Calvin Russell III gave Syracuse football a moment worth celebrating Saturday night. Then he took a little too long enjoying it.
The freshman wide receiver scored the first touchdown of his career against Louisville, capping a day that came less than seven months after surgery to repair a torn Achilles tendon. After hauling in a 24-yard score, Russell danced in the end zone, sprinted toward the Syracuse sideline, came back onto the field to grab the ball and fired it deep into the stands toward his family.
That celebration cost Syracuse 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct, a penalty that was easy for the officials to spot and painful for the Orange to absorb. Shay Barker missed the extra point from the longer distance, and Syracuse went on to lose 34-26.
Russell was corrected by coach Fran Brown when he got back to the sideline, though he also got plenty of love from teammates around him. Brown later described the conversation this way:
“I asked him, ‘Is that intelligent?’ ” Brown said.
“I said I understand your adrenaline. I understand what you’re going through at the moment and the excitement you have but you have to control that because you are a pro.
You’re going to do that a lot. Are you going to throw 60-plus footballs into the stands?”
Russell was not available to reporters after the game. The school has only made freshmen available to reporters on select occasions.
The penalty fit a familiar theme for Syracuse this season, and that’s what makes it bigger than one freshman’s exuberance. The Orange have been piling up flags all year, and the cost has not just been field position. It has bled into timeouts, stalled drives and, in this case, an extra point that never should have become harder than it needed to be.
Syracuse entered the game averaging 95.6 penalty yards per contest, the most self-inflicted damage in the country. On Saturday, the Orange were flagged eight times for 88 yards. That was technically an improvement, but it still included four personal fouls, among them a pair of late shoves by Kam Pringle and an unnecessary roughness penalty on linebacker Gemaus Sackie after a kickoff that went into the end zone for a touchback.
The celebration issue has shown up in other ways, too. Multiple Syracuse touchdown celebrations this season have led to burned timeouts because the Orange could not get lined up for two-point conversions.
Nazir Ward, who said he was flagged earlier this year for what officials considered a banned “nose wipe” celebration, put it bluntly.
“You can have fun but there’s a certain point you have to relax and chill,” Ward said. “We have too much fun to the point where we can get out of control. We’ve got to have some control in certain situations.”
Brown and Ward both said Syracuse has leaders who hold players accountable for selfish mistakes. Brown’s public stance has remained consistent all season: some penalties are part of aggressive play, but others are avoidable and frustrating.
“We have to eliminate penalties, but if you watch some of them, they’re playing and fighting,” Brown said. “Some of them are aggressive plays that they’re playing though. It’s a mixture of penalties.”
He has made similar comments after other games, including after New Hampshire, Cal and Pittsburgh, where he said the officials were “cheating” and called some of the flags “judgment calls.”
Still, the flags keep coming, and Syracuse’s struggles with discipline are now tied to a skid that has stretched to 11 straight conference losses. The Orange are one defeat away from matching the school record for consecutive league losses.
Brown pointed to the team’s youth on Saturday and said fans should still feel good about what’s ahead, even with the results staying grim. He also said Russell should learn from the mistake, especially because the penalty directly cost the team a point.
“I think the point hurt him more than anything though,” Brown said. “That was a lesson learned right away.”
That may be the hope. But with the season already halfway gone and little left on the line, Syracuse still has a long way to go before the lessons start showing up on the scoreboard.
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Syracuse had enough offense to hang around with Louisville, even outgaining the Cardinals in total yards, but the Orange could not get out of their own way in another ACC loss that felt all too familiar. A series of turnovers and mistakes, including multiple interceptions from quarterback Malachi Nelson, undercut the kind of production that usually should have been enough to keep a conference game competitive.
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