As a unit, they stayed in Syracuse all summer. The Syracuse football team’s offensive linemen not only conditioned together, they lived together.

They learned about one another, inside and out. Over plates of wings and hamburgers at Hooters, after countless hands of poker, a trust was built. And, on the offensive line, trust trumps any other asset.

‘It’s huge,’ guard Matt Tarullo said. ‘You gotta know that the guy next to you is kicking somebody’s ass just like you are.’

That trust manifested itself again Saturday when SU’s offensive line paved the way for Walter Reyes’s Carrier Dome-record 241 yards and four touchdowns without allowing a single sack.

It’s been happening all season. With four starters – Nick Romeo, Matt Tarullo, Kevin Sampson and Adam Terry – back from last year’s line and Jason Greene and Steve Franklin filling the fifth spot, Syracuse has allowed only three sacks all season while making Reyes the nation’s leading rusher at 173 yards per game.

‘If you compare us to any offensive line,’ said Tarullo, a left guard, ‘we’re probably going to be bigger, we’re probably going to be stronger and we’re probably going to be more experienced.’

That experience showed Saturday. All week Romeo and Co. prepared for Central Florida’s defensive scheme.

A funny thing happened Saturday on the way from the film room to the Carrier Dome, though. A week’s worth of studying evaporated, as UCF came out with a formation opposite of what SU expected. The Golden Knights shifted their safeties and linemen differently than expected.

Panic could have set in. Instead, dominance did.

‘UCF came out in a defense we didn’t expect them to come out in, and we reacted to it,’ Tarullo said. ‘We just sort of played through it. We started drilling the other guys, and they started to give up.’

Busting Reyes loose against UCF proved how much SU’s blockers have improved since a year ago. The Golden Knights bottled up Virginia Tech running back Kevin Jones, holding him to 83 yards.

‘The Central Florida line took care of Virginia Tech’s offensive line,’ Greene said. ‘That motivated us to play harder. We outplayed Virginia Tech’s offensive line.’

Indeed, the Orangemen can overpower a defense. Greene realized that while watching film of SU’s season-opening, triple-overtime 49-47 win Sept. 6 at North Carolina.

Head coach Paul Pasqualoni pointed out a play in the second overtime when, on a straight-ahead inside rush, SU’s line pancaked three Tar Heels for a 15-yard Reyes gain.

Combined with that power is an understanding gained from playing together for an entire season. SU has already faced two teams – UCF and North Carolina – that blitz extensively and use multiple defensive fronts, two traits designed to confuse offensive lines.

‘We’ve picked up a lot of blitzes that we didn’t last year,’ Tarullo said. ‘We got much better. We learned how to recognize fronts as they change. They tend to add and subtract people from the front eight to make us confused. It hasn’t been working quite yet.’

That traces back to the summer, when the Orangemen line voluntarily spent the summer in their South Campus apartments, where each lineman found his role.

Tarullo was the loud mouth, Terry the contemplative guy. Greene was the quiet one, while Sampson exuded confidence. They all attended the wedding of Romeo, their center and leader.

‘The bottom line,’ Tarullo said, ‘is if you have someone you can trust and depend on off the field, you can trust and depend on them on the field.’

Romeo, who’s responsible for calling out shifts and making sure blitzers are blocked, knows if he looks left before the snap, Tarullo will alert teammates of a linebacker creeping up on the right.

Romeo knows he can count on Tarullo, his best friend, thanks to playing next to him for 15 games – not to mention that Tarullo covers Romeo in Halo, a crossfire game on Xbox the linemates play incessantly on weekends.

Said Romeo: ‘It’s great to have guys like that where you can trust them off the field and in your life.’

Published on September 23, 2003 at 12:00 pm