SYRACUSE — Ryan Nassib knows he’s going to shoulder the burden of keeping Syracuse’s resurgence on the upswing, and the senior quarterback is ready for that challenge.
“I’ve got a little less nerves this year, starting to feel a little more comfortable, more confident,” said Nassib, who begins his second year as the starter. “But at the end of the day, it’s the season, time to focus at the highest level. This is really when it counts.”
Coming off a surprising 8-5 season, its first winning campaign since 2001, Syracuse opens the season against Wake Forest on Thursday night in the Carrier Dome. The memory of the Orange’s comeback win over Kansas State in the Pinstripe Bowl last December has faded but the effect on the team’s collective psyche hasn’t.
“We do have high expectations, but the expectations that we worry about are the ones that are on ourselves,” said Nassib, who last season threw a school-record 202 passes for 2,334 yards and 19 touchdowns with eight interceptions. “We do have a lot of returning guys (eight on offense), and if we don’t reach those expectations that we set out for ourselves, we consider that a failure. There is no room for excuses this year.”
The Demon Deacons are where the Orange were a couple of years ago, coming off a dismal season (3-9, 1-7 ACC). Wake Forest was picked to finish last in the Atlantic Division this season.
“Hopefully, the experiences of last year will help us this year,” said head coach Jim Grobe, starting his 11th year at Wake Forest. “We got our nose bloodied quite a bit last year and I would assume that that’ll happen this year, but I hope we’ll play a little bit tougher with bloody noses this year than we did last year.”
Wake Forest does have a small building block for encouragement. The Demon Deacons beat Vanderbilt 34-13 on the road to close last season, snapping a nine-game losing skid. Still, the Deacons also lost consecutive games on their opponents’ final possession and opened the year by scoring more than 50 points in back-to-back games for the first time in school history.
“They’re an ACC team that’s coming off a tough year. I know the feeling, the hunger that you have to do well,” Nassib said. “They’re going to come out firing. We’ve got to do the same, come out focused and ready to rock.”
Grobe, AP coach of the year in 2006 when the Deacons won 11 games, the ACC title and beat Syracuse 20-10 in the first meeting between the schools, built Wake into an ACC contender in part by redshirting most incoming freshmen. He does make exceptions, though, such as quarterback Tanner Price.
Last season, Price set almost every school single-game passing record in his first home start, completing 37 of 53 passes for 326 yards and two touchdowns against Navy. It was the best performance by a freshman quarterback in school history.
Price completed 137 of 241 for 1,348 yards and seven touchdowns with eight interceptions and was sacked 19 times during the season. He’s one of seven returning starters on the offense. Defensively, senior linebacker Kyle Wilber leads a unit that returns nine starters.
As many as six interior linemen are likely to play for a retooled Syracuse defense this season. Third-year head coach Doug Marrone has four nose tackles and two defensive tackles on the depth chart, and they’ll be called upon to help stop a ground game that averaged 158.5 yards rushing in 2010. Tailback Josh Harris led Wake Forest with 720 yards and scored seven touchdowns.
The Orange’s last win over an FBS team in the Carrier Dome was a 31-13 upset of Rutgers in November 2009. Syracuse was 0-4 last season against FBS teams in the Dome and hasn’t had a winning season overall at home since it went 4-1 in 2004.
“It’s big for us, and it’s been addressed with our players,” Marrone said. “Everyone has to understand how focused you have to be at home. I’m a believer that it’s much harder to play at home than it is on the road. It is for me, and I’m not even playing.”