Boca Raton, Fla. — Syracuse football safety Alijah Clark scooped up a South Florida fumble late in the first quarter, taking it 46 yards down the Orange sideline for an apparent game-tying touchdown.
The lights flashed at FAU Stadium in celebration over a near-even crowd of Orange and Bulls fans, but there was a flag down on the field near the 20-yard line.
A block by Jason Simmons Jr. — called as a block in the back by the refs but marked unnecessary roughness in the official game stats — took the Syracuse defensive scoring play off the board.
Still, the play by Clark put Syracuse’s offense at South Florida’s 28-yard line, prime position to restore the points back to the board and make the Boca Raton Bowl competitive early.
Instead, a fumble by LeQuint Allen lost SU 14 yards. It picked those yards back up on third down but was still looking at 4th-and-long — a touchdown downgraded to a field goal.
Then, the Orange fumbled again on a botched snap as rain came down during the long field-goal attempt. Kicker Brady Denaburg picked the ball up then dropped it nine yards back from the line of scrimmage. South Florida’s Aamaris Brown returned it 64 yards for a touchdown.
Before the first 15 minutes were up, SU trailed 14-0. By halftime, it was down 31-0 with five fumbles under its belt.
Syracuse was trampled by South Florida in a Boca Raton Bowl fiasco, losing 45-0 for its first-ever bowl game shutout. It was also SU’s worst loss of the season, beating out the 38 point- defeat at Florida State back in mid-October, and the largest loss by an ACC team in a bowl game.
The Orange looked inept in the game where it likely had the most eyes on it potentially all season, both due to wider bowl game audiences and the allure new head coach Fran Brown has brought the program.
Brown did not coach the bowl game but was present on the sideline. Nunzio Campanile served as the team’s interim head coach for the game. Running backs coach Mike Lynch did the offensive play calling with Jason Beck departing for a new job before the game.
Syracuse (6-7, 2-6 ACC) ended the season the way it spent the final month of it: without a true, healthy quarterback and running a pieced-together, run-heavy offense the coaching staff didn’t switch up once it wasn’t working.
The quarterback of the Orange’s future, Ohio State transfer Kyle McCord, watched on from the sideline, along with four of Syracuse’s other incoming transfers.
His presence provided one of the few positive Syracuse talking points for the ESPN broadcast team and served as a reminder of the hope on the horizon for Orange fans.
USF had clearly done its homework and knew exactly what to expect with Orange tight end Dan Villari and Allen taking snaps in a wildcat formation. At the end of the first half, Syracuse had minus-15 rushing yards.
Though redshirt freshman Braden Davis was used as a true quarterback more than he had been when he appeared against Georgia Tech last month, the Orange never let him fully take the reins of the game, even when he was showing more success passing than Villari.
Davis finished the game 6-of-13 for 84 yards. Villari was 4-of-11 for 55 yards with two interceptions.
The Orange offense finished with a meager 159 total yards. It moved the chains just nine times all game and turned the ball over four times.
Syracuse’s defense somewhat cauterized the wound opened by its offense in the second half but still allowed USF to put points on the board.
After Villari’s second interception set up USF in the Orange’s territory early in the third quarter, a blown coverage in the secondary between Justin Barron and Simmons Jr. allowed USF’s 1,000-yard receiver, Sean Atkins, to literally twirl into the end zone on a 35-yard reception.
The Bulls went scoreless the rest of the third quarter but punched in another touchdown right after the fourth quarter began to jump above the 40-point mark.
USF had 407 total yards of offense, 161 on the ground and 246 through the air. Its only turnover was the fumble Clark recovered.
The Bulls’ tempo offense and Syracuse’s inability to sustain drives made the game clock tick slowly. Add in numerous penalties — seven by the Orange — that took minutes for the officiating staff to sort out, along with injuries, and the game dragged out to nearly four hours, ending just shy of midnight.
Maybe it was for the best: SU’s new regime takes over at the start of a new day, rather in the 11 o’clock hour of a day the program witnessed one of its most embarrassing losses of the year.
New day, new year (almost), new Syracuse.
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