Syracuse against Notre Dame: the great advantage of Cuse, explained by Dino Babers

Notre Dame, number 3, is in the home stretch of a playoff series. Syracuse number 12 on Saturday at Yankee Stadium remains a surprisingly serious obstacle for the Irish.

The Orange are neglected at 10.5 points, but they have a clear advantage in one area. This is the same neighborhood that Syracuse has already used to almost spring the biggest surprise of the season.

Syracuse is the No. 1 national special teams S & P +. In week 5, Orange almost used this phase of the game to beat Clemson.

Syracuse Head Coach Dino Babers attributes his unit's second-year specials coordinator, Justin Lustig, to the unit's success this season.

"The only thing I've always said to these young men," said Babers, "I've already been coordinator of special teams, but the way to help this team is to be a special team player. "

Six minutes from Death Valley and Orange, Syracuse striker Sterling Hofrichter had already demonstrated the value of his booming leg. By the end of the third quarter, he had hit a 52-yard deflated ball that had been stifled by the return, partly because of the time. While the Orange clung to the lead of a goal, he hit a beautiful 55-yarder:

Sean McDonough, ESPN's drama man, quipped, "He may have hit a satellite while returning to Earth."

Clemson's point guard, Hunter Renfrow, had to rack up about 10 yards to catch him. When Cuse had to have it, his guy was offering his longest kitty of the day to force an offensive with a third-string quarterback to travel almost the entire length of the field to win the game.

Clemson won, but the special teams unit kept Orange in a nasty match in which she had little activity to stay.

The S & P + play-by-play data gave them a 15% chance of winning after the match (how many times does a team normally win by playing as well) and an adjusted 14 point margin … in a match lost by four.

The Orange also dominated kickoffs and their own returns.

They are # 1 in kick efficiency and # 13 in kick kick efficiency. Both are measures of how often launches occur after the 25 participants.

Sean Riley, who returns to the game, also scored 17.4 yards. He has the fantasy to do things like this:

All this is added to create a real edge of field position.

In this surprise offer from Clemson, Syracuse's seven throws scored a record high of 48.6 yards. Four flatts entered the 20th, but none was a touchdown. This led the Tigers to have an average starting position on the ground of their own 24-yard line, compared to Syracuse starting at his own 33.

The Orange have built similar edges all year round. The defense has the nation's No. 7 middle ground position and the offense against the No. 1 mark: its own. 37. Last year, the Syracuse offensive ranked 104th in the position of average start on the field, at 28.

"Everyone says that special teams account for one third of the match," said Babers. "That's not the case, but it's a third of the distance from the match. Every time you fight, it's 40-50 meters of territory. Every time you start, it represents 60 to 65 meters of territory if you look at it from the point of view of the battle. And that's what you need to protect. If you do not focus too much on it, you can end up on long or short fields. "

And Syracuse has learned to turn short fields into real points.

In 10 games, Syracuse have had more kick attempts (and more kicks) than in the first two complete seasons of Babers. The Orange is ranked seventh in national points per game while he is 59th in yards per game and 39th in S & P + offensive.

It works thanks to Cuse's special teams and the position they create in the field.

Kicker Andre Szmyt is 27 of 29 on the year and has made every extra point. He is one of three new students among the 20 semi-finalists of the Lou Groza Award. It is also a player who has not kicked the football before the end of his senior year in high school. Babers said, "It's a real diamond that has come out of nowhere."

This year, Syracuse is taking advantage of scoring opportunities – that is, moving from the 40th to the other team – on 58% of its records. This is the national No. 12 and it happened despite the average driving length of Syracuse going slightly down from last season. It's easy to see how simple the field is: Syracuse added more points to the table.

Coaching special teams is a point of pride for Babers and Syracuse.

"I've had more than 50 players in the National Football League and I've coached only two types of players," Babers said. "One of the sporting monsters where God said," I'm going to make myself a football player, & # 39; and two, super-performing guys who did everything consistently, not great from time to time, and just did not get it wrong, and who were special team players.

The roadmap for Syracuse to beat Our Lady is clear, as the Orange uses it all year round and almost beat Clemson with it.

Notre Dame, like Clemson, has decent overall special teams, ranking 54th in the S & P + special teams. The Irish are good at once other the sides of the ball, however, and tend to face a favorable ground position.

The question is whether Cuse can make the most of it and win the match this time around.