For the strongest safeties, the play was routine. Evan Foster came to the aid of his cornerback, Christopher Fredrick, who had been beaten inside down the left sideline by Central Michigan’s Cameron Cole. It was a simple plug, the reason why safeties exist.

Except Foster took a poor angle. Cole took a minor cut and Foster tried to pivot. His body folded at the hip. The tiny black pellets beneath his spikes flicked into despair as he collided with Fredrick, setting Cameron loose on a 56-yard touchdown that gave CMU its first lead of the game.

A week after the Syracuse secondary allowed three second-half touchdowns in a brutal loss to Middle Tennessee, a trend appeared to be taking shape.

“We knew that people would think that we wouldn’t be able to get the job done,” Foster said, “just because the game kind of went the same way it went last week.”

The SU (2-1) secondary responded. Aside from an 11-play second-quarter drive, the Orange’s defensive backs led the defense in a dominating performance. Central Michigan quarterback Shane Morris threw for 190 fewer yards than he did the week prior, and the Chippewas didn’t score in the final 37 minutes despite SU not recording a sack in the entire game.

Syracuse is entering the first phase of its brutal schedule, with trips to No. 25 Louisiana State and North Carolina State over the next two weeks.

In Week 1, two sophomores in Fredrick and Scoop Bradshaw started at corner. Foster, a sophomore, paired with redshirt junior Antwan Cordy as the safeties, before Cordy suffered an injury.

As a result, redshirt junior Rodney Williams and Jordan Martin, a graduate transfer from Toledo, have seen an increased role. Martin logged 66 snaps at safety against CMU, Williams 54 and Foster 37, according to data from Pro Football Focus released by Syracuse.com.

“The first time Cordy went down it was like seeing Superman bleed,” senior linebacker Zaire Franklin said after Week 1. “I hate to see it, but now guys are like, ‘Alright, we’ll be alright because we survived the storm the first down.’”

At corner, Bradshaw led the position with 69 snaps, Fredrick followed with 50, redshirt junior Juwan Dowels amassed 45 and Notre Dame graduate transfer Devin Butler had 34, according to PFF’s data.

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Martin, Fredrick, Dowels and Bradshaw all notched a pass defended in Saturday’s game. Fredrick had an interception and dropped another. But it was Foster’s pick-six — which head coach Dino Babers called the play of the game — that sparked the turnaround after early struggles.

Martin started the play by hitting a pass-juggling CMU receiver over the middle. The ball popped up and came down in Foster’s hands, and he rushed 24 yards into the end zone for SU’s first touchdown of the game.

The play came with SU’s defense in its usual four-linemen, three-linebacker, four-defensive back set, which it used on 48 of 82 defensive snaps, according to PFF. The rest of the plays were split among 4-2-5 and 3-3-5 formations. Butler came on for all of them.

Most of Butler’s experience with the Irish came on outside coverage. Babers said Monday that Butler is doing a “nice job” at the nickel because he has coverage skills but can come up and stop the run as well. Butler has six tackles through three games.

“The offense is usually reading you for what they’re going to do with their plays,” Butler said last week. “You get a lot of opportunities, direct plays, that’s always fun.”

This week, SU gets its toughest test yet when it travels to LSU. The Tigers own the FBS’s 31st-best rushing attack, averaging 217 yards per game.

“If you’re going to stop the run against some of the guys we’re going against, you have got to put extra guys in the box,” Babers said. “(The cornerbacks) are going to be on islands all by themselves.”

Published on September 18, 2017 at 9:47 pm

Contact: jtbloss@syr.edu | @jtbloss