TAMPA, Fla. – I don’t have to explain why Cameron Dantley should not be the starting quarterback for Syracuse anymore. He did that himself.

‘I’m good at times, and then there are times I’m really bad,’ Dantley said after the game Saturday, a 45-13 loss to No. 19 South Florida. ‘I just feel if I can get myself on track I can get myself back to playing good again. But I haven’t found a way to get myself on the right track.’

Sorry, but that’s not good enough. Not if you’re going to play the most important position on the field for a team desperately searching for any semblance of offensive consistency. Dantley had his chance these past six games to make his mark, and his play has gotten worse, not better.

Andrew Robinson gives the Orange a better chance to win than the Dantley we’ve seen these past two weeks, and it’s time to make the change. What has Dantley done, especially lately, to suggest otherwise?

In essentially the last 10 quarters, dating back to the Pittsburgh game Sept. 27, Syracuse has scored one touchdown – a 24-yard rush by Curtis Brinkley against the Bulls. Last weekend against West Virginia, the defense stayed strong and managed to hold the Mountaineers to only 17 points. Dantley led the Orange to six.

It hit rock bottom for him Saturday. In the second half, Dantley went a miserable 1-of-10 for seven yards, and the offense as a whole gained only nine yards for the entire 30 minutes. A lot of the passes weren’t particularly close, either, often bouncing on the turf and rolling to the intended receiver.

Yet immediately after the game, the always-positive SU head coach Greg Robinson said he didn’t see it that way.

‘I didn’t ever feel it was Cam not doing anything,’ Greg Robinson said. ‘I don’t know, maybe you guys felt that, but I didn’t feel that.’

Yes, Coach, we did feel that. Didn’t you notice how too many of Dantley’s throws were simply bad balls?

Robinson paused, thinking about what had transpired out on the field half-an-hour before, trying to remember each time his quarterback dropped back. Then, finally:

‘Yeah, there might have been a couple of them that were.’

At least a couple.

Granted, until the second half Saturday, Dantley had not been terrible. Syracuse has only scored 26 points since halftime of the Pitt game, but the offensive deficiencies haven’t necessarily been Dantley’s fault. He has been serviceable, mostly, with seven touchdowns to three interceptions and a completion percentage of 55 percent. But this team needs better than serviceable right now. Dantley has started six games and has hardly made much of a statement in any of them. Heck, he’s averaging 147 yards per game.

There comes a time when an offense is sputtering, it needs its quarterback to step up and make a big play. Brinkley can only do so much, and he isn’t the type of tailback who explodes for the game-changing 75-yard run, anyway. It’s up to Dantley, and he hasn’t proved he is capable of doing that.

More alarming is Dantley seems to be regressing, having played progressively worse in each of SU’s last three games. Pittsburgh, West Virginia and South Florida have good defenses, but at times, Dantley has looked lost. Bad throws are bad throws, no matter who is playing defense.

And the scariest part is it seems like he knows it.

‘I just keep trying to make that one play to get me back on track and on rhythm,’ Dantley said, ‘but I just can’t … I just haven’t seemed to be able to do that yet this season.’

Dantley is running out of opportunities, and that’s why it is time to switch back to Andrew Robinson. He got a raw deal to begin the season, being benched after one poor performance on opening day coming off a solid season as the starter last year.

Greg Robinson even wanted to make the change Saturday. The head coach said he wanted to put Andrew Robinson in late in the game. ‘What happened was, I’m coaching over on the (defensive) side. I run over there (to the offensive side), and it’s too late,’ Robinson said. ‘I think that Andrew deserves to get in there and do something like that.’

I don’t know if Robinson is much better than Dantley, but I do know Dantley hasn’t been good enough to warrant keeping his spot. Robinson won’t be worse than Dantley. He may even be better.

‘This is a bye week, so we have time to assess a lot of things,’ Greg Robinson said.

Good. Start assessing.

Jared Diamond is a staff writer for The Daily Orange, where his columns appear occasionally. He can be reached at jediamon@syr.edu.

Published on October 19, 2008 at 12:00 pm