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SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 22, 2016

Dino Babers

Syracuse - 28, Boston College - 20

DINO BABERS: This is an opportunity before going into a bye week which is extremely important. We've got a lot of healing to do. The first eight games without the bye have been rough. It's been physical. Last two opponents were extremely physical.

Hats off to Coach Addazio, Boston College. That was a physical football game, and they played a heck of a game, a game all the way into the fourth quarter, and hopefully -- I think it was an exciting game.

Again, before I stop, just for our football team to be able to play in weather like that where three weeks ago we weren't that good in it, and now to come back and play half a game in weather like that and the way they played the game, I'm really excited about it, really excited about how they played.

We had mistakes. We weren't perfect. But we're human, and we're excited to be at .500 again.

Questions?

Q. With Eric's interception in the first quarter on the first drive, that hit on the sideline, what did you see went down on the sideline? Did you say anything to Eric afterward?
DINO BABERS: Yeah, I told him that his job is to get the guy down, not to hit him like a middle linebacker because he needs to preserve himself. He did a great job in stopping the touchdown. That's what he's supposed to do, and then after that he needs to protect himself. When you get in scuffles like that, somebody steps on your hand or something like -- it's like a baseball pitcher; you don't go in there and start throwing punches and break your hand. He didn't throw a punch, I'm just giving you an analogy.

But he needs to just get the guy out of bounds and then play the next play, so that's all I told him.

Q. You had 16 penalties, but I think nine or ten of them were false starts. What went into that?
DINO BABERS: We're going to have to go back and check the tape. I think that some of it we have to see because that's very uncharacteristic for you to have that many false starts without there being a reason. So we will go back and check the tape.

But they called them on us, so I'm sure we must have did it. I'm assuming.

Q. Was there a thought of you calling time out, getting the guys together, just asking them to focus on the game? It seems things got out of hand in the second and third quarter.
DINO BABERS: Absolutely thought about it, almost did it, and then I paused and stopped and said, if this becomes a fourth-quarter game and I have to call a time-out and I have to come into this meeting, you guys talk about me killing a time-out when I could have used that time out to win the game, and I said, you know what, I'd better not call it. But I'll tell you what, in between series, I sure did get myself around to where they could feel me and made sure that they settled down.

Q. 1:50 left in the game and you guys got that first down. Talk about the character that shows to put the game away when you had to.
DINO BABERS: It's big, it really is. Those are difficult times. The box is loaded. They know we're not going to throw the ball, we're not going to throw the ball, and that is a top-five, top-six ranked defense against the run, and for us to be able to get that 1st down with the box being that heavy with as young as we are on the offensive line and the injuries that we've had, I think that was really big.

Q. Which was the better catch, Amba or Steve?
DINO BABERS: They were both good, but Amba's was like, wow. That was a wow. They were both really good, though.

Q. Steve has gotten a lot of those the last two weeks and he had his biggest game this week. What's opened up the last couple weeks for him to get more looks?
DINO BABERS: Again, it all comes down to the coverages. Any time you can see that Amba is drawing more coverages, which is singling up more guys on the other side, that's just how football goes. I think that a little bit of it has to do with Amba, and a little bit has to do with Ish making more plays.

Q. I'm not sure if you saw it or not, but on the Dungey interception, it looked like BC jumped offside, which is why he threw that pass deep into double coverage. Did that look offside to you or did you talk to him about that at all?
DINO BABERS: It looked like it was offsides to me, and I did talk to him about it. I said, hey, I thought the guy was offsides. You can't worry about it. I know that goes down as an interception on your record, but last time I checked, you got five or six touchdowns off that same thing this year. You've got to take the good with the bad.

Q. Going back to that early skirmish on the sideline, did you talk to Eric about what triggered his reaction there? Was there anything that got him that upset?
DINO BABERS: I saw the play, so my conversation with him is private, but I saw the play, okay. I can't talk about it. I'm going to get fined. I saw the play. I talked to him about it.

Q. Amba now ranked second for single-game receiving yards for SU, so where does he rank for you in terms of guys you've coached?
DINO BABERS: He's up there. I've coached over 30 wide receivers in the National Football League, so there is a lot of them, but he's definitely in the top 10.

