Dino Babers previews the upcoming “business trip”/game at Western Michigan on Friday.
It’s officially the first the Syracuse Orange football game week of 2018, which means Monday morning gave Dino Babers the chance to preview the upcoming matchup against the Western Michigan Broncos. Here are some of the things he had to say.
“I just think this a business trip and we need to go there and we need to have that type of mindframe.”
Sean points out the way most non-football players would view this statement.
Dino was asked about how the players may need to carry a different attitude against Western Michigan head coach and former SU OC Tim Lester than they did against Middle Tennessee State and Scott Shafer last year. Don’t want Tim Lester smoking any staircase cigars after Friday night...
Reporter: “Coach, when you look at this Western Michigan team, what do you see?”
Dino: “I see a team that wants to run the football. They have a tough, tough running back that’s very, very good. They have an explosive backup tailback...”
The WMU running attack — led by Jamauri Bogan — is probably why the Orange are sticking to a 4-3 defense.
“It’s different for a program of our size to be on the road for the first game. It’s unusual. I’m not sure how many times we’ve done that here at Syracuse.”
#BRAND
Also potentially a subtle jab at SU around scheduling (though at the same time, smart move here since openers against FCS teams had been pretty poorly attended in the past).
Oh, and Syracuse has opened on the road nine different times since 1990 alone, says John.
“We refuse to slow down the growth of the football team based off of injuries.”
This is in reference to Dontae Strickland missing parts of camp. Solid attitude. Tommy DeVito will be able to grow whenever Eric Dungey is pre-scheduled to go down for the last 2-3 games of the season.
“If the schools were playing each other it’d be one thing, but it’s not the schools, it’s the athletes at the schools... I think they may have had 3-4 times as many draft picks as we’ve had on this football team, so this team is talented. You don’t win games unless you are talented. So the teams win games, not the names.
This is the response to how to handle playing against a team you’re expected to beat. It makes sense, but there is definitely a quicker and easier way to make this point.
“If someone’s played for me for three years, then they really are my guy. Someone else may have recruited him, but they can’t remember the old defense and they can’t remember the old offense.
I think there are a lot of seniors that are starters on this team that were not recruited by us.”
Solid quote here from Dino, though on the other hand there aren’t a ton of senior starters on this team because of attrition and a lack of strong recruiting classes before Babers arrived.
Check out the full video from Dino below.
