One Last Chance
With one guaranteed game left for the Orange, Syracuse head coach Dino Babers is looking forward to the game against PITT(9-4). Babers looks at this game as not only an opportunity to clinch a bowl game but an opportunity to knock off one of the best teams in the ACC.
“It’s going to be a heck of an opportunity to line up against that football team in our last game this year,” Babers said. “This is a doggone good football team that’s going to have an opportunity to play in the title game in the ACC and they definitely deserve it.”
With an opportunity for a bowl game still in sight, Babers hopes this is not the team's last contest in 2021. The Orange have failed to come out on top the last two games. The 41-3 loss to Louisville and 41-17 loss to NC State are evidence of the Orange lack of success in crucial moments this season. It seems as if when the games really matter the Orange never show up. For example, the opportunity this season to knock off Florida State, Wake Forest, and Clemson are all failed opportunities. Each of those games resulted in three point losses proving that the Orange failed to pull those out in crunch time. As well as the opportunity of winning one more game to get to a bowl game. Losses to Louisville and NC State are coming when the Orange need the wins the most. The Orange are close but not close enough. The failures of the Orange have led to reporters asking about Dino Babers’ job security.
“My job belongs to my employer, my career belongs to me,” Babers said. “I only control the things that I can control.”
Babers also believes that “good coaches get hired and good coaches get fired.” The approach Babers is taking towards his job security is that one can only do so much. Determining how the season went can either be up to the critics, the media, or Babers. Finishing better than last year can be seen as a goal of Babers however Babers won’t tell you about his goals.
“I remember that we weren’t supposed to win more than three games,” Babers said. “And then all of a sudden when you decide that we weren’t going to be bad, that we were going to be good, everybody changed their expectations. Our expectations never changed, we read all that stuff but our expectations in here has never changed.”
Babers credits the super seniors for coming back and contributing to the success of this season. The sour taste of a 1-10 2020 season brought back seniors with the intentions of finishing their collegiate careers in a better fashion.
“Them (super-seniors) recommitting to coming back, I knew that we were going to have a bridge,” Babers said. “That we had an opportunity to get some things done.”
Based off the outside noise, Babers believes the team has “outshot” the critics. Babers loves proving people wrong, he said. And with one final guaranteed chance to do so, the Orange have the opportunity to prove a lot of people wrong.
