Syracuse Orange post lost thoughts after 21-18 defeat to Cal

In 2024, I was at the Carrier Dome on September 21 for a bachelor party. The Orange, 2-0 at the time, played a very "not good on paper" Stanford team that flew across the country to play the conference matchup, and ended up beating Syracuse 26-24. In a game where the Orange dominated in the air and Stanford on the ground, a few costly mistakes and a few more penalties than the Cardinal gave a Syracuse what felt like a season deflating loss.

The Orange under first year coach Fran Brown would lose just two more games the rest of the season (at Pittsburgh and at Boston College, ugh) and would roll to what was a great start to Brown's tenure.

This weekend, the Orange once again hosted a West Coast ACC foe that after one week did not look very impressive, and once again, fell flat at home. The 21-18 loss was frustrating at best, deflating at worst, and leaves Fran Brown in a position where he has led Syracuse to just one victory, last week's win over FCS New Hampshire, since they beat Clemson almost exactly one year ago.

SP+'s postgame win expectancy begins to tell the story. Strip out randomness, and Syracuse wins this game 55.4% of the time. But you don't need fancy stats to see that a team that commits three turnovers, 132 total penalty yards, 34 minutes of total possession, and almost a full yard more per play (5.07 to 4.15) would normally win a game with more discipline and less football chaos.

Credit goes to Cal because when Syracuse slipped, they pounced. Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele is going to be playing on Sundays at some point in the future, and while he had his moments of recklesness, Syracuse couldn't create turnovers and it allowed the QB to keep taking shots that eventually connected. Cal's defense also adjusted well to what was clearly a less than 100% Steve Angeli and offensive line, sending pressures the moment cracks appeared.

How bad was this loss? Pretty bad. But as I wrote above, Fran has had these seemingly pretty bad early season losses before and bounced back. If the Orange are going to rebound, they will have to do it quick as they travel to Pittsburgh for a Thursday night game this week. So, without further ado, my takeaways.