeastern DL is just overmatched and has yet to even record a sack this season against Ball State and Georgia Southern. I expect Boonah to surpass his career high of 143 yards he set a few weeks ago against Akron and Hogue to chip in for 60-80.

Northeastern Offense (ranked 31st out of 109 in FCS) vs Syracuse Defense (ranked 115 out of 119 in FBS): If theres any reason to be concerned about this game – it’ll be because of our defense. As we all know – defensive guru Greg Robinson has yet to display anything close to…well, defense. At times during the Penn State game I felt as if Robinsons old buddy Bill Romanowski would have been more effective against Penn State – by himself.

Northeastern has actually been able to piece together a decent offense this season – especially in the air. Senior QB Anthony Orio (yum) has totalled nearly 450 passing yards for a score and no interceptions in the Huskies two games this season while the Offensive line has only given up 3 sacks. Orio should have some success against our swiss cheese secondary – but the Northeastern OL has never seen a player like Arthur Jones. Jones has been the only bright spot on the defense and I expect him to be all over Orio all game. LB Parker Cantey, CB Dorian Graham, and DB Kevyn Scott are all players to keep an eye on Saturday as they recieve more and more needed experience. I’m interested to see how the young guys stack up against lesser opponents…hopefully Graham lives up to his word to play better after basically being thrown to the dogs by GRob last week against a strong Penn State WR core.

Why Syracuse will win: No matter how bad – they’re just on a whole other level. Brinkley and Jones are true D-1 BCS players and should have field days against an outmatched Northeastern football team. No disrespect to the Huskies at all – They’re out there practicing and putting in work while I sit in my recliner blogging – but I just dont think they have the horses to compete on this level. Sure a few smartass fans might say – ‘Well neither do we’ – but for example: The Skychiefs stink and may not be able to do much with a 90mph fastball – but what do you think they’d do against a Single-A pitcher who throws 75mph meatballs? That ball is probably going 400 feet over the fence. If we lose to Northeastern this program is 10x worse off than we thought.

Why Northeastern will win: They’re able to make a few stops on defense and continue to throw the ball just like any other team has on us this season. Northeastern, like almost all other opponents, will bring much more experience to the field Saturday.

Syracuse player to watch: Freshman WR Marcus Sales. Sure he only has 2 grabs on the season – but if you’ve watched him the past three games you know he can contribute much more to this offense. I really did not expect him to do much this season being a freshman but he already looks better than a few of our other guys who have been around longer (cough Lobdell.) He runs tight routes, has shown good hands, and each time I’ve followed him he’s running full speed. Seems like he’s progressed each game.

Northeastern player to watch: Anthony Orio – threw for 287 yards and a TD last week against Georgia Southern. He has yet to throw an interception in two games.

Reyes39 Prediction: Syracuse 38 Northeastern 28

CollegeFootballNews Prediction: Syracuse 33 Northeastern 14

-Stats thanks to ncaa.org and cfbdatawarehouse.com

-click on photos to see them from host site

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 4:11 am by Sean N. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.