To read Part 1 of the Babers Offense Series, click here. To read Part 2, click here.

Syracuse has used six different quarterbacks over the past two seasons. The Orange ranked 13th in the Atlantic Coast Conference in total offense last year. Its offensive play-calling has come under scrutiny.

Enter Dino Babers, who has repeatedly beamed about the offensive scheme he’s bringing to SU. And the team he’s leading, especially his quarterback, can be molded.

Starter Eric Dungey still has three years of eligibility remaining. Babers has said there’s no doubt that over time, the system will work. That means Dungey could join a select group by the time his Syracuse career is over.

Kevin Kolb, Robert Griffin III, Jimmy Garoppolo and Bryce Petty all spent multiple seasons in the Baylor-style offense and put up video game-like numbers. Griffin won the Heisman Trophy. But they’ve also all had up-and-down stints in the NFL. Griffin, Garoppolo and Petty still have chances to improve and match their college success.


“Scouts like to see them in a pro-style system because you see them run what they’re going to run in the NFL,” said Mark Dulgerian, an NFL Network researcher and scout for Optimum Scouting. “I don’t want to say they can’t be successful, they just haven’t practiced making some of the reads and some of the throws that they’re going to need in the NFL.

“It’s just a lot more difficult.”

Dungey has the chance to be the next in line. And if he enters the NFL, the same question that follows his predecessors will almost undoubtedly follow him. Can he handle the complexity of NFL offenses?

“Scouts like to see them in a pro-style system because you see them run what they’re going to run in the NFL.I don’t want to say they can’t be successful, they just haven’t practiced making some of the reads and some of the throws that they’re going to need in the NFL. Mark Dulgerian

The style that Babers learned while coaching under Art Briles at Baylor from 2008-11 has a stigma of being “simple.” That’s because it is — or at least it’s simpler than some “pro-style” schemes. Fewer quarterback responsibilities have led to quicker decisions and faster passes. The movements become instinctual and allow teams to pick defenses apart.

The scheme was created by Briles in 1990 at Stephenville (Texas) High School, and one of Briles’ core principles was to keep it as easy as possible to learn. Unlike many NFL schemes, there aren’t traditional three-, five- and seven-step drops and a significant amount of the reads are done on option plays. Most of the time, the quarterback lines up in shotgun while standard NFL systems feature the quarterback under center.

Briles was recently fired at Baylor after allegedly covering up several players sexually assaulting students. According to a review by Philadelphia-based law firm Pepper Hamilton that presented findings of fact to Baylor’s board of regents, “football coaches and staff had inappropriate involvement in disciplinary and criminal matters or engaged in improper conduct that reinforced an overall perception that football was above the rules.”

The offense that Babers is using at Syracuse is friendly to quarterbacks. Almost too friendly.

When quarterbacks who saw immense success playing collegiately in the scheme transition to the NFL, they’ve often been forced to learn different styles that don’t align with what they were previously used to. The gaudy numbers they put up in college can be inflated.

The dynamic is multi-faceted. Players coming from the Baylor system have a steeper professional learning curve. And then in the pros, quarterbacks are being pigeonholed to run a system they’re not used to. But if they didn’t put up monster stats in college, they may never have gotten a shot to reach the professionals.

“I learned coverages from Coach Babers,” Garoppolo said in an email, “and learning that helped me transition to the NFL.”