It started, oddly enough, with a mistake.

Standing inside his own 20-yard line, Marcus Clayton allowed Garvin Ringwelski’s punt to bounce and tumble by him. As the ball rolled toward the goal line and eventually inside the 1-yard line, Clayton drew Syracuse head football coach Paul Pasqualoni’s ire. Syracuse held a 10-point lead and had seemingly given Temple an opportunity to jump back into the contest.

Instead, the Syracuse offense turned Clayton’s faux pas into an opportunity. With 13:01 remaining in the second quarter, it embarked on a 99-yard, 11-play drive that lasted 5:17 and served as the touchstone to SU’s dominating, 41-17 win over Temple on Saturday.

‘I told our guys, there was going to come a point in the game where you’re going to break their will,’ SU offensive coordinator George DeLeone said. ‘I think that 99-yard drive really took a lot of steam out of them.’

So did the loss of their top defensive player. On the drive’s first play, SU quarterback R.J. Anderson sneaked for a yard. As the pile of players unsorted, Owl tackle Antwon Burton stayed down.

Burton and Taso Apostolidis – listed at 330 and 285 pounds, respectively – caused SU fits the whole first quarter, forming a pair of defensive tackles that looked like bowling balls and played like tree stumps.

‘When (Burton) got hurt, it definitely put a damper on them,’ said SU center Nick Romeo, who appeared to be injured on the play but was only trapped under Burton as doctors inspected the Temple defensive tackle.

Said guard Matt Tarullo: ‘It was definitely easier (with Burton out). That’s a 330-pound guy, so it was a lot easier on me.’

After Anderson’s sneak, Walter Reyes rushed for seven yards out of SU’s two-fullback, ‘hambone’ formation. Faced with a third-and-two, seldom-used backup running back Tim Washington gained three yards on an option for SU’s first of four first downs on the drive.

The most important first down came three plays later, when wide receiver Johnnie Morant made perhaps the game’s most impressive play. On third-and-10, Anderson threw a pass to Morant’s outside shoulder on a fade that arrived just as Morant turned around. He stretched out over the sideline and kept his feet inbounds to sustain the march.

‘How he caught that ball, it was unbelievable,’ DeLeone said. ‘That was as big a big-time catch as you’re going to see.’

Next came the drive’s longest play. Rashard Williams ran a ‘sluggo’ pattern – Pasqualoni’s nickname for a slant-and-go. Anderson pumped to Williams, then heaved a 40-yard bomb that Williams hauled in over his shoulder.

‘(Anderson) was accurate today,’ TU head coach Bobby Wallace said. ‘Some days he isn’t, and some days he is. We got him on a good day for him. When he is accurate like he was today, Syracuse is a very tough team.’

Two quarterback scrambles and a six-yard burst by fullback Thump Belton later, Reyes plunged behind tackle Kevin Sampson for a touchdown.

With that, Syracuse had turned nightmarish field position into a game-clinching performance. Not only did it give Syracuse a 17-0 lead, more importantly, it demoralized the Owls.

‘That took a lot out of them,’ Tarullo said. ‘Back on the half-yard line, and we run the ball right down their throat for 99 yards. You come off the field as an offensive lineman and you take pride in it.’

Said Pasqualoni: ‘We needed to answer the bell on that one. That was a key point in the game.’

Published on November 9, 2003 at 12:00 pm