In its first test of the season, Syracuse is expecting Villanova to turn to its bag of tricks.

It’s a trend SU picked up on from watching the Wildcats’film against Boston College last year, and Villanova’s trickery is not something the Orange gets a glimpse of too often.

“The Boston College game — they did a lot more formations, a lot more fast tempo, a lot more everything than the rest of their games,”SU defensive coordinator Chuck Bullough said of Syracuse’s Football Championship Subdivision opponent. “Do they consider us like BC or do they consider us like they did the rest of the second half of their season?

“We think —we don’t know —that they’re probably going to come out and do some of that stuff.”

From the get-go, the Orange may very likely face a curveball as it looks to get started on the right foot in its 2014 campaign. The Wildcats, based on SU’s findings in the film room, utilize a multitude of unbalanced formations — including unorthodox alignments of their offensive linemen —and deceptive play-calling.

Yet the Orange has been up against this strategy once in the recent past. North Carolina State used an identical formation last year, SU linebacker Cameron Lynch said, so Syracuse may not have much of a reason to worry when it hosts Villanova in the Carrier Dome for the season opener on Friday at 7:30 p.m.

“Excellent FCS opponent — probably the best FCS opponent to come in here in a long time,”Syracuse head coach Scott Shafer said.

The Orange may only defend 10–15 plays with unbalanced formations by the end of the year, Shafer said. SU expects Villanova to be the first to start the trend.

In some of the Wildcats’formations they line up a tackle on the opposite side and place the tight end right next to a guard.

Villanova’s offense also has a tendency, Shafer said, of running zone reads that react off a defensive tackle rather than a defensive end. As opposed to letting a more athletic end into the backfield, the Wildcats often free up a bigger, usually slower, lineman and the Wildcats’quarterback will react to him instead.

The Wildcats then whip out the jet sweeps and fake jet sweeps, reverses and fake reverses, guard pulls and whatever else they think might throw their opponent off. Add a fast tempo to the mix, and Shafer said it can be taxing to a defense.

“The big thing is if we get something that’s whacky that we’ve never seen before, we try to cover it down and play sound defense,”Shafer said. “If they get one on us, we’ve got to brush it off and go to the next play.”

The Orange has had all of training camp to prepare for Villanova, a timeframe Bullough called a “blessing”compared to only having a mid-season week to strategize for such schemes.

Last October, N.C. State used the same unbalanced formation against the Orange, Lynch said, but SU was prepared for it, giving the setup little bearing on the outcome of the game. Syracuse held NCSU to 10 points and 129 yards on the ground.

Villanova’s attempt to sneak past Boston College with trickery and a quick tempo in its season opener last year didn’t pan out either. The Wildcats led 14-7 at halftime before losing 24-14. Still, Lynch knows from experience not to take Division I-AA programs lightly, after needing a second-half bounce-back to defeat Stony Brook at home in 2012.

But he’s just looking forward to finally hitting somebody not in Orange.

“We’ll be on our P’s and Q’s, do our assignments,”Lynch said. “We’ll watch our pull keys and don’t worry about the window dressing that they have going on.

“It’s going to be a good one and I can’t wait.”

Related content

Daily Orange beat writers Jesse Dougherty and Jacob Klinger preview the Villanova-Syracuse opener in the first ‘On the beat’ of the season.

Published on August 28, 2014 at 12:15 am

Contact Phil: pmdabbra@syr.edu | @PhilDAbb