Q. What were some of the biggest challenges in the second quarter with the elements, and what did you learn about your team?
DINO BABERS: Now, when you say second quarter, you mean second quarter, not second half?

Q. Second quarter when it was pouring.
DINO BABERS: Yeah, the second quarter was tricky. The water was really coming down. Fabulous question. We made a mistake. I'm not going to tell you what the mistake was, you've got to figure it out. I thought we made a mistake that that quarter as coaches, and I told the players that. I said, we're not going to make that mistake again. You can't push the elements when it starts to rain that hard. There's certain things you can do and there's certain things it's just not smart to do, and we had to pick and choose when we wanted to do some of those things that were a little bit more dangerous, but it was definitely more challenging. That's a great question.

Q. Eric has taken a bunch of hits the last few weeks. I think today it was 32 or 37. What have you seen from him, his ability to play through that, and how impressive did you think he was today compared to other games this year?
DINO BABERS: The thing I'm proud about, I'm proud about a lot of things with him today, but I think he handled the weather a lot better than he did versus -- that other game, and I don't want to mention it in this press conference. He's a big-handed guy. He's throwing the ball around. You could see some of those other passes coming from the other side maybe weren't as crisp, weren't as accurate, and then think about some of the deep throws. Yeah, some of them were kind of flat, but we left a lot of meat on the bone. There was some -- we'd have come up with some more catches down the field, a lot more people -- it could have been a different type of game. I thought he threw the ball extremely well, and you look at his incompletions, what his incompletions were and what plays they were on, I mean, he could have had -- with a little bit of help, he could have had a heck of a game.

Q. Is there anything mechanically different or anything -- played differently in regard to the weather?
DINO BABERS: There's certain things he needs to do. He's got to keep his feet underneath him. It's quarterback stuff, but he's getting better with that stuff all the time. He's come a long way from when we first saw him.

Q. I think down in the red zone, there were three drops, zero points, and then two drives where you gave up a field goal. What schematically is kind of working down there?
DINO BABERS: You're talking about our defense playing so well?

Q. Yeah.
DINO BABERS: Again, Boston College is a certain style of offense. They want to do certain things, and then based off of what quarterback is in the game, there's some tendencies that you have to take advantage of, and I thought that Coach Ward and the defensive coaches did a nice job of taking advantage of those tendencies and just playing the numbers. If they want to do something else, they may have a better chance of, successful, but they may be using people that they normally don't use, and that's their option.

But I thought we played -- we tried to take away their strengths, and for the most part we did. I had no idea that quarterback was that fast, though. When he got out there, he didn't look like we could run him down. He was really moving.

Q. You're 4-4 and in position for a bowl game. How much improvement do you want to see from the offensive line with Clemson and Florida State on the schedule? How much do you want to form a balanced attack so they can't flood the middle with six defensive backs, seven defensive backs and just try to go after Dungey?
DINO BABERS: I would like to be balanced today, I would like to be balanced yesterday. We're always shooting for balance.

Now, when it's difficult to run the football, you just can't keep slamming your head against the wall and expecting that thing to loosen up a little bit. Sometimes we've got to use the pass to help us run the football. But in this situation, they were so heavy in the box that it was -- it would be a little foolish not to throw the ball as much as we did, and as what happens, a lot of times with two-part question, the guy up here normally forgets the second part of the question, so ask me again the second part that I didn't answer.

Q. The second part is the offensive line, how do you improve that going forward when you have Clemson, Florida State, and need at least two wins to be bowl eligible?
DINO BABERS: We've got to find a way. We need a slingshot and a rock. I'm not even sure who we play against.

Q. It's Clemson.
DINO BABERS: I'm sorry, I've been so locked in on these guys, and now we've got a bye coming up. But obviously that team is extremely talented. Their athletes are outstanding. The coaching staff is unbelievable. I wish somebody would add up how many coaches they have and how many coaches we have and do a flow chart or something like that on that. But we're going to try to find a way to run the football and try to find a way to move the football.

When you're playing teams like that, the most important thing is to try to get a 1st down before you punt the doggone thing. You just don't want a whole bunch of three-and-outs, and usually you have to try to do what they're not giving you, so we have to get in that game and just see what from a structure standpoint they're going to allow us to do and then we've got to try to take advantage of that. I hope I answered your question.

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