The Boca Raton Bowl did not go well for the Syracuse Orange. They did not score during the game and lost by 45.
There is a lot of buzz about the future in upstate New York after the addition of Kyle McCord and an extremely talented recruiting class (relatively). Thursday was not reflective of the new era.
That didn’t make it any less ugly.
Syracuse never stood a chance. South Florida went up 14-0 in the first quarter and never looked back.
It was so lopsided that Bulls head coach Alex Golesh posed a savage rhetorical question about the beatdown while live on ESPN. The sideline reporter could only agree.
Part of the Orange’s problem stemmed from the quarterback position.
Syracuse started a tight end at quarterback.
Literally.
6-foot-4, 235-pound redshirt sophomore Dan Villari committed to Michigan as a three-star quarterback out of high school. He arrived at Syracuse as a transfer in the spring of 2022 and moved to tight end.
An injury to starting quarterback Garrett Schraeder forced him to move back to his original position, mostly out of the Wildcat. Villari had a coming out party in a win over Pittsburgh and actually went 2-1 over the final three games of the regular season.
Schraeder also missed the Boca Raton Bowl, which forced the quarterback-turned-tight-end-turned-quarterback to start, again. He had completed 18-straight passes coming into the postseason college football game.
It did not go well for Villari. He went 4-of-11 for 55 yards with two interceptions and totaled less than 40 yards on 11 carries in the loss.
McCord is set to join the Orange in a couple of weeks. Villari will be relegated to the backup role or moved back to tight end. His brief stint back at his old position may also prove to be an interesting case study.
Perhaps Dan Villari will look to transfer, again, after his head coach was fired. Maybe he will choose to try and get one last opportunity at quarterback. Wouldn’t that be something?