Andrews: Syracuse, Brown can’t merely shrug off embarrassment in South Bend
SU's 70-7 loss to Notre Dame was the program’s fourth-largest defeat. The Orange can’t afford to merely shrug it off, our columnist writes. Jacob Halsema | Staff Photographer
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SOUTH BEND, Ind. — That was the most uncompetitive football game Syracuse University has played since the 1800s.
Saturday’s colossal embarrassment for the Orange, who suffered a 70-7 loss at No. 9 Notre Dame — the fourth-most lopsided defeat in team history and worst since 1893 — can’t merely be shrugged off as a hopeless late-season loss for a program out of bowl game contention.
SU head coach Fran Brown constantly talks about his pursuit of a national title. He marked that down as his goal this year and will continue to do so every season. Yet, for an Orange squad that quickly became one of the FBS’ worst teams after losing quarterback Steve Angeli to a season-ending torn Achilles, they’re not close to Brown’s standard. Neither is Brown himself.
“Humbling experience,” a stoic Brown said at the podium following Saturday’s 63-point loss. “This may sound crazy, but there’s obviously a chance to learn from that.”
Syracuse’s (3-8, 1-6 Atlantic Coast) second-year head coach said he’d put on the game film as soon as he touched down in central New York again. He’ll watch it throughout the week, too. And he’ll watch it every chance he can in the offseason. But none of that is going to fix SU’s immense problems stemming from this absurd result.
The loss doesn’t just reflect Syracuse’s injury misfortunes in 2025; it puts the nail in the coffin for how poorly Brown handled the quarterback situation, makes SU a less-attractive nonconference opponent to schedule and marks the end of Brown’s honeymoon after a historic 2024 season.
Worst of all, it signifies how far the Orange have truly fallen — from nearly qualifying for last year’s ACC Championship game to becoming the Fighting Irish’s late-season punching bag.
Even in a campaign that has featured Syracuse’s longest losing streak since 2020 and Brown making midseason coaching changes like letting go of wide receivers coach Myles White, Saturday stands alone as SU’s biggest embarrassment. It needs to let that sink in.
Senior tight end Dan Villari expressed that the Orange are taking the loss hard. Though he won’t be here to help rewrite the wrongs of 2025 in 2026, Villari is confident this game will stick with those who remain at Syracuse.
“I don’t think we’ll lose like that again after this, trust me,” Villari said.
Well, I hate to break it to Villari, but Brown said the same thing a couple of years ago. After SU hired him in November 2023, Brown attended the Orange’s Boca Raton Bowl matchup against USF to watch on the sideline. Syracuse got smoked 45-0. Brown told his incoming players that, under his watch, the Orange would never lose a game by a margin that devastating.
Twenty-four games into his tenure, Syracuse suffered its most-lopsided loss of the 21st century.
Plenty of things went haywire this season for the Orange. Let’s begin with the quarterback situation, which Brown bungled in the aftermath of Angeli’s injury.
The fact that SU missed on LSU transfer Rickie Collins is one thing. It was clear through three starts Collins isn’t cut out to start at a Power Four school yet. Brown knew he needed to make a change after Syracuse dropped to 3-4. What ensued, though, was a repeating pattern of mind-numbing decisions.
He chose freshman walk-on Joe Filardi, primarily an SU lacrosse commit, as the Orange’s starter on Oct. 31 against North Carolina. Then he reverted back to Collins for the next two weeks. Then he went back to Filardi versus Notre Dame: the worst stadium a freshman walk-on could play in. Every one of those games resulted in a blowout. Neither quarterback looked competitive.
All the while, Brown put freshman quarterback Luke Carney into four different games — including in garbage time Week 3 versus Colgate and the Notre Dame disaster — which effectively means he can’t suit up against Boston College in the season-finale. Why’s that an issue? Brown repeatedly said he wanted Carney to redshirt, meaning he can only appear in a maximum of four games. Yet, despite an opportunity on the horizon for Carney to get reps versus a 1-win BC team, Brown’s actions tarnished that possibility.
Brown said, if he put Collins in against the Fighting Irish, the result probably wouldn’t have looked all too different. But that’s pretty negligent, considering his other two options were freshmen being thrust into one of college football’s most challenging road environments.
Syracuse’s confusingly-handled quarterback conundrum hit its lowest point Saturday, when Filardi threw three interceptions — two of which were pick-sixes in the first quarter — and tallied 83 passing yards on 26 attempts. Filardi should not have been put in that position. It only hurts his confidence and diminishes SU’s standing as a serious program.
If this is the effort the Orange are going to muster, why would Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman ever want to schedule more future games against Syracuse?
The two teams have a matchup scheduled next season at the JMA Wireless Dome. But for Freeman, whose team is a perennial College Football Playoff contender, he can’t be too pleased with the Fighting Irish essentially being in a non-competitive game against Syracuse Saturday while it ramps up for the postseason.
It’s all part of why Brown’s honeymoon at SU is over — made true by the loss in South Bend. In 2024, Brown instilled an entirely new attitude within the Orange’s football facility. They finished 10-3, led by former quarterback Kyle McCord rewriting the ACC’s single-season passing records and a litany of future NFLers like Oronde Gadsden II, LeQuint Allen Jr. and Fadil Diggs.
Brown made Syracuse feel untouchable. It’d been beaten down as a power conference bottomfeeder for many years prior, but Brown promised instant change and delivered. Within a year, SU is no longer untouchable. It showed it’s as fickle as any team in the nation with its inability to overcome the injury of one player, Angeli. And it showed it can still suffer embarrassments on national television.
Look, there’s tons of hope for the Orange’s future. They have highly-touted recruiting classes incoming in 2026 and 2027. Angeli will be back next year. So will sophomore running back Yasin Willis and presumably more key players. And, at the end of the day, it’s tough for any team to win after losing its QB1. Just look at Nebraska, whose once-promising campaign is going down the drain after losing quarterback Dylan Raiola to a season-ending injury.
But, wow, did the Orange falter at every turn when hit with adversity in 2025. Right now, they’re a team without confidence. In South Bend, they performed like a team whose season is already over. It was an indictment against Brown and his entire program.
Syracuse needs to look itself in the mirror, because it’s clear the Orange needed significantly more than a healthy Angeli to upset Notre Dame — they’re still years away from building a roster, coaching staff and culture that can create sustained success.
Cooper Andrews is a Senior Staff Writer at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at ccandrew@syr.edu or on X @cooper_andrews.
