A flashback to the last time Lavar Lobdell scored a touchdown. Local football enthusiasts may remember it fondly.

It happened at the Carrier Dome late in the fourth quarter of a game the crowd still had a reason to care about. After all, here was an opportunity to root against Ray Rice, a local enemy and former Rutgers star tailback, who had already scored three touchdowns.

With the score tied, Lobdell took the ball and scooted 27 yards to the endzone to give his team a 41-35 lead – the eventual final tally. ‘Finally, it shut Ray Rice up,’ Lobdell said.

It was a Syracuse fan’s greatest dream: Lobdell scoring the winning touchdown to propel the Orange to a key win against Big East rival Rutgers, leaving Rice, now with the Baltimore Ravens, wishing he hadn’t broken his verbal commitment to SU.

One problem, though.

The year was 2004. The game, the Class AA New York State championship. Rice played for New Rochelle taking handoffs from now Providence basketball standout Geoff McDermott. Lobdell was still a four-star wide receiver recruit at local Christian Brothers Academy, showing why Rivals.com ranked him the third-best prospect in the state.

‘If someone had told me I would not score a touchdown since then,’ Lobdell said, ‘I would have laughed in their face.’

Yes, it has been almost four years since Lobdell, now a junior for the Orange, last experienced the endzone. Despite all the hype, Lobdell’s time at Syracuse has been nothing short of a frustrating disappointment. He has just 16 catches and no touchdown in his collegiate career. By way of comparison, Donte Davis has 12 receptions this season alone.

As far as Lobdell is concerned, there is an easy explanation as to why this year has not gone well: He isn’t getting the ball thrown to him enough.

‘We like to run the ball,’ Lobdell said. ‘I’ll say that.’

Then, less than a minute later in the same interview:

‘How can I say this and be politically correct?’ he said. ‘If the ball is in my hands a little more, you’ll know. I’d like to feel that pigskin a little more.’

There always has been an excuse for why he wasn’t living up to the expectations. He was injured in 2005, forcing him to miss the last nine games, earning him a medical redshirt. Then in 2006, he was too inexperienced having missed the season before. Last year, other receivers – Mike Williams and Taj Smith – prevented passes from coming his way.

This season, it seemed there would be no more excuses. Lobdell came into training camp considered Syracuse’s top receiver, primed to finally break out. But Lobdell is sixth on the team in receptions with three, behind tailbacks Curtis Brinkley and Doug Hogue, tight end Mike Owen and even fullback Tony Fiammetta.

And as he continues to struggle, the new excuse begins to form.

‘It’s really all about the plays that are called,’ Lobdell said. ‘We want more production, we want more passes thrown our way, but we got to wait for (offensive coordinator Mitch) Browning to call them.’

When the ball has been thrown to him, though, Lobdell has struggled. He has dropped passes, and several times it appeared he and the quarterback were not on the same page.

In Syracuse’s Sept. 13 game against Penn State, Lobdell dropped a pass in the fourth quarter thrown by backup Andrew Robinson. Later, Robinson threw a high ball in Lobdell’s vicinity that he arguably should have come down with. On the sidelines, SU head coach Greg Robinson and Lobdell seemed to have an animated meeting.

At Greg Robinson’s press conference the next day, he tried to mitigate the expectations of his receiver.

‘The expectations for Lavar from the day he got here probably were unfair,’ he said. ‘People expected him to be the second coming. That’s been hard on him.’

Coming out of high school, however, it looked like Lobdell deserved those expectations. In his senior year at CBA, he caught 38 passes for 733 yards and 21 touchdowns while leading the Brothers to the state title. At 6-foot-3, 210-pounds, he has the body and athleticism to be a big-time college receiver.

But drops have been a problem since he arrived at Syracuse, something the coaches have been trying to work out of his system.

‘He just needs to catch the ball consistently, he knows that’s the deal,’ said wide receivers coach Chris White last week. ‘He has a nice package to him. He’s tall, he can run, he runs good routes, he’s fundamentally very good. But he needs to make plays when plays are thrown to him.’

The question is whether or not he still can, if all the accolades he received were deserved. First on the agenda: score another touchdown in the Dome. This time, for the Orange, not Christian Brothers Academy.

Lobdell says he knows he still has the ability to be the star everyone expected, that he expected from himself. He still has eight more games this year and all of next season to prove he is not a bust.

He knows it’s coming. That’s something he has never doubted.

‘I know what I can do,’ Lobdell said. ‘I’ll just leave it that.’

jediamon@syr.edu

Published on September 26, 2008 at 12:00 pm