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Syracuse, N.Y. — Any other seven-point loss to a team favored by three scores at kickoff maybe could have been stomached.
But this unforgiving SU football season, which will almost certainly conclude with a 10th loss next week at No. 2 Notre Dame, couldn’t just die with a whimper. It needed one last cruel twisting of the knife, in the most exasperating way imaginable.
The final moments of Saturday’s 36-29 loss to North Carolina State superseded a career day by a wide receiver, a stout effort by a defense and special teams that manufactured 12 points and a performance on offense that, up until the final 30 seconds, made us all forget about the scoreless embarrassment from the previous week.
Instead, it became the week’s new punchline when quarterback Rex Culpepper spiked the ball on fourth down to seal the team’s seventh-straight loss.
“Everyone wants to talk about the last play,” coach Dino Babers said, “but last time I checked there were like 70 plays on offense and (75) plays on defense. There were (145) snaps in that game, and all of them were important.”
Maybe so, but no sequence of plays carried more significance than SU’s final drive of the game. It started with 5:20 remaining in regulation and was headed for a three-and-out until Culpepper took a deep shot corralled by Taj Harris just as the junior receiver snuck his feet inbounds.
The catch, initially ruled incomplete, brought SU across midfield with two timeouts and plenty of time to orchestrate a score.
After moving forward and backward and forward again, SU took its second timeout of the half ahead of a 4th-and-1, only to run a quarterback sneak and get the little yardage it needed.
Culpepper later found the freshman receiver Courtney Jackson sitting in a pocket of space. He turned upfield and advanced the ball to the NC State 20-yard line, well within striking distance of a couple of shots into end zone.
SU never took that shot.
It called its final timeout ahead of a 3rd-and-10 from the same spot, at which point Culpepper found Harris streaking across the field to move inside the 10-yard line and cap a 13-catch, 146-yard performance.
SU ran the ball on first down with no timeouts and the clock ticking down with less than a minute remaining. NC State even gifted SU extra time to prep for the end-of-game script, taking a timeout to stop the clock with 30 seconds to play.
SU only got further away from the end zone, never closer. Culpepper gained nothing out of the timeout, then circled the backfield to buy time, searching for an answered prayer that a receiver might pop open from a well-blanketed defense.
He took the sack.
On fourth down, with the final 5 seconds melting off the clock, he spiked the ball to end the game.
“I think you guys saw it. The third-down call, you have to throw it away, and then you play the fourth-down snap,” Babers said. “And if you’re going to go on fourth down, you’re going to have to throw the ball. Nobody wants to spike it on fourth down.
“There’s people making mistakes, but one mistake didn’t win or lose a game. There were other mistakes made during that game, and people need to realize that.
“He had a heck of a game, and it’s unfortunate that one play was bad.”
Babers took responsibility for “everything that goes on in the game.” It’s not his style to publicly throw players or assistant coaches under the bus.
He was upset his team got “absolutely nothing” in the run game against a heavy-run front on defense.
He even thought Harris “left some meat on the bone” when a deep pass slipped through his arms earlier in the second half.
But all of that couldn’t mask the blunder at the end of the game, not when SU, with perhaps its last shot at another win this year, couldn’t even sail such hopes toward the end zone when it mattered most.
“This is something that we practice,” the coach said, “and you practice because you want it to be perfect in the game, and even though you strive for perfection, we all do in a lot of things, we don’t always get there.
“That’s the amazing thing about grace and humility. Those two words are important if you’re going to be able to survive.”
More SU football coverage:
5 SU seniors took a final lap in the dome. Is that a sign they’ve played their final home game?
Best and worst from Syracuse football’s 36-29 loss to NC State
You grade the Orange after loss to NC State
Box score from Syracuse-NC State
Syracuse QB JaCobian Morgan will not play vs. NC State
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Dino Babers on Syracuse’s final drive: One mistake didn’t lose the game - syracuse.com
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