Syracuse’s kicking game has become a weekly headache, and the numbers tell the story as plainly as the misses do. No team in the country has missed more field goals than the Orange, and no team has come up short on more point-after tries either.
That ugliness showed up again in Saturday’s 42-41 overtime win against UConn, when Syracuse left seven points on the field and nearly watched the game slip away. The Orange missed two field-goal attempts and an extra point, including a 44-yard try by freshman Shay Barker as time expired in regulation that would have ended the drama before overtime.
Syracuse has already changed kickers and holders this season, but the results haven’t changed much. The Orange are 5-for-10 on field goals, a 50 percent rate that ranks better than only nine teams nationally. On extra points, Syracuse is 12-for-15, a mark worse than every team except Hawaii.
Coach Fran Brown said he still believes in Barker, who was making his first start against UConn in place of Tripp Woody.
“I have a lot of faith in him,” Brown said. “I have a lot of faith in Shay.
He’s a tough kid. He’s going to bounce back.
He may kick a game-winner this week. We need him.
We’re counting on him. We’re going to stick by him.”
Brown said Barker simply missed the game-winner. On the other field-goal miss, Brown said the kick itself was the issue.
“We just missed the last field goal,” Brown said. “That was it.
I mean, should have got it. Of course not the snap.
Wasn’t the hold. It just went wide right.
I think they moved the goalpost a little bit. The first (missed field goal) was the way he kicked it, his body.”
The extra-point miss had a different culprit. Backup quarterback Rich Belin couldn’t handle the snap cleanly, and Barker drove the ball into the line. CBS Sports Net’s broadcast said the snap wasn’t ideal, though Belin still had a chance to get it down.
“We had some bad holds at times,” Brown said. “So we replaced the holder.”
Belin was then replaced by punter Jimmy Gregg, but Syracuse still missed twice more on field goals. The only constant in the operation has been long-snapper Fran Brown Jr., who is Brown’s son.
Last season, Syracuse split snapping duties between veteran Ethan Stangle and Fran Brown Jr. Brown said then that his son had won the job on field goals, while Stangle handled punts. Stangle transferred to Alabama in the offseason, leaving Fran Brown Jr. to handle both.
The setup was far cleaner last year, when Woody was the kicker, Fran Brown Jr. snapped, and Jack Stonehouse handled the holding duties. Woody went 12-for-14 on field goals, didn’t try anything longer than 49 yards, and made all 22 extra points.
This season, as the misses have stacked up, TV crews have kept circling back to the details of each botched kick. Most of the blame has landed on Woody or Barker, though Belin’s hold against UConn was a clear miscue.
Fran Brown Jr.’s snaps have also come under the microscope twice, once after a missed field goal against California and again after the missed extra point against UConn. Brown said neither snap was truly off the mark.
Over more than a year, Brown said, his son has not had a blatant bad snap. On the plays that drew attention, the ball tended to get into the holder’s body and make the job harder, not impossible.
When asked about his son’s performance, Brown said he sees the snaps as solid.
“The snap is cool,” Brown said. “If it was the snap, I’d say it was the snap and I’d put Tim (Schwerwa) in.
There are no positions that are safe. We all have to compete.
I’m not sure if that’s what you’re asking or going at.”
Brown added that if he thought another snapper gave Syracuse a better chance, he would not hesitate to make a change.
“The snaps have been good,” Brown said. “Franny is my son. He’ll be the first I move if something is wrong because I’m trying to show them how to be men too.”
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There was at least some good news to offset the uneasiness, with Tylik Hill and Umari Hatcher both picking up ACC weekly honors. Even so, the broader conversation around Syracuse now feels less about the scoreboard from that night and more about what it says moving forward, especially with a full slate of ACC results around the league and Week 6 already on deck. [Read more 🡒]