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BOCA RATON, Fla. — The Boca Raton Bowl held a joint media availability ahead of Thursday night’s game between South Florida and Syracuse. Six players from each team, as well as head coach Alex Golesh and interim head coach Nunzio Campanile, discussed their preparations for the game. The Orange have a chance to win their first bowl game since 2018, while the Bulls are in their first postseason game since 2018.

With the news that Garrett Shrader underwent surgery to repair a tear in his right shoulder and won’t be available for the game, Braden Davis is listed No. 1 on the depth chart. The announcement, along with numerous players from Syracuse entering the transfer portal, have loomed over the game plan for each team this week.

“(Syracuse) didn’t quit,” Golesh said. “They had a lot of reason to and they didn’t.”

Here are some takeaways from the media availability prior to the Boca Raton Bowl:

What the offense will look like without Garrett Shrader (again)

Shrader announced Monday that he had been playing with a tear in his right shoulder since injuring it on the first play against Virginia Tech. The tear led to his absence in three straight games and forced offensive coordinator Jason Beck to overhaul the offense into a run-first, wildcat-heavy scheme. Tight end Dan Villari, who has also seen time at quarterback and running back over the last four weeks, said Shrader has been like an extra coach. He has helped Villari, who played quarterback sparingly for two seasons at Michigan, understand reads and improve his dropbacks.

Campanile said that while Davis will still be used in some of the receiver and H-back roles he’s previously featured in, the redshirt freshman has taken “a bunch” of first team reps under center. Since Davis spent most of the season as the third-string quarterback not taking reps, Campanile said it would have been “unfair” to give him responsibilities at quarterback in the game. He noted it’s important for Syracuse to get the ball in the hands of “two of our best players” in Villari and LeQuint Allen Jr., and said doing so would be a key to winning the game.

“You can’t just run the ball. You have to find ways to get it to the outside or find ways to get pop passes,” left guard Christopher Bleich said.

Bleich said that while many of the blocking schemes didn’t change with the new offense, it puts more pressure on the line. South Florida tends to load the box much more than teams Bleich has seen in the past. They throw a lot of players into certain gaps and bring down people from the secondary, which will provide more tests for Syracuse’s offensive line.

Preparing for South Florida with limited defense

Linebacker Leon Lowery and safety Jeremiah Wilson headlined a group of 12 defensive players for Syracuse who entered the transfer portal since the firing of former head coach Dino Babers. The exodus hindered a unit which already struggled with depth this season. While Golesh touted the group as having a great deal of size and experience, namely from Marlowe Wax, Caleb Okechukwu and Justin Barron, they’re facing off against a USF offense that averaged 30.83 points per game this season.

Wax said he’s never seen a team play so wide and was impressed during film sessions with their speed. The Bulls’ receivers, including No. 1 option Sean Atkins, line up way outside in order to thin out the tackle box and spread out the defense. He said many ACC teams, specifically Georgia Tech, play fast offensively, but none like USF’s style. Golesh said the Bulls are going to have to use their lack of size to an advantage. “We got to go run,” Golesh said.

The spread offense with quarterback Byrum Brown — who was one of two quarterbacks this season alongside Heisman winner Jayden Daniels to throw for 3,000 yards and rush for 700 — provides a challenge for the Orange. Barron said both Brown and Atkins make defenders think “longer than you should” about their playmaking abilities.

“(Brown’s) athletic. He’s multiple. He’s able to get outside the pocket, make plays that a lot of other guys aren’t able to make,” Barron said. “Trying to contain him is a big factor in the game.”

How South Florida is looking to upend Syracuse

The Bulls kept Alabama at bay in Week 3 of the regular season, holding the Crimson Tide to three points in a half before an eventual 17-3 loss. Golesh said the team has taken that experience with them throughout the season, showing that they can play with any team in the country. For a team that orchestrated the second-best turnaround in college football, playing the Crimson Tide so close will translate well into its second Power 5 opponent of the season.

Brown said defensively, the defensive line does a lot of twists while the defensive backs tend to drop out of a blitz and into coverage. The pre-snap motion of Rocky Long’s 3-3-5 defense was a challenge for Brown and the offense to plan against, Brown said. “The challenge has been simplifying it for our kids,” Golesh said. The former offensive coordinator at Tennessee said he has some experience against Mississippi State when it ran a similar defense. He added Syracuse’s defense is so hard to read because it’s a mix of a variety of formations.

“They’re able to switch looks, go in and out of looks very easily, very quickly. It must be the simplicity of how they do it is what’s hard,” Golesh said.

Defensively, Golesh knows Syracuse’s players tend to be bigger than the Bulls, and the way to get around that is their speed. The offense that ran the most plays in the country this season hasn’t played against players resembling the Orange’s size since Alabama. But because SU has revealed so much tape of the new wildcat, run-first offense, defensive end Tramel Logan said they switched to a run-first mentality during the installation period. The goal, much like the Orange’s final three opponents, is to get Syracuse to third-and-long and force SU to pass.

Logan said the offense has “a bunch of eye candy,” which forces the defenders to weed it out and focus on their “keys.” The defensive end said that the team essentially copy and pasted the film from their 44-30 win over Navy in September in order to prepare for Syracuse’s new offense.

Published on December 20, 2023 at 6:55 pm

Contact Anthony: aalandt@syr.edu | @anthonyalandt